Straight Ahead Jazz Horns
The ideal instrument for jazz, funk, swing, and big band, featuring deep-sampled horns & saxes.
US$179
Hear Straight Ahead Jazz Horns In Action
- Return All Robots! Swing Andrew Aversa & Michael Worth 0:49
- The Dead of Night Jason Cullimore 3:33
- Toro Por Los Cuernos Trey Pollard 0:42
- 9 to 5 Superhero Trey Pollard 1:01
- Tank! Yoko Kanno (arr. Nabeel Ansari) 1:32
- Noir Trey Pollard 1:08
- Blues Too Brad Jerkins 0:53
- Trouble's Brewing Jason Cullimore 3:22
- Racing Dream Henning Nugel 1:28
- King of the Crosswalks Jason Cullimore 3:04
- 9 to 5 Superhero (Naked/Dry) Trey Pollard 1:01
Reviews
Simon Franglen
Titanic, Skyfall, Spectre, Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water
Impact Soundworks make detailed, emotive instruments. I’ve happily bought over two dozen of their libraries which should say everything. They get used every day.
Mark Portmann
Ariana Grande, Luis Fonsi, Celine Dion, Quincy Jones
"[ISW]'s instruments consistently deliver the sound, feel, and reliability I need to do my best work. Thank you for raising the bar and making tools that inspire."
Neal Acree
World of WarCraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Overwatch
"Impact Soundworks has some of the most creative and innovative libraries out there. From world instruments to the insanely deep sampled Shreddage guitar series the Impact catalog is full of must-haves and unexpected and inspiring surprises. Highly recommended!
Stewart Winter
Co-founder, VideoHelper
"I'm a keyboard player -- I can't even make a REAL guitar sound convincing. But Telos and Rosette are my go-to guitars because they sound incredible, sit well in a mix and are so easy to configure to my personal playing habits. I'm constantly discovering new ways to play them and they've saved my ass more times than I can count. And the pedal Steel is still my favorite library of its kind for Country, Folk and organic layering behind synths."
Brian Pickett
PAW Patrol, Lucas the Spider, Daniel Tiger
"I never would have thought that sampled guitars could sound as good as ISW's do. The fact that I can use them to lay down a realistic solo is unprecedented. They’ve pushed the boundaries of realism."
Rosette Mandolin – Sound on Sound
Rosette Mandolin review
"The sound of the library is very pleasing...the more I used the library the more I felt I was learning how to write idiomatically for the instrument." "Rosette Mandolin provides a good sound that could have many applications, with versatile input options that cater to writing realistic mandolin lines, impossible 5+ note chords and everything in between." Thomas Field, September 2024
Richard Jacques
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Mass Effect, Overwatch 2, James Bond 007: Blood Stone
"I'm a huge fan of the Ventus Winds series. They feature rare instruments deep-sampled to an incredibly high level of detail. It's so liberating to have such a wide range of articulations & phrases that perfectly capture the nuances and performance style of these instruments... from beautiful to haunting, celebratory to sorrowful. Each is expertly recorded and the sound quality is superb, sitting in the mix with ease. If you want to add authentic world winds to your palette, then look no further."
Kevin Manthei
Angry Birds Mystery Island, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Villainous, Neverwinter, Star Trek Online
"ISW creates some of the most inspiring & realistic guitar sample libraries. I had to write a bunch of really gritty, angry heavy metal & sports action rock cues. I used Shreddage 3 Serpent for leads and was blown away by its onboard processing, programming, and amazing live-sounding leads. I also created a signature sound based on the lead guitar in David Lynch's Twin Peaks series, originally played on baritone guitar. [Serpent] built a convincing replica of that sound just using on-board FX. It was so fun and easy to do!"
Audio Demos
- Return All Robots! Swing Andrew Aversa & Michael Worth 0:49
- The Dead of Night Jason Cullimore 3:33
- Toro Por Los Cuernos Trey Pollard 0:42
- 9 to 5 Superhero Trey Pollard 1:01
- Tank! Yoko Kanno (arr. Nabeel Ansari) 1:32
- Noir Trey Pollard 1:08
- Blues Too Brad Jerkins 0:53
- Trouble's Brewing Jason Cullimore 3:22
- Racing Dream Henning Nugel 1:28
- King of the Crosswalks Jason Cullimore 3:04
- 9 to 5 Superhero (Naked/Dry) Trey Pollard 1:01
Overview
The ultimate virtual horn and sax band! With 13 deep-sampled solo instruments — trumpets, trombones, and saxes — this library has everything you need to produce incredible jazz, pop, funk, swing and big band music. Plus with new Smart Voicing ensembles, writing full harmonies and arrangements has never been easier.
Product Info
Huge sample base
Over 75,000+ 16 or 24-bit samples.
13 individual horns
4 separately recorded and sampled trumpets; 3 solo trombones; 1 bass trombone; 2 alto saxes; 2 tenor saxes; 1 baritone sax.
Standard articulations
A variety of longs and shorts: sustains, legatos, staccatos, staccatissimos, quarters, and fortepianos.
Jazz and pop articulations
Falls, glissandi, scoops, turns, flops, doits, bends, and shakes.
2 unique mic positions
Two different mic positions with separate level and pan controllers.
