The Trumpet v3

Vibrato is undoubtedly an essentials element for the realism of your musical lines. Samplemodeling vibrato is by far the most manageable existing vibrato, since it does not start from multiple static recordings but from real-time modeling of the sample.

The vibrato of a real trumpet has a very complex “anatomy” which can be described as a modulation of pitch, intensity and timbre. Also, vibrato intensity and frequency slightly vary over time. Our virtual trumpet creates a realistic vibrato by reproducing these subtle variations by advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques.

You can exploit the extremely realistic vibrato created by the instrument by adjusting its intensity, with MIDI CC#1. The algorithms will automatically manage, pitch, intensity, harmonic and timbre variation based on deep analysis of real performances, according to the inserted CC#1. If you desire, you can manually change the rate by controlling and automating the parameter (CC#19) Vibrato Rate.

For more plug-&-play users, the instrument gives the option of exploiting an automatic vibrato, selecting before the performance the desired maximum intensity, rate and delay time.

For those who want to manually control everything and exploit the extreme flexibility of the instrument, Samplemodeling instruments can be used without any algorithmic “help” and perform your vibrato directly with a controller (i.e. Breath Controller or Wind Controller)

The Trumpet v3 package includes several instruments belonging to the same family. Their playing range corresponds to that of a top professional player, and extends from E2 to G5 (B Trumpets, Cornet), E2 – C5 (Flügelhorn, German Trumpet) or G#2 – G5 (Piccolo Trumpet).

• Three B Trumpets Along with the main, solo B trumpet (“Main Trumpet”) you will find 2 other ones – named “Trumpet 2” and “Trumpet 3”, sounding slightly different, and suitable for being used in trumpet sections (which shouldn’t mean that your arrangements need to be limited to 3 voices only).
• Flügelhorn Similar to the trumpet, but with a wider, conical bore, the Flügelhorn provides a darker and much softer tone. Its beautiful, warm sound is mainly used in jazz or in brass bands, as well as in popular music.
• German Trumpet This more “massive” type of trumpet uses rotary valves and sounds less “bright” than the jazz trumpet. It possesses a larger volume of tone which may better blend with other instruments. It’s mainly used in classical music.
• Cornet Similar to the trumpet, but more compact in shape. It sounds a bit warmer and mellow. Its agility makes the Cornet particularly suitable for melodic passages. It is mostly used in brass bands, but also in jazz ensembles.
• Piccolo Trumpet Also known as “Bach trumpet”, it represents the smallest instrument of the trumpet family. Its tubing, which is only one-half the length of the “normal” trumpet, as well as other construction details, make this instrument more advantageous for playing in the highest register – not only in Baroque music. Piccolo Trumpet sounds “smaller” and brighter than the B trumpet.
• A ready-to-use Unison Ensemble Multi, including three B♭ Trumpets with Ensemble Maker, along with an appropriate ambience/convolution reverb, suitable for unison playing from a single MIDI source.

The base material of the instruments consists of 278 MB of samples, chromatically performed by a professional trumpet player over a very wide dynamic range. All samples are unlooped, and have a minimum duration of about 10 sec. The Trumpet engine is structured according to an adaptive model, based on the performance “fingerprints” of the real instrument. The purpose of the model is to minimize the differences between the real phrases and those played by the virtual instrument.

Proprietary modal resonance IRs, innovative techniques for sample modulation, and advanced artificial intelligence MIDI processing are used for real time construction of all articulations and morphing across dynamics, vibrato, legato, portamento, trills, vibrato-like endings, shakes and so forth.

Pseudo-random detuning, based on real performance-derived pitch trends, is another outstanding new feature of The Trumpet v3, adding further realism.

Despite its structural complexity, this instrument is very intuitive and easy to play.

The Trumpet does not use pre-recorded articulations, and shaping the sound is the task of the player, carried out by proper use of a few midi controllers. However, extensive use of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques greatly facilitates this task.

Our revolutionary “Adaptive Model” approach acts by minimizing the differences from the real instrument, whatever articulation or phrase you play. You can therefore concentrate on creating music, rather than mastering complex sample bank management. Nevertheless, thorough knowledge of the controllers and the keyswitches, and some practice are certainly needed to get virtuoso effects.

Before starting to play, please make sure your expression pedal (or breath controller) is connected to the keyboard and properly mapped to CC11 (or CC2).

