How to resolve AdBlock issue? The Crow Hill Company MARSHAL BRASS
In response to repeated requests, music-making community tools-maker The Crow Hill Company presents MARSHAL BRASS - available as an all-new brass library featuring a never-before-assembled ensemble for a sample project, portrayed as being rich, moving, reflective, and plaintive in the great British tradition that is not the lofty, noble sound of beautiful horns, nor the regal connotation of the trumpet, but something more honest, heartbreaking, and truthful to the human spirit without breaking out a violin, cello, or piano - as of February 26…
As a result of setting out to create a library that embraced the lesser-visited area of brass - that of courage, valour, and loss in the face of heroism, something honest and truthful, The Crow Hill Company arrived at MARSHAL BRASS’ beautiful-sounding combination of a flugelhorn and three euphoniums, respectively performed by Mark Addison, Peter Moore, Tom Berry, and Simon Johnson, creatively captured at Assumption Studios, a recording, filming, and green screen facility located in the north side of Glasgow, Scotland. By bringing them together, MARSHAL BRASS succeeds in recreating the beauty of the types of tone normally achieved with French horns and trumpets, but with slightly less identifiable characteristics. The tuning, for example, on the euphonium - often referred to as a tenor tuba - is more fragile than that of a French horn, so when played as an ensemble it carries a very special, very moving richness, while the flugelhorn has less of the huntsman and more or the hunted about it -- a wistfulness that is very unique to the instrument with a core tone that is not too alien or distracting.
Cue composer Christian Henson who co-founded The Crow Hill Company on the back of primarily working on television and film soundtracks, so the musical mechanics of MARSHAL BRASS are clearly close to his heart: “The euphoniums don’t have the regal quality of the horns because of their idiosyncrasies in the tuning that just makes every note different, which is what really suits sampling.”
Serious sampling, of course, is what led to those repeated requests for what became MARSHAL BRASS being made by the music-making community tools-maker’s ‘AAA-list’ composer friends who were seeking a brass library that took them to grave emotional, reflective states and memories, both fond and fateful. “This is a library that's been requested by a bunch of massively successful professionals,” confirms Christian Henson, before adding: “As this is a flavour of brass that we believe hasn’t yet been sampled, we thought that we’d deliver what is - for us - a very grown-up library. It really is like, ‘Okay, you’ve got all your orchestral libraries; if you want to slot in this heroic element into your existing template then we want to give you the choice of articulations and depth of sampling that you would expect.’ So we’ve forgone the temptation of Gestures [as a cutting-edge concept, whereby an orchestra interpreting its user’s composition and making it into music and art lies behind every key played] in this instance, instead opting for a real selection of different shapes, articulations, and lengths of note. So we have CRESCENDO; DIMINUENDO; HAIRPIN [SHORT and LONG], which are, basically, a colloquial term for going up and then down, but, because these don’t loop, if you stagger them then you can develop these pealing effects which are just stunning; and SFORZANDO - not particularly idiomatic of these types of instruments, but if you want a bit of loud, bright, and brassy, we have that, too.”
This is a library that is split into a slightly different hierarchy compared to The Crow Hill Company’s previous offerings. On the face of it, presets are plug-in settings that house articulations, themselves being a selection of different playing styles that users can switch to by using (colour- coded) key-switches, while all front panel changes made, such as (CLOSE, WIDE, and AMBIENT) microphone balance and (CHAMBER) reverb amount, will remain the same regardless of which articulation is ‘live’. LONGS - looping long notes playable as solo lines or, indeed, chords (controlled with the modulation wheel or a fader controller assigned to MIDI CC1), the above-quoted SHAPES, and SHORTS - shorter notes and plucks that are, by default, largely controlled by velocity which determines the loudness and timbre of the tone - are the three key categories of articulation type that are also used to organise the presets.
Put it this way: whereas composers seeking grave emotional, reflective states and memories, both fond and fateful, would usually reach for a solo cello, piano, or strings, MARSHAL BRASS sees The Crow Hill Company curating a plaintive selection of articulations with a never- before-assembled ensemble for a sample library that will have audiences and listeners reaching for the hanky box. Concludes Christian Henson: “Thanks to the three amazing euphonium players and the flugelhorn player who gave us so much of their time to make this incredibly authoritative account of a set of articulations, performances, and shapes that give a whole new meaning to brass and certainly to heartfelt brass - that of heroism, valour, loss, pain, and ache, we hope that this library will make you think differently about brass and encourages you to adopt more nuanced textures and writing styles to bring originality and notoriety to your work.”
MARSHAL BRASS is available to purchase for a time-limited introductory promo price of £99.00 GBP until March 7, 2025 - rising thereafter to a price of £129.00 GBP - as an AAX-, AU-, VST-, and VST3-format-compatible sample-based virtual instrument plug-in comprising 12 GB of uncompressed material (compressed losslessly to 6 GB) that loads directly into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) directly from The Crow Hill Company.
For more in-depth information, including some superb-sounding audio demos, please visit the dedicated MARSHAL BRASS webpage. MARSHAL BRASS installation and activation requires installation of The Crow Hill App - an easy-to-use app designed by the best in the business to provide seamless download, installation, integration, calibration, and organisation of The Crow Hill Company tools.