REQUEST; Sly & Family Stone Horn Section

[Lord_Nord]

Hey fellow Nord Lords! I'm playing a Woodstock revival type show and I've been asked to cover the horn section for Sly & The Family Stone on Dance To The Music, Music Lover, and Higher. I'm finding that the downloadable samples from the Nord site are a little cheesy sounding...or maybe need tweaking. Does anyone have any horn section samples that might work for some snappy funk?!

Thanks in advance!

[Quai34]

in my opinion, there is no samples that could be as good as a real horn section in a funk song.....You will always miss the "Snap" and "intensity" of the all brass section like in September (Earth Winf and Fire...) or the songs you asked for. But if you check this website, I had good experiences with some pop/brass samples or even "full sustain" of full "fall section". I got them a while ago and they work for "I feel good", "Sledgehammer" etc....Ok, I usually layer them with some other samples from my VX5080 or the Proteus 2000...But I always miss the real articulation of a real brass player but it does the trick in a cover band situation.
I'm assuming that if you use big samples libraries on computer you will get even closer but just with Nord Samples you will be a bit short...It all depends on how realistic they want you to be....But honestly, I Start to be a little bit upset by other members who always ask you to cover some stuff that you are not even supposed to do, as a keyboard player.
Here is a thread about brass samples:
http://www.norduserforum.com/nord-elect ... 13602.html
But I start to think like "Gambold", he said in different posts that the more you try to emulate real acoustic instruments, the more the band will always ask you to play other parts that keys and will turn/Shift you away form the basic, playing keys....
So, I don't want to discourage you but make sure you won't end up being told :
"Well, look at that, this new Rolling Stone song, you will have a blast in doing the Sax solo!!!!"...Well, for sure, it's really hard to distinguish even a small amount of organ in the song...
Ok, sorry for being maybe too much negative but to get the best brass samples, you need to get a good and pure samples box...Shouls I say that the Roland Integra 7 has some?

[harmonizer]

Many pop songs that feature horns also have a B3 organ playing along with those horn parts. You might try playing some organ parts *instead* of horn sounds - this might work better than horn sounds on some songs, especially since it is difficult to emulate the breath attack of horn parts from a keyboard. I say this as someone who plays sax as his main instrument.

[Lord_Nord]

Thanks for the replies. I usually comp on organ for the horn parts, but there is actually going to be another keyboard player doing the organ parts for Sly and they want the horns in there. Ill do my best!

[DJKeys]

I also think that blending samples with synthesized brass-like sounds makes for an effective combination.

-dj