“Legato” means “bound together”: legato notes are not separated, but rather connected to the previous note by some form of transition. The transition time (and type) between subsequent notes represents one of the most important elements of expression. If it’s short, it is usually named legato. If exceeds a certain time, the transition may “carry” from one note to another by a slide, which is called “portamento”. On a real trumpet, this can be achieved by skilled control of the lip tension, and/or by changing the tube length with the valves. To get a legato or portamento with our virtual trumpet is indeed very easy. You only need to overlap subsequent notes with the appropriate velocity. The duration of legato/portamento ranges from 30 msec to about 1 sec., depending on the velocity of the overlapped note and on the played interval. Normal legato is obtained with velocities ranging from 70 to 90. Lower velocities lead to a more “trumpet-like” portamento effect. Portamento may be interrupted by overlapping a new note. This leads to the very realistic effect of a split portamento, especially if a wide interval is played in an arpeggio-like fashion. Please note: very low velocities (below 10), which are necessary for longer portamentos, might be difficult to play on some keyboards, so the proper calibration of the velocity response of your keyboard may be very helpful. Under these circumstances we strongly recommend using our velocity remapping tool. Please refer to the Menu description above to learn more how to apply it.

Realistic trills, ornamentations and shakes can be obtained by simply playing them on a keyboard. However, a very helpful retrigger feature greatly facilitates this task: upon release of an overlapped note, the previous note will be played again (retriggered) if the key is still held down. So in order to play a trill, keep the initial note pressed while pressing and releasing the other note. Try different velocities, which noticeably determine the character of the trill/shake. This technique works also in more complex ornamentations using two or more overlapping notes. Typical trumpet shakes can be played either using the technique described above, or raising the ModWheel (CC1) to 110-127. In this latter case, a very realistic vibrato-to-shake transition will be obtained.

These playing techniques provide a characteristic “dirty” sound, which is the result of a frequency modulation of the sound. The most common is “growling”, accomplished by singing a tone of a different pitch (vocalizing) while playing a note. The flutter-tongue (frullato) is accomplished by modulating the airflow: while playing a note, the trumpet player flutters his tongue making the typical “Frrrrr” – sound, similar to pronouncing a “rolling R”. “The Trumpet” uses 2 controllers to obtain growling and frullato effects: CC21 and CC23, where CC21 uses higher modulating frequency. To differentiate the results, they can be used separately or mixed in different proportions.

Falls are descending glissandos going to nowhere, i.e. they just fade out and do not stop on a particular note. If performed using only the half-valve sound, which is more suitable for longer falls, they sound smoother and softer. If a “punchy” or “sloppy” fall is needed, a series of notes (usually in f-ff) is played – either chromatic, or using any other – e.g. harmonic – series of notes. These articulations may be directly executed on the keyboard by skillful players. However, more conveniently, the same effect will be obtained by using dedicated keyswitches. For more details please refer to the “Performance Keyswitches” below.

An outstanding feature, allowing to create real time articulations which are too difficult to perform with the usual interplay of expression pedal, pitchbend and modwheel. Sforzato, crescendo, vibrato-like endings and different types of release, can be obtained by hitting one or more keyswitches.

The intensity of the effect, and its duration, are under player’s control. Please note that these are not just sampled articulations, but they are sample-modeled, indeed. This means that each time each of them will sound slightly different. No machine-gun nor mechanical repetitions here.

With the velocity you can naturally handle the attack of the sound and shape the overlapped notes, triggering for example a legato, portamento or glissato transition. The instrument will help you with its complex internal or algorithms that control attack’s ramps, pitch and other aspects of the sound.

It is well known that midi keyboards have different and uneven velocity response, and this may heavily influence the performance of a virtual instrument. To obviate this problem, the instrument includes automatic detection of any velocity inhomogeneities or non-linearity of the keyboard, and provides automatic mapping to any desired curve.

NEW: Similarly, user-drawn rescaling of the expression controller allows better control of the dynamics, particularly with such input devices like breath and windcontrollers.

Mutes are devices affecting the timbre and/or volume of an instrument. The trumpet – like other brass instruments – uses a wide range of mutes: – the most common are Harmon (with or without stem), Straight, Cup, Plunger and Bucket. They are mostly cone-shaped and are inserted into the bell or simply held or clipped outside the bell. Depending on the shape or material (metal, wood, plastic) they may significantly vary the sound of the trumpet. The most common mutes are:

• Straight – commonly used, cone-shaped, hollow mute – provides more metallic and „nasal“ sound. It is available for all the brass instruments.
• The Cup mute, which is similar to the Straight, decreases high and low frequencies providing a rounder, more „muffled“ sound.
• The bulbous, hollow Harmon mute provides a very characteristic sound similar to the ”Miles Davis sound“ of the trumpet. It completely blocks the air output forcing it to pass the hole in the middle of the mute, providing a very bright, “buzzy“ sound, frequently used in Jazz. Harmon can be combined with the stem, which is a short metal pipe with a funnel-like end, fitted into the hole of the Harmon mute.
• The Bucket mute uses some soft materials which remove the high frequencies providing a much softer, darker sound. The Plunger – which, indeed, is very similar to an unused toilet plunger – is kept by the player in one hand and manipulated in front of the bell. By closing and opening it, the typical “wah-wah” effect – even imitating the human voice – can be obtained.

