The story
Inertia Horns was born as a collaborative project to accompany the release of Twiceful Mind Duo’s first single Inertia in 2017. A French horn, cello and electronic arrangement with a powerful performance by singer Alessandra Balliana.
Since discovering PianoBook early in 2020 I wanted to contribute with this library which I believe would fit perfectly with the community ethos. It has been a perfect excuse to reopen the project and do some fixes to the samples. The library needed some polishing up, it’s not perfect but here it is, at last, cleaned up and ready to use.
Created with the help of composer and long time friend Susanne Aubert, this unpretentious library was aimed at fellow composers and producers as a free, quirky instrument to add to their toolbox.
Quirky as it’s reverse-engineered from the pre-existing recordings and comprised of fixed length – uneven notes (as they naturally happen throughout the song).
The French horn was recorded in London in 2016 at our university recording studio (ICMP) using a pair of SE Electronics Rupert Neve Design RNR1 Ribbon mics in a Blumlein configuration placed mid-room in front of the player (room mic) and a Sontronics Orpheus, Omni pattern as Close mic behind the player where the bell is pointing.
The built-in reverb has a story of its own. I have captured the impulse response of a boutique studio inside the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building in Wandsworth, just before it being relocated. Allegedly one of the most haunted locations in London and also previous home of Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor. The reverb features the main live room which has a special sound that I quickly fell in love with.
I really hope you all will find this instrument useful and enjoyable!
About Inertia
https://www.twicefulmind.com/inertia
Listen: https://soundcloud.com/user-75627837/inertia-1
Reviews for Inertia Horns
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Buggy but it can work!
You can definitely hear some character on this instrument, but overall there are some issues that may be hard to deal with in the context of a real mix.
First and most importantly, there is some significant noise in some samples, and some weird artifacts as well, that can be found between the dynamic layers between different velocities. The volume and the panning are also slightly inconsistent so you will need to keep that in mind during mixing.
In the GUI, while the wallpaper is really cool, you will see two knobs for the mics, and these are super buggy. As soon as you touch one mic, the other one gets muted no matter where it is placed. You have to touch it again to have it retriggered, but that will mute the other mic, and that is not indicated anywhere, and means that you can't really have a blend between the two. There is also the reverb which sounds very nice.
Useful and Sweet
Ok, so there are some issues. Occasional phasing when switching between dynamic layers. But, throw it in a mix with other brass and add another layer of randomness. Which is always good.
Interesting sound but a bit unrealistic
Maybe the point of these samples aren't to sound realistic and if thats the case they sound pretty cool, specially with the warble and saturation. However, something about th programming or th samples just feels unrealistic to me. I agree with others who commented about programming issues. I dont know the specifics like they do, but it doesn't feel as smooth and "well groomed as other sample libraries. The GUI also seems a little buggy sometimes. I agree with Sam, i think theres potential here but in its current state i dont find it that useful.
Needs some beta testing...
Synthesized horns are one of my favorite "genres" of sample instruments, but this library unfortunately let me wanting more. There's really just one sound from the instrument and with no ADSR controls, there's not much that can be done to change it. As others have also noted, there were some issues with finding the samples properly. The GUI also seems way to spread out to be efficient. This library would benefit greatly from some beta testers and implementing their feedback.
Great sounding horns, with a problem
These samples are good, but there are multiple problems with the Kontakt programming. The Kontakt preset had trouble finding the samples easy enough to remedy and there's a problem with the script in regards to the mic volumes. It looks as though the programmer forgot to make the knobs persistent in KSP, so when one is adjusted, it mutes the other. Sadly, the script is locked and password protected, so no one but the author can fix it. There are also some weird overlaps in the mapping between soft and loud samples, and a few start times were adjusted a little too aggressively resulting in unnaturally fast attacks. While this has all of the makings of a great sample pack, it ends up being pretty unusable because of the issues. Hopefully someone will endeavor to fix it at some point, because it has the potential to be really great.
