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Flame Studio Guitars

January 1, 2016, 9:26 am
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Flame Studios Guitars

These are fairly simple versions of the Flame Studios guitars. The main instrument in each has three velocity layers with every note sampled. The mild version drops the most aggressive sample layer. Finally there is a mute layer. The Mickaël Ménager scripting & GUI work really well here as you can add some cool effects and amps right from the instrument.
Samples are from the fine folks at Flame Studios. You guys rock!
The license is GNU GPL.  Which means that I or anyone else can't charge you for a Flame Studios instrument, but you can use this instrument for any purpose you like, including becoming a millionaire with a hit song.

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Taylor Sampled Synths

January 1, 2016, 9:27 am
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Taylor Sampled Synths for Kontakt


Axis 80   Part 1    Part 2    Part 3

Richard Taylor did a great job sampling analog synths and the nice folks at Freesound.org are hosting them. They were placed in the public domain which was very generous of Richard Taylor.

I'm calling the first one Axis 80 so as not to get sued, read about the real thing here. It has over 30 presets and weighs in at a touch under 2 gigs.

The King One Many is a classic synth from the early 80s. Check Wiki for the real deal. This one is more 1.5 gigs, 3000 samples and 50 presets.

The Newtron 5 is an interesting modern synthesizer. This almost 2 gig download
has 19 presets including interesting arps and sounds that seemed designed to stack in interesting ways.

I used Mickaël Ménager's great script and GUI, so you can add effects like Tremolo, Phaser, Reverb and Distortion along with using half a dozen amps.

As a bonus:
AKWF The First Attempt
Adventure Kid is Kristoffer Ekstrand and he has sampled many wave forms and placed them in the public domain because he is cool like that.
As with the previous synths, the script and shell are by Mickaël Ménager.

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G-Town Church

January 1, 2016, 9:31 am
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G-Town Church Samples for Kontakt

G-Town Church Piano
G-Town Church Organ
G-Town Glockenspiel
G-Town Glass Harmonica
G-Town Church Mandolin

G-Town Church Drumkit
G-Town Church Cymbals
G-Town Church Hi-Hats
G-Town Church Dual Snare
G-Town Church Ensemble Snares
G-Town Church Orchestral Snares
G-Town Church Orchestral Snares Open
G-Town Church Percussion Toms
G-Town Church Orchestral Toms
G-Town Church Bass Drum
G-Town Church Anvil
G-Town Church Woodsticks
G-Town Church Woodsticks 2 
G-Town Church Bongos
G-Town Church Darbuka
G-Town Church Eggs
G-Town Church Overblown Flutes
G-Town Church Stomps
G-Town Church Tambourine
G-Town Church Waterbowls 
G-Town Church Wood Pipes 
G-Town Church Plate

There are lots of great samples recorded in his local church in Grebbestad, Sweden by music producer Tobias Marberger. If I understand right he made EXS24 instruments which some kind soul turned into old school Kontakt instruments. This makes my life making new Kontakt instruments much easier. Thanks to a buddy of mine for getting them to me.
I tried to make a basic GM drumkit from various elements.
Creative Commons with credit to Tobias Marberger.
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Electric Iowa Orchestra

January 1, 2016, 9:39 am
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I've been messing with the University of Iowa samples for a long time now. My latest toy has all of those sustain samples plus the sustains from the LDK1609 Violin packed into Mickaël Ménager's script and GUI. You can add all kinds of funky effects and amp sims to your orchestra from inside the instruments.
The Iowa samples are Public Domain. Please credit LDK1969 for the Violin.
The only thing missing is a Cello, which you can find here. Thank you D Smolken.
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Sonatina WIPs

January 1, 2016, 9:44 am
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Jasper Blunk

January 1, 2016, 9:46 am
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Karoryfer Alto Sax

January 1, 2016, 9:48 am
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Thanks

February 8, 2016, 1:40 pm
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Old bigcat instruments just topped 1.5 million downloads. Thanks everyone for your support. This is kind of a little hobby that got a bit out of control, but its a lot of fun creating things. There is a wide variety of quality and oddity here, but hopefully there is something here to intrigue you. Thanks for the visit.

Index to bigcat blog stuff

bigcat standalone VSTs.
bigcat Kontakt instruments organized by GM category.
bigcat keyboard instruments in one place.

