Legato Vibrato Piano

The gang over at Vi-Control have a bizarre thread about a legato piano that started on or around April Fool's Day, VI crashed recently so its tough to say. Being a bit crazy I decided to see what would happen if I used Big Bob's WIPS scripts to create a legato piano with vibrato. It sounds pretty weird.

Legato Vibrato Piano for Kontakt (5.6.6)

Soundcloud Demo

Instrument and Samples: Public Domain.

WIPS scripts: Copyright Robert D. Villwock 

Freesound

Here is a collection of 5 toy piano type instruments.

Toy Pianos for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Creative Commons Attribution: Beskhu,  Corsica_S, Poissonmort

Creative Commons Sampling Plus: Tombola

Public Domain: Taylor Sampled

This chap named pjcohen has put up some really nice drum, cowbell, harpsichord and standup acoustic bass samples. Bass is up first. To quote the gentleman.
"This standup bass was sampled using a direct pickup as well as stereo overhead mics for some room ambience. Articulations include a normal pizzicato, or finger plucked note; a stopped note as performed with the finger; a stopped note performed Bartok style; and some miscellaneous sound effects: a slide by the hand down the strings, a slap on the strings, and a knock on the wooden body of the bass. Do enjoy; feedback is welcome!"

pjcohen standup bass for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are placed in the Public Domain.

Sauron974 placed five Shofar samples in the public domain, "An 18" ram's horn shofar being sounded from a few feet away."

Sauron974's small shofar for kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are placed in the Public Domain.

I asked over on the Cakewalk forums for any ideas for instruments. Fleer suggested a deeply sampled pan flute which I have utterly failed to deliver, but in searching I found this really cool instrument. Made by Mr. Shoes as he explains, "I used a 3/4 in. diameter PVC tube stopped at one end and water to create all of the notes. the notes have even temperament. they may be slightly off in terms of tuning at the top end, but overall, I'd say not too much." There are 20 samples and I stretched the ends a bit so you have over 2 octaves of PVC pipe and water goodness.

Mr. Shoes Panflute for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are Creative Commons Attribution: Mr. Shoes.

Sound Modules

Hey a new Rompler is out this time featuring the VSCO2 Community Orchestra. Check it out on a new blog devoted entirely to VST Instruments.

VSCO2 Community Orchestra Sound Module

Do I ever get tired of messing about with the labor of Mattias Westlund? Apparently not as here is the entire (I'm pretty sure) Sonatina Orchestra in a single 1 gig VST module (650 meg zip). 20 instruments and over 50 articulations. Note that the piccolo is tucked into the flute instrument and a few other instruments are tucked around. This is based on the idea of a free Rompler by the great Sample Science who created the Orion Sound Module. While they may not be Sampletank 3 and Miroslav 2, they cost a lot less. Hopefully there is some fun to be had here.

Thanks to my friend at VST4Free for providing an alternate download site.

Some exciting news, VSTBuzz is hosting the Module and has a great looking page for it.

Just a note, Cantabile Lite seems to work pretty well for just plugging in a keyboard and playing any VST instrument like this one. I'm not affiliated with them, just looking for the easiest way to play digital instruments.

Sonatina Orchestra Module - Windows 64 - Mediafire Link

VST4Free Hosting Link - 32 & 64

Sonatina Orchestra Module - Windows 64 - Backup Mediafire Link

Sonatina Orchestral Module - Windows 32

Soundcloud Demo

Entire Soundcloud Album by Mountn using SSO

OK thanks to advice by Samulis. Here is an experimental Mac VST. Hopefully I followed his instructions correctly and this works. I don't have a Mac so I can't test it, so please folks with Macs give it a try and let me know. Thanks.

Sonatina Orchestra Module - Mac VST

Oops, thanks to Mr36 for finding a messed up articulation. Both the Violin and Cello Sustain problems are now fixed in the current version.

 Creative Commons Attribution: Mattias Westlund

Index

Here are some of the more popular pages on the blog

Big GM Order list of Kontakt instruments

All Keyboard Instruments - Piano, Electric Piano & Organ
Taylor Sampled Synths
Karoryfer Collection
Musyng Kite Collection
MSLP Collection 
Best of bigcat

The Orchestras
Sonatina Orchestra
Iowa Orchestra
VSCO 2 Orchestra
No Budget Orchestra
  
Standalone Maize VSTis for Win 32 & 64 & Mac

Necromare VSTis for Win 32

Blogs and Pages about freebies from around the net
Totally free no Kontakt required instruments
Best of Totally free instruments
Free instruments blog  including Kontakt instruments

Whats new?
I've been slowly making Kontakt versions of the No Budget Orchestra instruments.
Updated the Sonatina Choir VSTi and made an experimental Violin VSTi.
Added parts 3 and 4 to the Bender Roma Equator Taylor Sampled synth.
10 multi-velocity layer presets, drummy, guitary, all kinda stuff...

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you find something useful here.

