Monday, September 7, 2015

All Keyboard Instruments

Rounding up all the Pianos, Electric Pianos and Organs in one post. A work in progress. 

The Grand Pianos 

The City Piano is a fully sampled Baldwin Baby Grand with 4 velocity layers and release samples. It is free and public domain. Do anything you like with it.
 
Soundcloud Demo


Original Versions
Kontakt 5
SFZ  -  by Music Mayor
Sampletank 2.5 - by Vic France. The ikmp file goes in presets. Use Child Instrument.
VSTi City Piano                Win 64   Win 32     Mac VST   Mac AU
VSTi City Piano Lite         Win 64   Win 32     Mac VST   Mac AU
The Samples - Wave files of every note

Improved Versions - All Kontakt 5
Vospi's Version  -  cleaner and crisper
City Piano - Tuned -  digitally tuned
Ultimate City Piano - 30 patches

Derivative Versions

The Whisper is an intimate experience. Think moonlit nights in Paris Cafes.
Soundcloud Demo

The Whisper      - Kontakt 5
Vospi's Whisper - Kontakt 5
Whisper VSTi      Win 64   Win 32     Mac VST   Mac AU

Shoot The Piano simulates the tinny sound of the classic barroom piano.


The Iowa Piano is a solid Steinway Model B in under 200 megs.
 

Iowa Piano - Kontakt 5
Iowa Piano Take 2 - Kontakt 5, a bit more consistent sound, newer shell.
Iowa Piano - SFZ created by Music Mayor.
Iowa Piano VSTi         Win 64   Win 32      Mac VST   Mac AU
Public Domain created from University of Iowa Musical Instrument Samples.

The Salamander Piano is a smooth sounding Yamaha C5.
 

Thorsten Meyer was kind enough to make a video of the Salamander Piano.

The Salamander Piano - Kontakt 5
Salamander Piano - SFZ hosted on Freepats.
Creative Commons Attribution License - Please Credit Alexander HolmFeel

The Summer Piano is Yamaha Disklavier Pro with real sustain samples.
Summer Piano Sound Cloud Demo

Summer Piano - Kontakt 5
Attribution Creative Commons - Please credit The OLPC Project

The Maestro Concert Grand is a classic Yamaha CF3.
Please credit Mats Helgesson who sampled this piano in 2003.

The Musyng Kite Acoustic Grand is a Fazioli
Soundcloud Demo 

The Musyng Kite Acoustic Grand - Kontakt 5
Creative Commons Attribution License - Please Credit Sarcyan

The Sonatina Grand Piano
Sonatina Grand Piano - Kontakt 5
Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license Created by Mattias Westlund.

Upright and Other Pianos

Skerratt London Upright Piano

Skerratt London Upright Piano - Kontakt 5
Skerratt London VSTi    Win 64   Win 32     Mac VST   Mac AU
KungKrill sampled his parent's piano and placed them in Public Domain.

The Beskhu Upright is both played and plucked.
Beskhu 's samples fall under the Creative Commons License. You can do anything you like with them, but please give him credit.

MSLP Soft and Toy Pianos
MSLP Piano Grand Soft - Kontakt 5
MSLP Toy Baby Piano - Kontakt 5
Creative Commons. Please credit Erick Kvist

Uncle Dave's Piano is an upright with a crunchy feel.
Uncle Dave's Piano - Kontakt 5
Samples by Goup_1. Creative Commons, please credit Goup_1.

Poissonmort Toy Piano
Poissonmort Toy Piano - Kontakt 5
Fun little instrument based on Creative Commons samples by Poissonmort. Please credit him. 

A Prepared Piano
Kurt James Werner sampled a prepared piano on the CCRMA stage at Stanford. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. The piano may be used for commercial use as long as credit is given.

The Not Quite Right Piano is good for silent film accompaniment if those films involve pratfalls and pie in the face. Public Domain.
Not Quite Right Piano - Kontakt 5

Jobro Quick Piano for Kontakt
Jobro at Freesound.org sampled a good chuck of a piano using the hit it hard and release quick method of playing. It's missing the top two octaves, but you get about 6 octaves in staccato style in under 3 megs.
Creative Commons: Credit Jobro

Grandmither's Piano for Kontakt
Techsetsu sampled Grandmother's piano with some interesting results saying, "I didn't cut my nails the day I recorded these at my grandmother's house, so you can hear my nails scratch against it in most if not all notes. It is out of tune, which adds a haunted, dead feel to it."
Creative Commons: Credit Techsetsu


Electric Pianos

Thanks to the sampling of Greg Sullivan we have a number of great sounding electric pianos. Please credit Greg. A number have Script and Shell by Mickaël Ménager.


