All the wind instruments were recorded in mono in a dry acoustic and were performed at one mf dynamic level with no vibrato (synthetic vibrato can be introduced via aftertouch). These clarinets 'speak' more quickly than their orchestral counterparts, and when played using Garritan's simple-but-effective legato mode, they handle the fluid delivery of Artie Shaw-style quicksilver runs with aplomb. The flute and clarinet families are included, effective both as solo instruments and for adding subtle colours to ensemble wind passages. I've usually found Garritan to be pretty good about providing updates to fix things like these, so they may well have sorted this out by the time you read this. There's also a handy facility to create trumpet 'shakes', although this had yet to be implemented in the version I had for review. Histrionic big-band 'falls' and 'doits' can be tacked onto the end of the trumpets' deliveries - a nice idea, but I found them too quiet in comparison with the straight notes. The brass is similarly comprehensive: a total of fifteen solo trumpet, trombone, and flugelhorn instruments, played with and without various types of mute, cover just about every jazz brass timbre known to man. The library is unique in providing the entire saxophone family, from the plaintive, reedy sopranino, to the foghorn-like subcontrabass. Gary Garritan's latest product is aimed at the jazz community, offering an enormous number of multi-sampled instruments at an unfeasibly low UK price. Mike SeniorĪudio CD and WAV, EXS24, Halion, and Reason Refill CD-ROM 3-CD set, However, if you're wanting to layer some urban swagger over your MPC programming, then you'll find bags of that kind of attitude here. Given the quality of the background effects and percussion, it was a shame that none of these were pulled out separately, and it would also have been nice if the one-shots had been organised so that you could easily find those sounds used in any given loop.Ĭompared to the same sampling team's Luscious Grooves, I'd say Broken Beats is less of a 'one-stop shop' for providing the whole rhythmic backbone of a track. However, a healthy dose of compression proved to be something of a panacea when using these breaks on their own and it must also be borne in mind that a breakbeat is often simply layered over a main programmed beat to add definition and/or detail, in which capacity the break wouldn't need to provide the entirety of the snare or kick sound anyway.Īn additional folder of 480 one-shot samples (comprising kicks, snares, and hi-hats) continue the library's general family sound. Some of the kicks and snares had a tendency to sound slightly spongy, or else too spiky and lacking body.
#Garritan jazz and big band 3 review series
The percussion and background ambient sounds are the main strengths for me, comparing well with great libraries like the Big Fish Audio Wall Of Vinyl series and E-Lab's Smokers Delight. While the demo track skips along fine using the fastest 120bpm loops, I think Broken Beats is generally stronger on atmosphere than groove overall. While listening through, I found myself thinking of Portishead at the slower tempos, and then the grittier end of hip-hop by around 90bpm, before heading towards Nine Inch Nails-style industrial beats at the higher speeds.
The loops combine live and programmed elements and the sounds are all pretty heavily processed, mostly with well-judged distortion, filtering, and compression, although occasional retro reverb effects also add a nice flavour. Or, to put it another way, although the library only actually contains a third of the 600 loops claimed on the back of the packaging, Sample Lab have (as usual) expended so much effort on making the sounds usable that I felt anything but short-changed. Even if you are forced into using the loops at their original speeds, the accuracy of the stated tempos means that you can layer loops from the same tempo group together pretty freely. Tempos cover 60-120bpm, although REX files are included for Reason users and pre-sliced loops (complete with MIDI trigger files) for EXS24 users, thus allowing plenty of flexibility if you want to layer any of the loops with existing tracks. more broken! Rather than Cuckooland glitches and squerks, however, the library's name appears to allude to the lo-fi processed breakbeats at its core.
I found myself a little surprised, given the title of this new release, that it didn't sound, well. Published April 2006 Sample Lab Broken Beats
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