Totally free instruments from all over that don't need Kontakt.
The free instrument blog including Kontakt and non-Kontakt.
The best free non-Kontakt instruments from the web.
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Ensembles

February 15, 2016, 11:27 am
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On the VI-Control forum there is an interesting thread about a script to create ensembles. About a decade ago, Jay Bacal created this script that "creates ensembles up to 7 players without any phasing using only 1 instrument." Since one of the defects of the Iowa instruments is that they are solo only, this allows for the emulation of many instruments at once. I put them all to three instruments, but you can twist the 'Voices' knob up to 7. If you do add more voices you might want to lower the detune value.


Public Domain samples by the University of Iowa edited by Blackhole. Kontakt instruments and scripts are placed in the Public Domain except the Ensemble Scripts by Jay Bacal and all rights are retained by him. Thanks to Matt McKay for heavily rewriting the bigcat GUI script.
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Recut Pianos

February 22, 2016, 8:09 am
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After a few complains about latency and other issues, I have reworked a couple pianos. First up is the Skerratt London piano by Kung Krille. I just hand edited the samples this morning and they should now be nice and crisp when you tap your keyboard.


Maize VSTi
Windows
Mac
Skerratt London Piano - AU


The Iowa is one of the most popular pianos, but has a few problems. I tried to do a better version by dropping out some samples that in the upper mid register at medium velocity that somehow came out almost mono. I also stretched the lowest C to go down to A as some of the lowest notes were pretty wonky. I wouldn't normally stretch notes this far, but bass samples are less noticeable.

Iowa Piano - Kontakt
Great Soundcloud Song by Reasy

Maize VSTi
Windows
Iowa Piano - 64
Iowa Piano -32
Mac
Iowa Piano - VST
Iowa Piano - AU


This is cool. Glyn Barnes from the Cakewalk forums has made these pianos compatible with the new Komplete Kontrol format. 

Komplete Kontrol

 
I don't understand all the details, but fortunately Glyn gave me the details on what you need to do to get everything up and running.
"The NKI should be copied to the same folder as the original NKI
The folder with the NKSN file should be copied to C:/Users/[user name]/Documents/Native Instruments/User Content/Kontakt
The NKSN should appear in the user tab of the Komplete Kontrol Browser.
When you click on this you will see the Kontakt Missing File dialog. Use the “resolve manually” option to locate an load the missing files, you will need to do this twice, once to find the NKI and once for the samples. Resave the NKI. Next go to the Komplete Kontrol file menu and re-save the pre-set.

On no account rename the new NKI or the pre-set file will not be able to find it.
If Komplete Kontrol cannot see the NKSN file check the folder is in the scan path."
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Pablo Project

February 29, 2016, 8:38 pm
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Here is the Pablo Trumpet with samples by rcasamajo.





It comes in a standard and a mild version. The mild version cuts out the loudest sample group which can get a bit funky at times. There are two or three velocity layers and almost every note sampled, about 80 total. I edited them by hand so they should be nice and tight.
I used the Big Bob WIPS scripts, which adds fake round robins, legato and vibrato and if you have a wind controller, you can play the trumpet using it!

Creative Commons Attribution: rcasamajo
Creative Commons Picture by Derek Gleeson.
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Necromare VSTs

March 30, 2016, 5:59 am
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An incredibly talented artist who goes by the name Necromare created an amazing amount of VST instruments a few years back. I was privileged to have an electronic chat with him and not only did he give permission to mirror the VSTs I was already aware that he had created, but also many I never knew existed. These instruments range from traditional pianos, music boxes and brass instruments to wild soundscapes and horror instruments that are perfect for Halloween. These VSTis are Windows 32 bit.

I made a mistake with the Recorder zip, if you got it earlier than 4/2/16 please download it again, sorry I put the receiver  mse in the zip instead of the recorder one.

These instruments are Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Please credit Necromare.