The Y Piano - Kontakt 5
The Y Piano is a personal favorite. Greg Sullivan sampled roughly every 4 notes and 4 velocity layers on this piano.

The H Planet S Piano - Kontakt 5
The H Planet S Piano has a unique sound thanks to its Sticky Reeds.

The W Piano - Kontakt 5
The W Piano is one of the legendary instruments in modern music history.

Bonus from  Sarcyan's Musyng Kite soundfont.
The Street Bumper Piano - Kontakt 5
Musyng Kite Merlittzer    Win 64   Win 32     Mac VST   Mac AU
(K5 and VST are the same instrument, different names, long story!)
Please credit Sarcyan.
The Street Bumper Electric Piano from Script and Shell by Mickaël Ménager.

Organs

Burea Funeral Organ

Burea Funeral Organ - Kontakt 5
Note that when you start the organ there will be NO sound. You need to push the stops to choose sounds. The two bottom stops are for the green keys, these simulate the pedals. The stops on the left side are for the light blue keys and the stops on the right for the dark blue keys. You can use more than on stop at a time to create a layered sound.
Samples by Lars Palo of Lars Virtual Pipe Organs http://www.familjenpalo.se/vpo under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

St. Augustine's Organ


Saint Augustine's Organ - Kontakt 5
Separate Swells, Greats and Pedals

Nick Appleton sampled the organ of St. Augustine's Anglican Church, Neutral Bay. I've turned it into an instrument for Kontakt 5.
The license is St. Augustine's Neutral Bay, Hauptwerk Sample Set, (c) 2009 - Nicholas Appleton, http://www.appletonit.com.au/nickspage/
You can download the full license (also included in the instrument) here but the important bits are the organ can be used to perform works commercially and I can create Derivative Works and redistribute them non commercially.

Bureau Church Organ
Soundcloud Demo - Adeste Fidelis

Bureu Organ - Kontakt 5
There are two buttons / lights under the organ stops. The left one turns that stop on while the right one unloads that stop from memory, so if you are running low on memory you can easily unload samples you aren't using.
Scripting Adviser was Matt McKay.
This sampleset is created by Lars Palo and Graham Goode. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Please credit Lars Palo.

Goldenhelix was kind enough to fix some looping issues on some of the stops. You can drop his new nki file into your base directory for the organ for the fix.
Updated Bureu Organ nki

Prudhoe Organ
Here's a little organ for you from the Prudhoe Methodist Church sampled by Mark Beverley. He says the samples are free. Thank you Mark.
Soundcloud Demo
Prudhoe Organ - Kontakt 5
The Pedal is Bourdon 16' and is always on from C-1 to a bit past C1.
The Great Stops are too the left and the Swell Pipes are too the right. You have to turn at least one stop on to get any sound from C2 and up.

bigcat's Amazon ebook page

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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

The Beskhu Collection

The fun thing about cruising FreeSound.org is that you often find things completely unexpectedly. I was looking for a lute, which so far has been futile, when I came across the samples of Beskhu. As you've noticed I like pianos and Beskhu has sampled a nice parlor type piano that sound something like the one in my house when I was a kid. Plus he sampled the piano plucked by fingers and all kinds of other fun things. I've started with Kontakting the piano samples and will add others as I figure out what to do with them.



The Upright Piano has every note sampled across the 88 key range with one velocity layer. The Plucked Piano has the bass and midrange but is missing the highest octaves, though I did stretch the top note a bit. For the Schroeder in you, the toy piano is a cute little thing and the black keys aren't just painted on. Linus would love the toy xylophone. Largely because it would drive Lucy bonkers.

What a name! Anyone have any knowledge of this instrument? I've read variously that it is simply another name for the Bassoon or that it is the predecessor to the Bassoon or that is is related to the Dulcian. Or all of the above.

I think this is an African finger piano? The sound is sort of a small hammer tapping tuned wires. It is a fun little instrument at all of 2 megs. I tried to make percussive and sweet articulations along with the normal one.

Pleasant Wind Chimes spread across two octaves.

Sampling a Jew's Harp is moderately insane. Turning Jew's Harp samples into a Kontakt instrument drops the moderately.

Sound effects of a creaking cupboard. They are not in a melodic type order on the keyboard.

