New work in progess website

My goodness I've been lazy recently. None the less I've started trying to make a more websitey site than a blog site. Take a look if you like. There are a few bits and pieces up and a couple more or less new instruments. Note I've had massive computer failure and death in the family, so things have been mostly stopped.

https://freedigitalinstruments.wordpress.com/

bigcat's Amazon ebook page

Odd music by me

If you feel like listening to little bits and pieces of my mind or supporting the place...
https://bigcatinstruments.bandcamp.com/album/bigcat-eccentricities

Or want to look at some odd ebooks...
bigcat's Amazon ebook page



Thanks.

VCSL Instruments for Kontakt

Well here we go again. Sam Gossner, the man behind Versillian Studios and the VSCO2 Orchestra, has created the Versilian Community Sample Library. It is really just starting, but there are already lots of fun samples. These samples and my instruments are CC0 which means you can use them for anything you like.

As always I'm using the acronym VCSL so that folks will know where the samples came from, these instruments are my own fault and Sam did all the amazing sampling work. I'm not affiliated with Versillian. I just love the free samples!

I tend to normalize samples and do other things to them, so when the SFZ versions come out from Sam or other clever SFZ devs, they might well be more to your liking. I'll let you know when they are released and where to get them. These instruments require a fairly recent version of Kontakt.

Plucked  Idiophones

JH Piano
Kontakt Patch that Smooths the Velocity Layers
 Thanks to StatKsn from VI-C!

Soundcloud Demo - Bumpy

K Piano 1

English Harpsichord 

 

Ren Organ

Baroque Soprano Recorder

Baroque Alto Recorder

Baroque Tenor Recorder

Baroque Bass Recorder
Soundcloud Recorder Demoish

Saxello

Small Ocarina
Soundcloud Lonely Bird Demo

20 Special Harmonica 

Train & Whistle

Samples CC0: Sam Gossner and Versillian Studios
Instruments CC0: bigcat instruments 

Here is a bonus instrument. Mattias Westlund of SSO fame created this violin trio using the violin samples from VSCO2, MSLP, ldk1609 and MIS. The zip also contains the SFZ mappings by Mattias.

Westlund 3 Violin Trio

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: Mattias Westlund
There is a second included nki that smooths the transition from p to f and adds vibrato thanks to StatKsn from VI-C.

As per usual by downloading these instruments you are agreeing to terms and conditions.

bigcat's Amazon ebook page

Nouveau Sound Tracker Samples

Relive the sounds of the 90s with Thrilling 16 bit Mono! CD after CD of Cutting Edge Samples for your Amiga or MS-Dos computer. Supports Kontakt with thrilling Reverberation, Equalization and Envelope Control technologies! Now in downloadable form to save the cost of postage or anything else! So hot you will need to wear your Asbestos Suit!
Legal notice NO CDs are included in this offer.

Download CD #1. The sound of 36 Flute Type Instruments. Over 4000 samples.
Listen to the World Class Demo from a Midi File found on the Internet Here!

Download CD #2. With 21 Acoustic Keyboards this CD this collection will amaze your friends who probably have no more 3 or 4 clavichords or pianos in their entire house. With 6500 samples only cutting edge zip compression technology allowed us to fit this on one internet!
Shhh. Don't tell anyone but we made a mistake and left out the samples for #11. Here is #11 and we'll get the original file fixed.
Listen to the Winter Games Demo from a midi file found on the interwebs here!

Download CD #3. The Beauty of the Human Voice shines through every bit of these 30 Choral Instruments. Over 1000 samples of singing goodness! Lots of happy vowels.
Listen to Why We Never Let bigcat Near A Keyboard!

Download CD #4.  Big, Bad, Bold Brass. 35 Brass instruments and well over 5000 samples. For those of you who love Heavy Metal we have a couple Tubas! Love that joke.

Download CD #5. Lots O Strings. 35 instruments and over 6000 samples.
Polyphonic NKIs. Use these to turn the strings from mono to polyphonic.


Magenta is a Google Brain project that has created something called NSynth, I can apparently use the NSynth Dataset to create instruments.

License: The dataset is made available by Google Inc. under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

Paper: Jesse Engel, Cinjon Resnick, Adam Roberts, Sander Dieleman, Douglas Eck, Karen Simonyan, and Mohammad Norouzi. "Neural Audio Synthesis of Musical Notes with WaveNet Autoencoders." 2017.

Sketching Chamber Orchestra

Sketching Chamber Orchestra for Kontakt 5.6.8 or later

The Sketching Chamber Orchestra features two dozen instruments from the VSCO2 Community Edition in only 1.25 gigs using Kontakt's lossless compression.

The instruments feature Convolution Reverb with 25 presets and 3 twiddly knobs, Full Envelope Control, 3 Band Equalization, Scripted Legato for Strings, Brass & Woodwinds, Faux Round Robins for sustains, optional loud and soft articulations for many sustains, 2 Round Robins for most shorts, cool scripting to show which articulation is in use (that took some work!) along with scripted Modwheel Crossfading and Ensemble patches for many instruments. There are also experimental patches for chords and programmable arpeggios.

Samples created by Versilian Studios Samuel A. Gossner along with Simon Dalzell & Samuel Hébert. Please consider purchasing the Professional Edition. I did and then I bought it.
Please follow the link above for a complete list of musicians and technicians.

