For big wind band arrangements…
Concert & Marching Band 2 Virtual Instrument - Garritan
Here’s a quick no frills rendering from Dorico using a default mod-wheel dynamic expression map to mp3 (some quality loss due to lossy mp3).
It’s a simple 4 part Bach Chorale.
I’ve simply stacked the box so to speak, to feature the entire Saxaphone family to some degree.
Soprano - 3 Solo Soprano Saxes
Alto - 3 Alto Sax Groups
Tenor - 3 Tenor Sax Groups
Bass - 2 Bari Groups, 2 Bass Sax Soloists, 2 Sarrusophone Soloists.
For what it’s worth, one can do this same sort of thing across many families of instruments. Flutes, Double Reeds, Saxes, Brass (Marching or Concert sets), etc.
I.E. Clarinets (Eb, Bb, Eb Alto, Contra)
It’s an old library that doesn’t get much if any developer love/support anymore, but it’s compact, doesn’t call for much in the way of system resources to use, is predictable/playable, balanced for use with large scores (lots of note doubling across many virtual players), and complete (You’ll scour the world for years trying to find all these instruments period, let alone in once place).
It’s also inexpensive considering everything in the library.
There’s nothing else even remotely like it on the market these days. Most libraries out there are meant for symphony, jazz, and pop/rock. They aren’t meant to emulate having ensembles like A 20 piece complete flute choir, wind band style complements of double reed sections, complete 40 piece clarinet family, complete 20 piece sax family, etc.
COMB2 in contrast is MEANT to be used this way. Every instrument in the box gets from 2 to 4 soloists and tutti sections. The style is controlled and steady…meant to blend and do ‘large arrangements’.
It covers the Brass too. Everything…Trumpet Family, Cornet Family, Bone Family, Euphonium/Tuba, Baritone/Sousaphone, Horns and Mellophones, Holicrons, and more. Soloists and tutti sections. Principle sections typically give you ‘at least’ 3 unique soloists and 3 or more unique tutti (group) sections [one for each ‘part’ of a section] (A few of the less common instruments only get 2 soloists). So yeah…all your ‘parts’ can each be done on their own stave, and have a truly unique sound to go with it.
You get the opposite with most symphonic libraries these days. You’re lucky to get more than one soloist and tutti section for each family at all. So, you start trying to stack ‘duplicates’ of the same player/section, and stuff begins to drop out of the mix, or just get oddly ‘out of balance’ when trying double up parts/notes across sections. So, COMB2 is simply meant for large arrangements involving large sections and ensembles. Symphonic libraries typically are NOT designed to be used that way.
The percussion that comes in the box is rather nice too. Battery, overhead, and pit percussion for several different periods/eras. American and Euro, Marching and Concert. You get quite a lot of battery, clash, suspends, and toys to work with.
It takes a little practice to learn how to set up and stage COMB2, but it does have enough in the box to get nice mixes.
The main thing to realize is the instruments and sections set up to be on the thin side by default. It might be a bit disappointing at first, but it turns out to be a big PLUS when it comes to mixing larger arrangements/scores. The players and sections are meant to provide many unique waveforms that can STACK up as layers while avoiding waveforms canceling themselves out.
In libraries meant more for symphony: dynamics, fullness, and sonority tend to be interpreted into pieces with ‘volume’ and ‘extra expressiveness’ in individual playing. Modern symphonic sample libraries are built this way. Loud, powerful, expressive, and rather ‘dynamic’ in concept.
With traditional wind bands, it’s more about having CONTROL and UNIFOMRITY, then simply doubling the parts (adding more players) if you want ‘more’. COMB2 is more designed for the latter.
Again, it’s an old library and nothing’s been added or changed to it in decades. Still, you won’t find anything like it. It’s still very useful. It’s also inexpensive.
There will be times when you want to arrange for smaller ensembles and have more exposed and ‘expressive’ soloists than COMB2 can provide. It won’t be uncommon to supplement it with sounds from other libraries.
When doing power arrangements…symphonic, jazz, big band, etc…COMB2 won’t always cut through the mix and stand out. It’s far too tame and ‘controlled’.
I still like JABB3 for reasons of my own. It can sound very realistic. Here’s the same chorale rendered with a bunch of solo saxes from JABB3. Again, we only use a simple mod-wheel dynamics expression map. These saxes are in their default states aside from a little panning, a small amount of a scoring stage style reverb is added, and no extra expression data is being sent. Again, the mp3 mixdown costs a little in terms of sound quality.
Soprano - 2 Soparano Sax Soloists
Alto - 3 Alto Sax Soloists
Tenor - 4 Tenor Sax Soloists
Bass - 2 Bari Soloists and 2 Bass Soloists
The con to JABB3 in the long haul is that it does take WORK to make it sound expressive with lively jazz or luscious ballad-type licks. It’s bone dry out of the box, no vibrato, not even velocity senstivie…nothing…until you start working the expressive controls. Start riding the controls, and it really comes alive. Each instrument has MANY. Nice Collections of mutes, techniques, and articulations for jazz and big band.
The JABB3 soloists mixed in with COMB2 can take arrangements into a more 1980s DCI realm of sound (add power and volume on top of sonorous fundamentals).
In the realm of JABB3 it is much easier to find newer competing products with similar qualities/value, but it won’t be easy to find anything with the sheer number of nice instruments and variations without spending at least twice the price.
JABB3 is one of those libraries that ‘if you learn to play it’, you can get very musical mockups that are about as realistic as it gets from a sub $200 library! I think it holds its own compared to stuff that costs way more, and isn’t much if any ‘easier to use’.
Other options…
Sometimes simpler is better. In spite of the ever growing choices for plugin based sample libraries, I’m constantly finding it easier to go back to a 90s era rompler that has a set of very true and clean waveforms from which to shape up my own players. To this day I still find it very useful to fall back to my old Roland Fantom XR (Or these days, one could check out free trials to something like Roland Sound Cloud and have a look at Zenology [petty much every rompler and synth Roland ever did under one plugin]).
I use full HALion 7 a good deal as well, and I love it. I like the content that comes with it too for jazz, pop, edm, general song writing, etc. Hook it to Band in a Box and it sings like no other instrument or sound library to my ears for that GM style of song building. So, I do recommend trying the full HALion demo at some point to at least check out all that ‘Collections Library’ content if you haven’t already.
One of the issues with HALion content in this case is, wave forms that ship with HALion almost always have built in vibrato! They sound great and work for most things, but if you’re looking for vibrato free waveforms for everything…it doesn’t seem to ship that way. The content that ships with it is built more for live keyboard players than for ‘through composers’ who want to get fine control over every expressive detail through ‘scoring’. HALion content is easy to ‘play’ as a keyboardist (predictive style instruments with built in expressive characteristics), or to throw together quick sequences that hit a groove and sound warm and rich. Not so much meant for detailed user expressive control over every little detail from a tracking DAW (at least not out of the box).
