Ez IllMuzik crew,
I am most familiar with Massive but I am struggling getting the brass, strings, or orchestral sounds you hear in most new hip-hop tracks today.
Thanks for your time,
bless
You're struggling because they aren't in Massive. The Key words here are "sounds you hear in most new hip-hop tracks today". Massive is really good for synths. Brass, strings and orchestral sounds not so much. Yes..some are there but not what you hear in today's tracks.
1) Get N.I Reaktor. Reaktor and the add on for it called Razor has the biggest sounding synths out there imo.
2) N.I Kontakt. So you can stack together some sf2's aka soundfonts. Most of the brass you hear in hip hop/rap songs right now come from soundfonts. I, like you searched many a vsti trying to get that brass sound you hear in commercial records but didn't come close until I bought a dope sf2. It had EVERYTHING I had been looking for in it. To get the brass sound u hear right now is going to take a combination of those soundfonts.
I use 7 diff't sf2's for brass and 3 diff't articulations of brass from cinesamples cinebrass which is a sound library for Kontakt. The thing with the brass u hear in most records today is that it doesn't exactly sound real BUT.. in order to get that sound you must use it. My brass is a combination of synthetic and real sounding brass so I use cinebrass in addition to the sf2's. Kontakt allows u to do that. Kontakt is DOPE!
3) Get Digital Sound Factory's EMU Proteus Pack for Kontakt. It consists of Mo Phatt, Planet Earth, Proteus 2000, Vintage Pro, Virtuoso, and Xtreme Lead. That pack is designed specifically for urban music. Has some very DOPE strings. The strings u hear in hip hop records today.
Get your sample library up (and I'm not talking samples from records)....sample library's are the best way in my opinion to get the sounds you hear in today's records. Check out Big Fish Audio. U can take those sample library's, chop 'em up and get exactly what you need minus the bulk. Vsti's are cool but you must understand that MOST are not geared toward hip hop. There are some out there that you can make work but most cater to other genre's of music. Though hip hop/rap is BIG it's still the music step child of the game.