the horns in UK garage

B

blissblogger

Well-known member
What a great sound

They are all done with synths, right?

So much better than if they were real horns.

(I know there are a few examples of real saxophone on UKG classics and sometimes it's fine - e.g. the solo in "Stone Cold")

Now is this a uniquely UKG thing? I can't recall examples of it in US garage.

It seems to be a defining feature of the music, almost as much as the woody thick drum sounds and the xylo-bass plinky percusso-riffs.

The fake-horns bring a sort of a sophistication-on-the-cheap quality

But also a musky, humid, languidly sexy vibe - horny horns
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
We've got a thread about midi horns. Can't think of too many examples in ukg off the top of my head though.

Cheapo nasty midi horn fanfares

As a sort of offshoot of the 2000s worst decade ever thread I suppose. I'm fond of them even though they're undeniably lame and weedy Rap, grime, dancehall, and nuum primarily ofc, but other stuff is welcome if it's good
www.dissensus.com
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Barty contributed this:

"The thing with shitty midi-brass is that there’s such a gulf between expectation and reality. Brass is so majestic, it speaks to the utmost heights and ambitions of the human imagination. Brass is 2001: A Space Odyssey, its the opening scroll in Star Wars, its the civil rights era enlightenment of Coltrane and Pharoah sanders… And then there’s that shitty plastic duck sound you get out of a computer.

But that actually ends up being the occasional strength of tacky midi brass. Suddenly it’s feebleness and its cheapness relative to what brass should be lends it this underdog quality; this David and Goliath feel. So when they work, those synths are really speaking to a sense of triumph and of conquering foes and of defying the odds and of rising above the lows life throws at you."
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
this one at about 32 seconds in is again using the horn sound as more of a bassline-like rhythm parp



however from about 2.15 in the pseudo-horn gets more active and jazzy in a kind of robotic-fixated way
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Comparison with US garage cuts are the variety of horn chorus licks Basement Boys put on everything, you couldn’t escape it and stopped you even lifting bits out of crates as xyz listed = shit clanking like dull brass

Didn’t deem it appropriate for the thread Benny listed above (not midi), at least after a certain threshold most midi horn segments ceased giving way to real horns prob to do with slightly inflated production budgets

Aye so shit horns eh, ubiquitous in the 4/4 pantheon
 
0

0bleak

Well-known member
not to be that person, but...
I think people are confused about what midi is. Besides being an interface between gear (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), midi is basically just a protocol for triggering sounds. It doesn't really have much to do with the quality of sounds used which can range from "basic midi" presets, to samples (whether "one shot" samples which can be played in different pitches, or "one shots" that have been sampled for each note to make it sound more real as you go up and down in pitch, or long sampled sounds and/or loops of brass) to synths (whether or not the synth sounds are "modelled" on sounding like real instruments, or just using sounds/timbres that are similar which is sometimes more interesting/better way to go).
 
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