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.

Beskhu Upright Piano

Beskhu Plucked Piano

Beskhu Toy Piano
Beskhu Toy Xylophone

Upright Soundcloud       Plucked Soundcloud

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.

Beskhu Fagott

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.

Beskhu Sanzanais

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.

Beskhu Windchimes

Pleasant Wind Chimes spread across two octaves.

Beskhu Jew's Harp

Soundcloud Demo

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

Beskhu Creaking Cupboard

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.

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.

The Ghent Belfry Carillon 

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.

Soundcloud Demo.

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.

Fantom57 Oud

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.

Juskiddink Crumhorn

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.

Wuola Medieval Bells

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.

Sasje Simple Viola Da Gamba

Sasje Crumbhorn

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.