Trying out this whole Twitter thing...

bigcat instruments @bcinstrument

And Facebook too
www.facebook.com/bigcatinstruments/

No Budget Orchestra

Sometime ago Jeff Glatt started creating the No Budget Orchestra for SFZ.He's also been adding many band instruments and all kinds of cool things. Some folks have asked if this is the same as the Sonatina and it is not the same. These samples are looped for infinite play and some were created using physical modeling software.
Jeff explained over in a post on KVR.
"The solo violin I posted (Kake) is half-modeled. I didn't like the original bow sound. It was too low-pitched and brought out too many dissonant harmonics. Via lots of noise reduction algorithms and filtering/phasing, I removed the original bow sound. Then for each sample, I modeled a new bow sound with higher noise frequencies, and more harmonics related to the fundamental pitch. I also thought the violin itself had too nasal and harsh a tone. So I also modeled a violin with more of the fundamental pitch and even harmonics. By mixing the two modeled samples with the real violin sample, I created an instrument that had the characteristics I liked of the original, but with a deeper, richer, and smoother tone.
In fact, about 1/3 of the musicians in the No Budget Orchestra ensembles aren't real. They're modeled. (The other musicians in an ensemble come from a sophisticated process of "stacking" multiple notes of the one or two solo instruments, giving the illusion of multiple musicians)."

If you click on the strings or brass headings below, you get all the instruments in that section in a single zip file.

No Budget Strings

Solo Violin - LDK    Solo Violin - Kake    Violin Section    Solo Viola
Solo Cello - BWV   Cello Section   Double Bass -  DS   Double Bass Section

No Budget Brass

Solo Trumpet    Trumpet Section     Solo Horn     Horn Section
Solo Trombone   Trombone Section    Solo Tuba    Tuba Section 

No Budget Woodwinds

Solo Flute - Alm    Flute Section    Piccolo    Recorder    Pan Flute

All instruments are Creative Commons Attribution : Jeff Glatt.

Also Solo Violin - LDK: LDK1609@freesound.org
Solo Violin - Kake: Kake 85
Solo Cello - BWV: Bwv66
Double Bass - DS: Drogomir Smolken and Ludwik Zamenhof
Solo Trumpet Mute Samples: Mihai Sorohan
Solo Flute - Alm:  almudenagonzalezflute_8
Pan Flute: Timohanes
Recorder: Samulis

These instruments use the WIPS scripts by the late, great Kontakt scripter Robert D. Villwock

Drummers Paradise

Nathan Sheeran sampled eight drum kits, 7 acoustic and 1 house, and kindly shared them. These are great for instant gratification as they load up really quickly and sound good. They are about 3 to 5 megs each and so are great for low RAM situations.

Drummer's Paradise for Kontakt 5

For SFZ versions hit the Karoryfer site

Soundcloud Demo

Samples by Nathan Sheeran
https://m.facebook.com/FLSTUDIO.IRISH.PRODUCER

This is a free download and royalty-free for use in songs. Please do not sell the samples or instruments or redistribute them without the permission of Nathan Sheeran.

Iowa Orchestra

I've scattered Iowa Orchestra variants all through this blog.  I'm putting them here in one blog post to minimize confusion (mine).

Thanks to the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios, we have the Iowa Orchestra with 15 orchestral instruments including 2 string, 5 brass and 8 woodwind instruments. I've created a WIPs version, an Ensemble version and an Electric version thanks to the generosity of Kontakt scripters..

While the Iowa samples have been criticized, they are the only multi-sampled, multi-velocity layer orchestral instrument samples out there for many instruments. With some editing, first by Blackhole12 and then me and some digital tuning, I think they sound quite reasonable. With a few exceptions they are all the basic sustain articulation.

The main negative at this point is that they are quite short with most samples coming in at about 2 seconds. Having tried my hand at looping samples, I'm both unskilled at the art and far too lazy to loop something like 2500 samples. If anyone would like to loop them please do and let me know.

The first set of instruments contain Big Bob's WIPs scripts allowing for scripted legato and vibrato, fake round robins and playing with wind controllers. The ensemble set of instruments uses Jay Bacal's script to emulate multiple instruments playing at once. The Mickaël Ménager Electric adds electricity, effects and amps to everything. The Basic has no additional scripts.

WIPs Iowa Orchestra

Iowa Ensembles

Electric

Basic

Public Domain samples by the University of Iowa edited by Blackhole12. Kontakt instruments are placed in the Public Domain except for the Kontakt scripts listed. The Electric Scripts and GUI are by Mickaël Ménager, The Ensemble Scripts are by Jay Bacal and the WIPS Scripts are by Big Bob with all rights are retained by their respective authors. Thanks to Matt McKay for heavily rewriting the bigcat GUI script.

The Iowa samples are Public Domain. Please credit LDK1969 for the Electric Violin.

Rest in Peace Big Bob and thank you.

You can add strings with the Cello and Double Bass here and the Violin here.