Features
Ready-made Multi Ensembles
Smart Voicing
Send Harmonized MIDI to Other Instruments
Extensive Articulation Options
One-click FX
Requirements
23GB disk space
7200 RPM hard drive or solid state drive recommended.
4GB RAM
Higher amounts of memory let you load more instruments.
2011 or later processor
A faster CPU with more cores will allow you to play more simultaneous voices
Kontakt 5.5.2+ Player
This library will run in the FREE Kontakt Player.
Kontakt Requirements - Mac OSX
Intel Macs (i5 or higher): macOS 10.14, 10.15, 11 or 12 (latest update).
Apple Silicon Macs (via Rosetta 2 & natively on ARM in Standalone or in hosts that support it): macOS 11 or 12 (latest update)
Kontakt Requirements - Windows
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit). Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU. Graphics hardware support for OpenGL 2.1 or higher. Windows 10 strongly recommended.
Tutorials
Walkthrough & Overview
Smart Voicing Teaser
Featured Artists & Composers
Mark Portmann
(Ariana Grande, Luis Fonsi, Celine Dion, Quincy Jones)
“[ISW]’s instruments consistently deliver the sound, feel, and reliability I need to do my best work. Thank you for raising the bar and making tools that inspire.”
Mike Gonsolin
(Snoop Dogg, T-Pain, Playboi Carti, Migos)
“Impact Soundworks’ libraries are truly in a league of their own. I’ve been a long time user for as long as I can remember and it would take me a whole other producing lifetime to build the depths of these libraries on my own. As a Kontakt enthusiast who owns just about every library out there I can confidently say that Impact Soundworks’ libraries stand in the top 1%, and that’s saying something! No snake oil here. Just meticulously assembled libraries that are overflowing with creative sound design options and inspiration igniting presets.”
Mike Gonsolin (Mike G)
ShadyCicada
“Impact Soundworks software is an absolute mainstay in my work when it comes to Video Game and Anime-inspired tracks! The amount of ease and wonderful sounds these plugins offer allows me to get straight into writing and brainstorming.”
Welcome to version 2 of Straight Ahead Jazz Horns! This library is designed to give you all the tools to create realistic solo and ensemble brass band mockups, with thirteen deeply-sampled instruments and over 75,000 samples total. Everything from the recordings to the performance scripting and multis has been created with authenticity and respect for jazz genres, but the library is equally suitable for big band/swing, pop, R&B, funk, and much more.
SA Jazz Horns was originally released by Straight Ahead Samples, who we have collaborated with to present this newly revised virtual instrument. Though the sample pool is largely the same as version 1 (with some additional tweaks and clean-up), the script and interface has been totally redone, including the realization of Smart Voicing – described in more detail below.
The result of our nearly year-long collaboration is an even more playable, realistic, and customizable virtual instrument that offers both excellent solo instruments and some of the most powerful ensemble writing tools ever developed, powered by our new Smart Voicing technology. We’re sure this library will find a place in your template and we can’t wait to hear what you do with it!
Our gamechanging new Smart Voicing technology makes it incredibly easy to write fully-voiced harmonies and ensemble arrangements with a minimum of effort. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:
1. Load an ensemble multi, such as 4 Trumpets or 5 Saxes.
2. In the left-hand, play or write a chord. (The engine can understand hundreds of left hand voicings and inversions!)
3. In the right-hand, play a melody. (Monophonic.)
Now, with each note of the melody, Smart Voicing will create a full voice-lead harmony based on the chord you play, the melody note, and the full context of the melody you’re playing. To do this, we created a database of thousands of possible ensemble voicings which are also displayed as sheet music notation in real-time! There are multiple voicing styles available too, from simple triads, unisons, and octaves to jazzier close, drop, and open voicings These vary based on ensemble type, and we covered a large range of idiomatic jazz configurations. Additionally in the future, we will be adding many more!
With Smart Voicing, you don’t need to know how to write intricate jazz parts, or laboriously copy MIDI data across many solo instrument tracks. Just play basic chords and a melody! Keyswitches, velocity and other MIDI CCs also work perfectly, and each solo instrument can use its full set of playing techniques including legato and glissando transitions.
As an added bonus, using Kontakt’s “Send MIDI to Outside World” option, you can record the MIDI output to further edit your voice leading, and even send Smart Voicing harmonies to other plugins!
Reviews
Straight Ahead Jazz Horns – Bedroom Producers Blog
“Jazz or pop horns have not been sampled nearly as frequently as classical brass and woodwinds, and have been the biggest hole in my virtual instrument arsenal for years. This library does an excellent job of providing exactly the kind of jazz/pop horns I was looking for. And even if you think that you have your jazz horn samples covered, this library was made by people who really understand the jazz style it’s aiming for, and therefore really nails the requirements of that style.” (9/10)
D Smolken (Bedroom Producers Blog)
Straight Ahead Jazz Horns – Sample Library Review
“Straight Ahead Jazz Horns V2 has been redesigned with some incredible scipting, all the controls and options you could dream of….[the Smart Voicing Multis] is the highlight for your humble reviewer. The Smart Voicing Multis allow users to load up one of the Kontakt Multis….and trigger intelligent harmonization during playback….Overall I really felt like the strengths of these instruments are playback at softer dynamics.”
Don Bodin (Sample Library Review)