Studio Horns provides a collection of highly expressive single and section brass instruments. It has a simple, clean interface, with all main controls at hand. Additional controls enable you to customize Studio Horns to match your preferences and to work best with your controllers. See Studio Horns extended parameters.
Studio Horns instruments feature a large collection of samples that cover different playing styles, such as sustain, staccato, or falls. These playing styles, called articulations, are chosen in the plug-in header. You can also switch articulations remotely with keyswitches. See Manage articulations for software instruments and Manage articulations with the Articulation Set Editor.
Default section and single instrument keyswitches are covered in Studio Horns keyswitch mapping.
Preset pop-up menu: Choose a solo or section instrument.
You can use MIDI channel events to control section instruments. If you want to play specific instruments in a section, you can send MIDI messages on their respective channels, then add a list of channel assignments. See Section MIDI channel assignments.
Monophonic button: Turn on monophonic mode for solo instruments.
Auto Voice Split button: When on, chords played on the keyboard are automatically assigned to different instruments or instrument groups, or “voices” in the section.
Depending on the size and type of section, a voice can consist of one or multiple instruments. This mimics the distribution of notes (voicings) among players, based on what instrument group is best suited to a particular note range, for example. See Studio Horns extended parameters for details about additional Auto Voice Split functions.
Note: When Auto Voice Split is off, Horn section instruments that share a key range are layered, with all horns assigned to a key range played simultaneously.
Dynamics via CC button: Turn on to enable control of an instrument’s dynamics (soft-loud) and timbre in real time. Additional dynamic control and mapping functions are available in the extended parameters.
Last Played Articulation field: Displays the most recently used articulation. This may be different to the articulation shown in the plug-in header. See Manage articulations for software instruments.
Auto Vibrato knob: Set the intensity of vibrato in the chosen sound. Further vibrato control is available in the extended parameters.
Humanize knob: Set the amount of random variation in the chosen sound. This emulates changes in embouchure by introducing small pitch and level fluctuations.
Volume knob: Set the output level of the instrument.
Attack knob: Set the amount of time it takes for the instrument to fade in, following a MIDI note on message.
Release knob: Set the amount of time it takes for the instrument to fade out, following a MIDI note off message.
Key Clicks knob: Set the level of key and pad noise for sections that contain saxophones and solo saxophone instruments.
Note: The Key Clicks knob isn’t shown for trumpet or trombone instruments.
Click the Preset pop-up menu to open a window that shows available presets, then click or double-click a section or a single instrument icon to load the sound.
Click outside the window to close it.
Studio Horns provides several articulations for falls and doits. These can be played on your keyboard like any other articulation. Horn players often attach a fall or doit directly to a note end, so the fall or doit happens with no gap after the previous note. Studio Horns features a special mode which allows you to smoothly connect a fall or doit articulation to the previous note at any position “on-the-fly”, as a real musician would play it.
To create a smooth fall or doit, add a second (Fall or Doit articulation) note of the same pitch directly following any note. There should be no, or a minimal, gap from the previous note.
Note: Velocity of the Fall or Doit note can be different to the previous note. You can also vary the length of the Fall or Doit note. This allows you to create very subtle falls or doits at the end of any note.
To perform falls and doits live on a keyboard, you can use the predefined keyswitches for Falls and Doits. These operate in Trigger mode, which automatically creates the Fall or Doit event and places it immediately after the previous note. Try this by holding a note with a Sustain articulation. While the note is playing, press the keyswitch for the Fall Long articulation. The sustained note is then stopped with a long fall.