Straight Ahead Jazz Horns

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. Compatible with FREE Kontakt Player!

kontakt-player

$249

$249

32 in stock

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    World-Class Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    World-Class
    Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

Audio Demos

  1. Return All Robots! Swing Andrew Aversa & Michael Worth 0:49
  2. The Dead of Night Jason Cullimore 3:33
  3. Toro Por Los Cuernos Anonymous 0:42
  4. 9 to 5 Superhero Anonymous 1:01
  5. Tank! Yoko Kanno (arr. Nabeel Ansari) 1:32
  6. Noir Anonymous 1:08
  7. Blues Too Brad Jerkins 0:53
  8. Trouble's Brewing Jason Cullimore 3:22
  9. Racing Dream Henning Nugel 1:28
  10. King of the Crosswalks Jason Cullimore 3:04
  11. 9 to 5 Superhero (Naked/Dry) Anonymous 1:01

Product Info

Content

Huge sample base

Over 75,000+ 16 or 24-bit samples.

4 solo trumpets

4 separately recorded and sampled trumpets.

3 solo trombones, 1 bass trombone

Four solo instruments: Lead Trombone, Trombone 2, Trombone 3, and Bass Trombone.

2 alto and 2 tenor saxes

4 solo instruments:  Lead alto, Alto 2, Lead Tenor, and Tenor 2.

1 baritone sax

A detailed, realistic bari 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

Super playable instruments out of the box

Detailed instruments and the Smart Voicing feature let you create realistic jazz, big band, and pop brass parts.

Ready-made multi ensembles

Ensemble combinations include 4 Trombones, Full Ensemble, Pop Horns, and many others!

Total Articulation Control Technology

TACT manages articulations with up to 3 triggering types as well as volume, offset control, and legato.

Smart Voicing: create harmonies and arrangements in real-time

Play a chord in your left hand and a melody in your right: a fully voiced chord will be generated!

Send harmonized MIDI to other instruments

Send generated harmony midi data to any other plugin!

Extensive articulation tweaks and options

Extra advanced editing controls can be used to fine tune certain parameters via midi CC.

One-click FX

A four-band EQ, compressor, delay and reverb let you shape the sound.

A Kontakt PLAYER instrument

Runs in the FREE Kontakt player.

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.

Videos

Details

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!

Smart Voicing

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!

Own the Original Library?

If you purchased the original Jazz Horns library from Straight Ahead Samples, you qualify for a massive discount: $199 off list price, meaning you get this new, totally rebuilt and reimagined library for only $50!

Please contact us to upgrade! (Be sure to include receipt, order email, or other proof or purchase so we can confirm your info with SAS.)

Reviews

stars
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)

stars
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)