Nord User Forum

Anyone know how to emulate the brass sound from this live performance? I keep getting either too fatty sounds, like here it sounds quite thin but not as full?

Get a real horn section. Seriously.

Absolutely agreed with Eric. Nothing car replace a real brass section.

We play the last brass part with 2 alto saxophones only and that is plenty enough to get the job done. We are a 5 piece, so I have to leave my keys to grab my sax.

ericL wrote:Get a real horn section. Seriously.

Hehe a horn section doesn't even exist in my region

What you can do on the NS3 to fatten the sound is to use the Amp/EQ and add some Drive (yes), besides doing some EQing of course.

Otherwise, better look at some specific Virtual Instruments like NI Session Horns, for example (which incorporates the logic to assign chord notes to different instruments, just like a real brass section would do)

Hi everybody,

this seems to be a good question for me to realize that all the nords, even the most expensive ones, can never compete with workstations like the ones I had from korg and Roland (perhaps also Yamaha, just that I could never make friends with them). On one of those I can combine 8 or 16 sounds of the same category, even the very same one, and can individually adjust pitch envelopes, attack phases, volumes, panorama, whether or not each one reacts to the wheel or pedals and so on. I mean, you can never play like a real brass in every detail, but you can get close to the feel and the impact of it even with a keyboard. Unfortunately not with a nord.

Cheers from Germany

Edit: Before I forget - I love my electro for organ, piano and simplicity.

Nothing beats real brass. That is for sure.
Also not in loudness...

I used Kurzweil and Motifs. Now with the Nord synths I mix and match some samples and synth brass

My bread and butter Brass sound is a Motif sample that I downloaded from this forum somewhere and the Pop section 3.
On the Nord Stage 3 I slightly (5-10%) add a sub saw one octave below to add some meat on the synth sections.
Play with velocity setting: best to have it different for both sound to have more dynamic change of sound.
Some eq and little bit plate and delay will also help to blend it better.
Works great in my coverband.

On the Wave 2 you could mix 4 sounds (I would add a trumpet and a synth brass to the section)

The original arrangement called for two trumpets, an alto sax, and a tenor sax. Sometimes playing two-part, three-part, or four-part.

As someone mentioned earlier, there are samples of horn “falls” that would work in the chorus, but some of those hits are also non-fall. The coda seems the most challenging part to perform, with all those pitch bends (along with subtle volume tweaks) that were individually crafted by those players, and are an important part of the “personality” of that riff.

I'm always one for the real horn section and have been in several bands with multiple horns. This has led me to mostly despise playing horn parts on keyboards. I make an occasional exception, such as Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, which I've been playing in a couple of cover bands. I have a short video tutorial about it on YouTube and have the NS3 Programs used in this thread, if this is of any help. I doubled up a couple of the big horn section sounds from the Nord Sample Library.

https://www.norduserforum.com/nord-stag ... ml#p146376

For Brass, I have the XV5080 and some extra card like Hirns and brass which work well. Glad I have this because they are a bit short on the Nord.