One Small Clue has released Grace : Sampler for free. There are both 32 and 64 bit versions for Windows. One of its features is that it can easily import and convert SFZ format 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.
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.
Bonus from Sarcyan's Musyng Kite soundfont. The Street Bumper Piano - Kontakt 5
Musyng Kite Merlittzer Win 64Win 32Mac VSTMac 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
