Song of the Week: December 4 – “Twilight”

This week I decided to take advantage of some great sales on some plugins, most notably by Native Instruments, Waves, and Computer Music. I’d heard some good things about the NI Session Horns, and thought 50% seemed like a good opportunity to test it out. I find myself usually unimpressed with canned horns on most synths, so investing in a decent horn library has been on my to-do list for awhile.
Now, I don’t claim to be a horn arranger at all, but in putting together this tune, I felt like the Session Horns were able to provide a fairly convincing alternative to a real horn section. There are a variety of articulation options, and you can play isolated instruments one at a time, so each note isn’t a stack of all three or four instruments or whatever. Plus, buried in the mix and with just the right amount of reverb, and it sounds pretty musical!
In this particular piece I was going for that 70’s cop show car chase scene vibe, or something not unlike it. I’ve also had Snarky Puppy and Billy Cobham rolling around in my head a bit too, so some of that might be seeping out too (minus the drum and horn chops). That stuff has me interested in learning more about arranging for horns, so I’m glad to have the Session Horns to get in some practice on that front.
I also added the Waves L1 Maximizer on the drum track and gave it a bit of grit. Not that I really know how to use the Maximizer…..but I like the effect I achieved here.

• Kontakt Abby Road 60s Drummer
• Scarbee Mark I (Rhodes)
• Scarbee MM-Bass
• Session Horns
• Vintage Organs
• Reaktor Monark (synth solos)
• Kontakt Factory Library (guitar)