Hey hey, it’s Hidde Pieters again!

My younger brother strikes again. I mentioned in the story of my previous submission, the LaPaz Guitar, how my younger brother wanted to learn guitar. What I didn’t mention in that story, is that the guitar would have been the umpteenth instrument he would have tried his hand at at that point. He’s played recorder, violin, xylophone, and a few others I can’t even remember. However, none of the instruments he’s tried his hands at have captivated him as long as his current instrument, the tenor saxophone. Where the other instruments held his attention for a year at most, he’s been playing saxophone for well over four years now, and even plays in the local intermediate orchestra. Having said all that, I never even thought about sampling him playing the sax.
Then, a few months ago, I had to do a project for school; me and a few classmates had to write and orchestrate a piece of balkan brass music. This composition had to include obvious distinct sections, one recorded instrument, one synthesised instrument, and one sampled instrument. Me and my team got to brainstorming who would do what, what we would record and sample, and what we would synthesise. The last part was the easiest, as we luckily had someone on board who was quite good at sound design, who also offered to synthesise a trumpet. The tricky part was figuring what to sample and what to record, as we didn’t know anyone who played brass. However, I then realised, I did know someone who played a brass woodwind: my younger brother! So me and my brother booked a few hours in one of the school’s recording studios, along with a small assortment of microphones, and got to work.

This is also my second experiment with multi-microphone recording setups, and my first voyage into mic controls. Admittedly, I used a somewhat unorthodox recording setup for this. One cardioid microphone (the Close Mic) about half a meter in front of the sax, a figure eight microphone (the Mid-Room Mic) about two meters from the sax with the sensitive side aimed towards the sax, and an omnidirectional microphone (the Far-Room Mic) behind the sax in a corner of the room. Though I don’t have a lot of experience in recording, I’ve found that I quite enjoy having a more roomy sound, hence this setup, as it both nicely captures the sax, and the room around it.

We recorded two octaves, with three velocity layers per note, and three round robins per velocity layer. We also recorded the various pads and keys of the sax, which I mapped onto the lower keys of the keyboard, free for you to add in as you please. I also have these sounds their own volume knob.

The one crux of this library, I think, is the volume disparity between velocity layers. I tried to fix that as best I could, but didn’t go too far with it for fear of disturbing the noise floor too much. Still, I don’t think it’s too big an issue.

In the end, I’m really happy with how this project turned out! I’ve got a few other sample libraries in the works which I’m slowly working on, and I want to experiment with true legato in the future as well, so this is not the last you’ll hear from me.

Cheers!
Hidde.

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Update 09/05/2022:

-Added support for Kontakt 6, including a new simulated legato patch, curtesy of Obolig, who helped out with the Kontakt Scripting.

-Changed the name of the “Plungers” knob. This knob was previously called “Pads,” which led to some confusion.

-Changed the colour of the different keyboard sections for added visual clarity.

-Changed the colour of the knobs in the Decent Sampler version so it more closely resembles its Kontakt counterpart.

-Changed the way the Tone knob functions in the Decent Sampler version. Before it functioned in a linear fashion, which meant that you’d only really hear an effect once you started getting halfway down. The knob now functions in an exponential fashion, giving it a more balanced and nuanced feel.

Contributors

Hidde Pieters

UI Design, Decent Sampler Developer, Recording Engineer, Sample Editor

Owen Bolig

Kontakt Developer