All these mutes are available for use with our trumpets. We used sophisticated technologies to capture the “fingerprints” of each mute, which were ultimately coded into a suitable impulse response (IR). The latter can be instantly loaded from a drop down menu of the graphical interface, or via MIDI, using CC100 (see MIDI-loadable mutes, page 15).

A real trumpet may play different types of legato/portamento, using either lips, valves, or a combination of the two. The sound is different, since a different harmonic resonance is excited. This is nicely reproduced by our adaptive model. One may choose to perform a continuous portamento over two octaves by simply overlapping two notes, to split it manually playing intermediate legato notes, or to split it automatically, exploiting the natural harmonic resonances of the instrument, by a keyswitch. One can also choose to perform chromatically-split portamento or realistic falls and doits.

Playing The Trumpet v3 with either a keyboard plus breath controller (e.g.TEControl), or directly with a windcontroller (e.g. Yamaha or Akai) is very easy. Breath & Windcontroller modes automatically set proper CC settings, enable triggering of note-on and off by the expression data flow, optimize the bite–to-pitch response for the individual WC, etc.

To our knowledge, The Trumpet, The Trombone and French Horn & Tuba are the only sample-based anechoic virtual instruments developed so far. The purpose of anechoic recording was threefold:

• avoid “contamination” of the pure trumpet sounds with the uncontrolled resonances of a particular ambience,
• allow artifact-free “harmonic alignment” processing
• provide clean articulations and phrases as a database to build the “adaptive model”.

This new feature allows precise positioning of the instruments in a virtual space, using early reflections, pre-delay, convoluted panning and perceived distance algorithms, working even in real time. The Virtual Soundstage will set you free of adding a further suitable acoustic environment, without incurring multiple-ambience issues. This can be carried out within the same Kontakt Player, which provides a high quality convolution reverb.

All samples in The Trumpet are mapped according to standard MIDI note numbers. This is very convenient when using a sequencer or a large keyboard. Conversely, users of small keyboards might take advantage of transposition to conveniently exploit the full range of the instrument. The Transpose knob greatly facilitates this task, by transposing keys and keyswitches at the same time, without the need to bother with keyboard programming.

This is an entirely new feature, coping with the requirements of musicians using non-tempered scales, so essential in, for example, Middle Eastern and Asian music. Our approach to microtuning yields maximal flexibility, allowing user-defined scales, where the extent of detuning (range +60/-60 cents) can be precisely set for each note by means of a series of bars. The scale can be saved and recalled as a preset. In addition, selective detuning can be applied to individual notes in realtime, by using third-level keyswitches, similar to those used for split portamenti, falls and doits. In this case, all notes are detuned by a predetermined amount (up to +/-60 cents), which may be set and modified by the user. The currently detuned notes are displayed in a dedicated GUI.

This revolutionary new feature adds a virtually infinite timbral variety to sample-based instruments, by acting on the amplitude of individual harmonics, or groups of harmonics, even in real time. This is not a graphic equalizer; the controlling bars are not assigned to fixed frequencies, but to the first 10 harmonics of the played note. As a consequence, the affected frequencies vary with the pitch of the note. So, rising, for example, bar #1 will boost the fundamental frequency (first harmonic) of each note played, yielding a rounder sound. Rising bars #3, #4, #5 will increase the intensity of the corresponding harmonics for a more “nasal” sound, etc.

Special consideration has been given to creation of realistic ensembles from solo instruments, whether driven from separate MIDI tracks, or when playing unison. An advanced “ensemble maker” has been developed, affecting timing, static and dynamic pitch evolution, phase, response to dynamics, pitchbend, velocity, portamento time, in such a way that even if driven from a single MIDI source, each instrument will sound as if played by a different musician. A ready-to-use Multi, including three specially devised trumpets, the ensemble maker, and an appropriate convolution reverb, suitable for unison playing straight out of the box, is included in the package.