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Root » Mobile Apps » Heavy Brass

Heavy Brass delivers the most flexible and innovative approach to Saxophone, Trumpet and Trombone sounds ever provided by a virtual MIDI instrument! With this ultimate brass app your productions and live performances will gain such powerful and amazing tone you previously were only able to retrieve from a real brass section!

Like all our audio apps, Heavy Brass is designed as professional, virtual sound module. Simply connect an external MIDI keyboard to your iPad by using the Apple USB camera adapter or another adapter supported by Apple¹, or launch Heavy Brass as virtual instrument directly within your favourite DAW app on your iPad!

This app supports Apple's Audio Unit v3 plugin standard, Audiobus, Apple's Inter-App Audio system, as well as Bluetooth LE MIDI !

Demo Video

A sneak preview of Heavy Brass (v1.0.0) by thesoundtestroom.com.

Sounds

This app covers the following instruments: Trumpet, Trombone and Saxophone sampled as solo instruments, as well as grouped in four different brass sections and providing alternative articulations for all of them. There are 3 fundamental sound categories:

• Singles:   24 Fundamental multi-sample brass sounds of this app. Find out more ...
• Switches:   Interactive, user configurable brass sounds. Find out more ...
• Combis:   This sound category contains 16 predefined combinations of the individual multi-sample brass sounds. Find out more ...

Singles

Sound category "Singles" contains the fundamental multi-sample brass sounds of this app. Sounds of this category are especially useful for recording purposes, i.e. when you are working on multi-track songs with your favorite DAW app: just select the specific sound(s) you really need.

24 Single Sounds are included with this App:

1.   Section 1 2.   Section 2 3.   Section 3 4.   Section 4 5.   Crescendo 6.   Growl 7.   Doiks 8.   Shaker 1

9.   Shaker 2 10.   Staccato 1 11.   Staccato 2 12.   Staccato Sax 1 13.   Staccato Sax 2 14.   Falls 1 15.   Falls 2 16.   Falls 3

17.   Falls 4 18.   Solo Trumpet  NEW! 19.   Solo Sax  NEW! 20.   Solo Trombone  NEW! 21.   Heavy Brass 1  NEW! 22.   Heavy Brass 2  NEW! 23.   Heavy Brass 3  NEW! 24.   Heavy Brass 4  NEW!

There are no in-app purchases in Heavy Brass. Thus all sounds mentioned on this site are already available to you after buying the app without any extra costs involved.

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Switches

The user configurable sound category "Switches" allows you to select among five fundamental base sounds:

1.   Brass Section 1 2.   Brass Section 2 3.   Brass Section 3

4.   Brass Section 4 5.   Crescendo

which are interactively switchable (by key velocity) or crossfadeable (by modulation wheel) to four alternative articulations:

1.   Shaker

2.   Growl

3.   Doiks

4.   Falls

You can configure the sound combination of those two articulation groups and whether switch or cross fade controller shall be used for the selected alternative articulation. Due to the interactive approach of these sounds, the sound category "Switches" is especially useful for live performances and for intuitively working on new musical ideas.

Combis

Sounds of sound cateogory "Combis" are predefined combinations of the individual multi-sample brass sounds, use these sounds if you want to achieve a rich tone for either live performance or recording work.

16 Combi Sounds are included with this App:

1.   Sections Velocity Layer 1 2.   Sections Velocity Layer 2 3.   Sections Velocity Layer 3 4.   Sections Velocity Layer 4 5.   Sections Velocity Layer 5 6.   Sections Velocity Layer 6 7.   Sections & Modwheel Layer 1 8.   Sections & Modwheel Layer 2

9.   Staccato Layer 1 10.   Staccato Layer 2 11.   Staccato Round Robin 1 12.   Staccato Round Robin 2 13.   Staccato Round Robin 3 14.   Sections & Staccato Round Robin 1 15.   Sections & Staccato Round Robin 2 16.   Sections & Staccato Round Robin 3

Some of these Combi sounds also allow to either switch (by velocity or by round robin) or crossfade (by modulation wheel) between alternative articulations, in contrast to sounds of the Switches category, this behavior is predefined for the specific combi sounds and thus not user configurable.

