Vintage Horns: Horn Section Kontakt Instrument by Big Fish Audio

Rated 4.5/5 on Plugin Boutique (20 ratings)

Vintage Horns is a horn section virtual instrument by Big Fish Audio that emulates the classic brass and reed sounds of 1960s and 1970s R&B, soul and funk bands. It runs in Kontakt.

REQUIRESKontaktHost player sold separately

VST2AURTASKontaktWindowsmacOS

AVAILABLE ATPlugin Boutique

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01Overview

Vintage Horns focuses on the sound of classic soul and funk horn sections. Big Fish Audio built it around nine multi-sampled brass and woodwind instruments, plus a set of pre-made sections modeled on well-known recordings. The developer says the goal was not a polished, perfect sound, but the slight imperfections that gave those 1960s and 1970s sections their character. It is available as a Kontakt instrument and as a ReFill for Reason.

Best for

Soul horn arrangements
Funk horn stabs
Motown-style brass
Ballad horn sections
Retro big band writing

Developer: Big Fish Audio
Category: Kontakt Instruments
Requires: Kontakt
Store: Plugin Boutique

02Key features

What you get

Nine multi-sampled brass and woodwind instruments
Keyswitches for long, short, stab, fall and swell articulations
Sixteen multis with pre-made horn sections
Memphis, JBs, Detroit, Philly and Oakland soul section presets
Sforzando samples for brass and reed instruments
53 NN-XT patches in the Reason ReFill version

03In depth

Classic Soul and Funk Horn Section Sounds

Vintage Horns is built around the horn arrangements of 1960s and 1970s soul, R&B and funk. The multis reference specific styles, including the Memphis Soul section, which typically used a single trumpet with one tenor sax and occasionally a baritone sax.

Other presets follow larger ensembles. The JBs Section uses trombone, trumpet, alto sax, tenor sax and baritone sax. The Detroit Soul, Philly Soul and Oakland Soul sections cover big production sounds, flute and flugelhorn voicings, and ballad arrangements with trumpets switching to flugelhorns.

Instruments, Articulations and Multis

The Kontakt Player version contains nine instrument patches, each with keyswitches for long notes, short notes, stabs, falls and swells. Brass and reed patches also include Sforzando samples.

The library includes sixteen multis with pre-made sections, from all-brass, all-flute and all-sax arrangements to big band and soul jazz layouts. The ReFill version provides 53 NN-XT sampler patches, with the same five articulations across all instruments.

04Specs