Convincing brass

[tomfuller]

I want to write some really bold-sounding trumpet and brass passages in a musical I have composed, and I haven't exhaustively tried nearly all what Sibelius has to offer, but the ones I have used sound like toys. Are any trumpets, cornets, etc. better than others? I use the Sibelius instruments for performance. Ordinarily, they work fine. But here and there, they lack.

Tom in Texas

[MikeLyons]

Unless you are willing to pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars, you aren't going to get realistic sounds. You certainly won't get them with Sib sounds - which hasn't been updated for at least 10 years.

Noteperformer does good brass sounds, with little fussing and faffing about for a low price, NP is fully (and automatically) integrated with Sib, but these sounds are still a far cry from real players.

Even if you do buy a high end orchestral instrument, Sibelius does not play well with VSTs and hasn't yet - to the best of my knowledge - started to use VST3 sounds yet. There will be a huge amount of manipulation involved in getting the sounds to work with sibelius in the way you want. If there is a soundset available for the particular library that you want to use (eg from soundset project) it will make the integration easier, but still involve you in messing about "under the hood".

An alternative would be to invest in a DAW (like Steinberg's Cubase or Avid's ProTools). Then you could export the sib file in a suitable format into the DAW and use any sounds you want to and manipulate them to your heart's content.

[andyg]

Mike has said exactly what I'll now echo.

For mock-ups, I'll use Sibelius Sounds plus Garritan GPO 4 together. That usually does the job quite adequately.

If I want something better, I'll export the piece as a MIDI file and import it into Cubase, where I have a lot of higher quality virtual instruments. I also have the ability to do much more fine tuning in Cubase, in terms of everything from randomisation of timing and intonation to use of DSP effects on individual sounds. Oh, and much better reverb, EQ etc.

I think a lot of people want Sibelius to be a one stop shop, doing everything in one go. But first and foremost it's a notation app, not a music production app. With a DAW like Cubase, it's the other way around and I'd never subject anyone to a score printed from Cubase, even though it has improved a lot over the years!

[tomfuller]

This is helpful. I am mostly ignorant of everything beyond Sibelius, including Cubase, etc. Guess I need to get educated. I would be willing to spend hundreds or thousands, for great brass and strings. I have performed hundreds of times using Sibelius's instruments as accompaniment, and have never heard a complaint. However, they could be so much better. So....no plug-in sounds set, such as Garritan (I have tried it, and liked Sibelius's better) can be had? I have some performances coming up, and I don't have lots of time to learn something brand-new.

Tom in Texas

[MikeLyons]

If money is no object, there are excellent libraries available from steinberg, sounds online and others. Again, the caveats are that, unless there are soundsets available you are going to have to get into the bare guts of sibelius 's soundworld. I believe the latest version of NotePerformer has a facility to access some of the more popular vst instruments.

[tomfuller]

Money isn't much of an object. I would pay quite a bit to get realistic sounds, especially in strings and brass. Guess my main handicap is my ignorance of how to get from here to there.

TnT

[MikeLyons]

Try EastWest Opus. Their Hollywood sounds can be made to sound very realistic.