App Features

Heavy Brass is very easy to use. Just connect your external MIDI keyboard to your iPad and you are ready to play! The following is an overview of the Heavy Brass app's main features:

• 16 parts.
• Low latency disk streaming.
• Polyphony up to 140 stereo voices.³
• Configurable audio latency down to 5 ms.
• Configurable MIDI channel or omni mode for each part.
• Scale tuning editor, which allows you to adjust the standard well-tempered scale to all kinds of oriental scales (save and restore them as presets at any time)
• Integrated effects with 18 presets.
• MIDI velocity response curve editor.
• App can keep running in the background, so you can play on your keyboard while e.g. using Safari or another app to display scores or surfing the Internet.
• Supports "Audio Unit v3" for being used as convenient instrument plug-in with third party mult-track DAW apps (iOS 9 or higher).
• Supports "Audiobus" for audio routing between apps (iOS 7 or higher).
• Supports Apple's "IAA" system for audio & MIDI streaming between other apps (iOS 7 or higher).
• Supports JACK Audio Connection Kit for audio & MIDI streaming between other apps (up to iOS 6.1.3).
• Virtual on-screen piano keyboard with velocity support, scalable & scrollable.

Scale Tuning

Heavy Brass allows you to adjust the app's tuning system from standard well-tempered scale to any other kind of tuning system. Simply open the scale tuning editor and move individual note's tuning bars with your finger. Save your favorite scales as presets and recall them at any time with one tap!

MIDI Player / Recorder

Heavy Brass comes with a built-in multi-part and multi-track MIDI player and recorder, which you can use for easy and quick recording your musical ideas without launching and configuring a separate app or external devices. Here is a summary of its features:

• Record, save and load your songs in standard MIDI file format.
• Load your favorite songs as MIDI files from the Internet, and watch at the virtual keyboard how to play them.
• Unlimited amount of tracks.
• Configurable target MIDI channel per track.
• Unlimited recording and playback length.
• Open MIDI (.mid) files directly from other apps (i.e. from Safari, Mail).
• Download or upload MIDI files with iTunes.
• Metronome.
• Use the "Tempo Zoom" dial knob to i.e. slow down playback at any time and learn your favorite songs more easily.
• Use the "BPM" dial to record new or to overwrite existing tempo changes on the master track.

You are however not limited to the built-in MIDI player / recorder of course. If you prefer, you can also use any other third party Inter-App Audio capable sequencer or DAW app like i.e. Apple's Garage Band for recording your oriental tunes or simply for using Heavy Brass as virtual instrument in your favorite IAA host app.

Polyphony & Supported Devices

Many sounds in this app are using several voices per note. The maximum polyphony depends on the exact device model being used.

Device	Stereo Voices	Mono Voices
iPad Air	140	280
iPad Mini 2	140	280
iPad Mini 1	84	168
iPad 4	140	280
iPad 3	100	200
iPad 2	84	168
iPad 1	40	80

Appropriate polyphony is automatically detected and selected for your specific device model by the app for you. If desired however, you can override the polyphony setting manually in the app's settings screen. For example to save CPU head room for other apps running in the background.

Please Note: This app requires quite some hardware resources from the device. In case there are problems with this app, please close other apps running in the background.

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Feedback

You've got questions? Issues? Write us!

Download

Heavy Brass is currently available for the following mobile devices. In case you encounter any problems while using this app, please report it to us by using the feedback link above.

• Apple iPad:
  You can get Heavy Brass through iTunes from the Apple App Store. You need at least iOS 5.1.1 or later to be able to use this app.

You have questions about Heavy Brass? Don't hesitate to write us by using the feedback link above.