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.
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)"
The endlessly amazing DSmolken has been very busy creating some cool and distinctive instruments. Check out his site. Recently he posted fun stuff on KVR.
Being me, I had to try Kontakting some of the samples of the nice lady. This is very experimental and a first attempt.
Here are the keyswitches. Each sound is mapped across 4 octaves.
B - C1, C - C#1, Ch - D1, D - D#1, F - E1, G - F1, H - F#1, J - G1, L - G#1, M - A1, N - A#1, Ng - B1, P - C2, R - C#2, S - D2, Sh - D#2, T - E2, Th - F2, V - F#2, W - G2, Y - G#2, Z - A2
A - C3, a - C#3, ah - D3, ea - D#3, E - E3, ee - F3, e - F#3, i - G3, O - G#3, o - A3, oo - A#3, ou - B3, ow - C4, oy - C#4, OO - D4, u - D#4, y - E4
This library is a free download, open source and royalty-free for all commercial and non-commercial use. Creative Commons. Please credit DSmolkin.
As an old radio guy who loves old time radio, sound effects have always had a special place in my heart. I've done a few sound effects instruments in the past and Sarcyan's Musyng Kite soundfont collection has many more. However I have an itch to make a collection all in one place. I've collected the old sound effects and given some of them a facelift and started adding a few new ones. These are all for Kontakt 5.
I really don't understand drums, but these great Samples by Quatertone made me want to give them a try. If you can give them a test it would be much appreciated. There are over 2500 samples. The mod wheel controls the pitch of the Kick, Snares and Toms. The lower the mod wheel, the lower the pitch. Check this as when Kontakt loads up for me the mod wheel is always down giving the lowest pitch by default. The keyswitches alter the sound quite a lot. In general the lower white keyswitches are a louder more open sound while the black keys give things like a Cross Stick Strike. Be warned this is almost a gig download and takes about 500 megs of memory.
Sometime ago the brilliant Kontakt scripter EvilDragon created a fine Kontakt instrument using these samples. He was kind enough to give permission for old bigcat to host this drumkit. It is a significantly different and in many ways superior version to mine that you should try.
Some time ago I was fortunate enough to work with Project 16's great bass samples on a Kontakt instrument. He mentioned to me that he had sampled his Sherwood guitar, but I was taking a break at the time with some shoulder problems so I never worked with these samples. I've also wanted to do more guitars with the script and shell that Mickaël Ménager has allowed me to use. His scripting of great effects works really well with electric band instruments like guitar, bass and electric piano.
So I decided to see what I remembered about making instruments and here is the result. The guitar is fully sampled (though I stretched the notes on the ends) and has 5 velocity layers. I made a few errors that I hope I've ironed out. It's been a while since I've worked with this many samples and this rather complex (for me) shell. If you find any problems please yell and I'll try to get them fixed.
Freesound.org has lots of fun Public Domain and Creative Commons sounds that have been uploaded by the community. As you can imagine this is right up my street. I've used some before to make instruments, but I thought I'd put them all in the same place.
There is something called the Pablo Project which I don't understand on Freesound. It seems to involve uploading both good and bad samples of various instruments. I assembled the better sounding Violin samples from Kake85 into this little Kontakt instrument. It uses the WIPs script to add legato and vibrato.
This instrument is one velocity layer with about every other note sampled. It is Creative Commons Attribution, please give credit to Kake85.
TVerse put up a fun sample set called Bubblesound Octature Bass Multi Samples. I shortened it to Bubbles. He was kind enough to place the samples in the Public Domain and the instrument is the same, use it for anything you like.
Francesco Da Pyjama suggested this Kayageum from samples created by Spt3125. The samples were placed in the Public Domain as is this instrument, so you can use it for anything you like. Be warned that I recently updated Kontakt because none of the Komplete instruments would work, so you will need the latest version too.
According to Wikipedia, This instrument is a Korean zither with 12 strings.
Another request was for the GMB Gamelan. Sampled by anamorphosi, the samples are Sampling+ which seems like an earlier CC license and requests attribution. So use for anything you like but please credit anamorphosi.
This Indonesian instrument features Gongs in Dark Blue on the bass end of the keyboard, Jegog in the middle in Green and Kantilan on the treble end in Light Blue. In general the Jegog and Kantilan have been put on the nearest white key. They don't conform to the western scale, so this is to give you a general idea of where the sounds are relative to each other and an approximation to the western scale. The lower two gongs are about correct, the upper two gongs are placed next to them for convenience.
Oddly I did another Gamelan about a year ago. You can find it here.
This piano has a crunchy feel. Every note or every other note sampled in one velocity layer. Samples by Goup_1. Creative Commons, please credit Goup_1.
As with most toy pianos, the tuning is a bit negotiable. Fun little instrument based on Creative Commons samples by Poissonmort. Please credit him.
Another nice FreeSounds instrument is the Ldk1609 Violin. I just put out a new and improved version... aka I fixed some mistakes.
The Quartertone Guitar is yet another FreeSounds creation. Some have criticized it, but its also been downloaded a lot for the limited time its been up. As with most digital guitars, a good amp helps.
Guitars are hard to get right. I've spent actual money for some and never been entirely satisfied. You can check out this list of free Guitars to see if you find something you like.