Scripting by Matt McKay, Joe Stevens and friends. Special thanks to Evil Dragon.
WIPS scripting was created by Robert D. Villwock.
Modwheel scripting was created by Nils Liberg.
Ensemble scripting was created by Jay Bacal.
WIPS, Modwheel & Ensemble scripting were developed for use by the modding community and made available for non-commercial projects like this one. All rights are reserved to the scripters. 

Samples are Creative Commons 0 / Public Domain: Versilian Studios & Samuel A. Gossner
Instruments are Public Domain: Me

The Sketching Chamber Orchestra is respectful dedicated to Sam Gossner and as a memorial to the late Robert D. Villwock.

I have no affiliation or endorsement with anyone mentioned and any mistakes are my own.
By downloading you accept the Limited Warranty & Liability.

List of Stuff in the SCO

Strings - All instruments have scripted legato except the Harp (that sounded weird)

Full String Section - Arco Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Solo Violin - Arco Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Violin Section - Arco Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Viola Section - Arco Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Cello Section - Arco Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Solo Contrabass - Sustain, Sustain Vibrato, Tremolo, Spiccato & Pizzicato
Harp - Plucked

Brass - All instruments have scripted legato
First Chairs - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato
Solo Trumpet - Sustain, Staccato, Vibrato & Straight and Harmonic Mutes
Solo French Horn - Sustain, Staccato & Mute
Solo Trombone - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato
Solo Old Trombone - Sustain, Staccato, Vibrato, Falls & Buzz
Solo Tuba - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato

Woodwinds - All instruments have scripted legato
Solo Lite Piccolo - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato
Solo Flute - Sustain, Staccato, Vibrato & Expressive Vibrato
Solo Oboe - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato
Solo Clarinet - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato
Solo Bassoon - Sustain, Staccato & Vibrato

Percussion
Orchestral Percussion
Timpani - Single Hits and Rolls
Marimba
Glockenspiel
Xylophone

Keyboard
2 Pianos
Organ with pedals both Loud and Soft settings

An Orchestra - Experimental Chord and Arpeggio instruments
These instruments use standard reverb and not convolution.
There are programmable Arps and a dozen types of chords depending on the instrument.

Strings, Brass & Woodwinds Chords and Arps multi
Strings, Brass & Woodwinds4 Arps multi
Strings Chords & Arps
Strings Chord Progressions
Strings 4 Arps
Brass Chords & Arps
Brass 4 Arps
Woodwinds Chords & Arps
Woodwinds 4 Arps
Woodwinds Arps and Melody

Bonus Instruments (must be downloaded  separately)

This is a lovely harp from Sam and EtherealWinds. Note the license.

Etherealwinds Harp CE for Kontakt 5.6.8

Harp SFZ, VSTi, etc... page

EWHarp: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license: Versilian Studios

The Conductor for Kontakt 5.6.8
The Conducator has baton swishes, cloth crinkling and ripping, flies buzzing, mumbled naughty words and audiences grumbling and even a gunshot for that authentic concert sound.
Created using Public Domain samples from Freesound.org. Thank you Free Sounders!
The Conductor is Public Domain

bigcat's Amazon ebook page

Mihai Sorohan Choir

Soundcloud Demo

Vowel Ensemble Choir for Kontakt 5

Vowel Ensemble Choir for SFZ

The internet has allowed for collaborations across time and distance. 

Seven years ago this thread appeared on KVR.  Mihai Sorohan and his friends and family had created an ensemble vowel choir. I'd happily downloaded it much later and made myself my own little Kontakt version because that's what I do. Over at Scoring Central (run by the guy who created the Sonatina Orchestra) where I hang out with friends and musically gifted AIs, someone asked about free choirs and mentioned this free ensemble. Somewhere someone mentioned that it was nice but it would be nice if it sounded fuller this reminded me of the Kontakt script J's Ensemble Maker created by Jay Bacal over a decade ago. This script can multiply solo instruments by up to seven through Digital Wizardy understood by about a dozen Kontakt scripting pros in the world. So after finding a public domain piece of clipart and using the freeware GIMP graphic editor to fake a woodburned GUI look, out came the Kontakt instrument.

But folks on VSR and SC wanted an SFZ version and I don't know how to do that. Fortunately Sam Gossner the headman at Versilian Studios (the guys behind the VSCO2 Orchestra) has created and given away a free folder-to-SFZ converter and made a nice video on how to use it. So after a bit of confusion and renaming 110 files I was ready to send out the SFZ version. I just wished I knew how to make a ketswitched patch for it, but hey you can't have everything right? Then into my inbox comes a full keyswitched version from Pytchblend from KVR. And that is how using freeware, samples and help from friends a free choir is put up on a blog.

From Mihai's blog...

"The choir patch was developed by Mihai Sorohan together with Richard Osborn for Mu.Lab Multisampla and Selcuk Bor (from Symphony of Specters) for Kontakt.
 

Choir: Citrina - soprano & alto, Jelena - alto,Roman & Dimitri (Timohi) - tenor, Jonny Zed - tenor, Mihai - tenor & baritone"

Also from Mihai's blog are the conditions for use...

"By downloading the provided files you accept the following terms:

• You get a personal non-exclusive non-transferable right to use the sample content as an integral part of your musical composition, in combination with other sounds, for both personal and commercial purpose. You may not use it for commercial sample libraries (put it on a CD and sell it, sell it online, etc) 
• You may use the sample content as an integral part of your musical composition, in combination with other sounds, for both personal and commercial purpose. 
• I don't accept any responsibility for any damage, loss, liability, injury or upset caused to or suffered by you as a result of misusing this material. "

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