Beskhu 's samples fall under the Creative Commons License. you can do anything you like with them, but please give him credit.
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Saturday, August 8, 2015

Predecessor Instruments

A thread over on KVR about baroque instruments got me thinking about all the instruments that have gone before our modern orchestral and band instruments. So being me I thought I would try to make a post with some little instruments and links to a simpler day when more people ate mud and played harpsichords. Here are a few Kontakt instruments. If I can find any other samples I'll try to make more.




This Carillon was sampled many years ago. The original site is now defunct, but Soni Musicae saved the original samples, along with making an instrument. So thanks to them we have this nice Carillon.



I found some neat samples on FreeSound.org. These are very lightly sampled as these were generally folks just providing a couple samples for fun.

This Oud has 17 samples, one for almost every note. It is apparently the ancestor of the English Lute. Fantom57 seems to have done a lot of work to get these sounding really good. Please credit him if you use this.

Just a little fun instrument with all of four samples, but a cool tone. Please credit Juskiddink if you use it on your million selling album. Check Sasje's Crumbhorn for a more fully sampled instrument.

Be a medieval bell ringer with these cool samples from Wuola. Please credit him.

For the admittedly too busy background, I used an illuminated manuscript from The British Library.

The brilliant gentlewoman Sasje has several instruments in this vein. The Viola Da Gamba seems incredibly hard to find even from commercial sources.


Also old bigcat has a few pipe organs which are kind of the predecessor to lots of modern keyboard instruments. Bureu Organ, Saint Augustine's Organ and Burea Funeral Organ.

Soni Musicae is a great site. They have two free harpsichords and other cool stuff, including a brilliant piano in Giga that you can convert to Kontakt.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Apparitions

This instrument is from Brandon Clark. Let's let him describe it.
"Apparitions is my first excursion into the world of instrument development in Kontakt 5 using Joe Steven's generously made "B Pad." The sounds are dark and slightly cinematic in nature. Made from scratch, and free to use."




This instrument is Public Domain and free for any use.


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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

B Pad

A long time ago I made a little Kontakt instrument called A Pad.  Its been improved a bit and called "B Pad". So clever I know. A number of my friends have helped me create it and then Matt McKay updated and overhauled everything. Thanks guys.

It still works the same way. Name any wave file "A Pad.wav" and drop it into the B Pad Samples directory replacing the public domain demo sound from OLPC. Kick up the B Pad Kontakt instrument and there is your new pad with fiddley EQ, Reverb and Envelope Knobs on. Any sound becomes an instrument (of sorts).
You can also change the picture with another one roughly 640 * 250 in png format. Just click the wrench on the upper left, go to "Instrument Options", "Instrument" and then "Browse" for your Instrument Wallpaper. Feel free to free name it anything you like. It's totally public domain and you don't need to credit anyone.





If you want to mess about with the magnificent WIPs scripts from Robert D. Villwock, aka Big Bob. I've made a second B Pad that includes the WIPs scripts and resources and such. Big Bob is the creator of these excellent scripts and they are in no way modified, just included in the instrument.

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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Open Source Drumkit

Over at KVR, they have a thread.  It is about this Open Source Drumkit.

The readme says
"THE OPEN SOURCE DRUM KIT by Real Music Media - www.realmusicmedia.net
Mapped by BaardW (Tjuvdalen, Norway) v 1.0 feb 2010 - www.trelyd.org
Partially based on the mappings by SWTrex and herodotus
The samples and the mappings are completely in the public domain."

So I tried making a Kontakt 5 instrument out of it. Its pretty lightweight at about 120 megs. See what you think. OK cranked up the crash and ride. Take 2.



By downloading and using anything on this site you agree to this Limited Warranty & Liability.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Sin Night Analog Synth


Sin Night posted samples from his analog monosynth on KVR.  He kindly gave me permission to create Kontakt instruments using his samples. Here is the first one.  Script and Shell by Mickaël Ménager.

There are lots of squares and saws in the 12 presets. They are arranged with 3 squares first, then 3 saws, square + saw, saw + square, double squares and finally double saws. The are over 500 samples with every note sampled in one velocity layer.

You are allowed to use them in your music without restriction, but don't share the individual samples or make instruments out of them without permission from Sin Night.
Here is the original readme file text .

"These samples are free.
You can use them royalty-free for music production (including commercial music).
You’re not allowed to share these samples without prior written consent (so no derivative product, like sample libraries, without prior consent).
Sinusoidal Nightmare (aka sin night)"
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