Dimensions in Dreams and Deep Space

includes 11 instruments

includes 4 instruments

includes 5 instruments

Keyboard Instruments




 Harps



Guitars & Bass

Acoustic Guitar Version 2

Nylon Guitar Version 2

Simple Acoustic Guitar

Open Electric Guitar

Electric Bass

Tremolo Guitar

Bowed Guitar Version 2

 Dante's Power Chords

Country Strings

Mandolin

Southern Banjo

Hammered Dulcimer 

Percussion / Idiophone

Bang 1

Bongoes

Clanger

Soft Mallet Xylophone

Waterphones

World Instruments

World Percussion

World Percussion 2

Gamelan

Didgeridoo

Kalimba

Koto

Oud

Pan Lute

Sarod

Shamisen

Singing Bowl
included 3 instruments

 Tibetan Monastery

Wood Flute

Brass / Woodwinds / Orchestral

Small Maestro
includes Clarinet, Angelic Choir, Orchestra Section & Hit

Jazz Trumpet

Classic Tuba

Tenor Sax

Recorder

Vocal

Mixed Choir

Phoneme

Toys

Kazoo

Toy Piano

Bent Furbie

Broken Toy

Vintage Electronic Sounds / Synth 

Wave-Stone
an amazingly fun draw your own sound instrument

Poly-Slop
32 presets and lots of synth functions

Bit Chip
includes 10 instruments

Bit Chip 2
includes 9 instruments

Tech Bin

Pong

Sinsonic Drums

VL Drums

Sound Effects / Found Items / Body Instruments

Receiver
includes 5 instruments

Old Candle Jar

Singing Glass

The Audience

The Office
contains 6 instruments

Turntable

War Machine

Whale Song

Fartburpatron3000

Fingerpop

Twisted and Horror Instruments

Chronosfear

Horror Movie Soundtrack
contains 5 instruments

Limbo

Satan's Fiddle
recorded one day when he went down to Georgia

Vampire Violin

Voices of Darkness

Zeebo Drum Kit

Zombie Electric Version 2
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More Freesound

April 15, 2016, 9:24 pm
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I haven't done much lately and am messing with some projects that aren't very fun, so I decided to take a break and browse Freesound.org. I bumped into a few cool things so I stuffed them into Kontakt.


Sandyrb generally recorded with 11 different microphones and between 8 and 11 velocity layers. Each snare is in its own octave with the different mics next to each other. There are over 600 samples and it weighs in at about 150 megs. Some of the snares are variations.

Creative Commons Attribution: Sandyrb



This on the other hand is quite small, with nine samples and one velocity layer. But is a fun instrument. It was sampled by iternetcone from his hammered dulcimer.

Creative Commons Attribution: iternetcone


 FaireDesVagues sampled his Fretless Bass for Freesound. While we have plenty of heavily sampled basses (thanks Project 16), this lightly sampled one has a nice tone and a bit different sound. It has one velocity layer and about every other note sampled.



And now for something completely different. Sometimes in the middle of your Carnegie Hall performances you just want to break out some classic video game sounds. Now you can thanks to B_Lamerichs.

Creative Commons Attribution: B_Lamerichs



I really like these seven chimes that Selector sampled or created or something. They have a touch of magic too them.

Creative Commons Attribution: Selector



You never know when a sword fight is gonna break out at your concert. Be prepared with the foley work of Mr. Derp. 

Creative Commons Attribution: Christopher Derp
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Possible break

April 27, 2016, 11:53 am
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One of the board members / trustees of the church organization I work for wants to get rid of me though I don't know if he has the power to do so. I'm not sure if I really want to stay some place I'm not wanted anyway. I'm a fuzzy weird dude with aspergers and I suspect I embarrass him. They've let me live here for a long time and been quite nice about my weirdness, so no complaints.

However this probably means I need to find a real job / room to stay in if I don't want to be a street person, so while I want to finish up a couple projects related to the blog, it might go into hiatus for a while (though given my slow rate of posting who would know!). All pending the outcome of this little issue which should come to a head by about the end of the month.

It might be nothing or it might be something. Either way thanks for everybody for coming by and supporting my little hobby that seems to have spun out of control.

P.S. Anyone know of any good Youtube videos that teach you how to shave?
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QuarterTone Rhythm Section

February 23, 2015, 3:12 am
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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.

Soundcloud Demo 

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.


SmithULTD / Evil Dragon Kontakt Drums

Based on Samples by Quartertone at Freesound.org
Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, please give credit to Quartertone and Evil Dragon for these drums.

If you are looking for more free Drums check out this list from Bedroom Producers Blog.


And here's the other part of the Quartertone Rhythm Section. The Bass Guitar. 


Based on Freesound.org samples created by Quartertone.  The license is Creative Commons Attribution. Please give that credit to Quartertone.

You can find the Quartertone Guitar below.
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best of

June 20, 2016, 7:32 am
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I made a new blog to kind of showcase some of the best instruments. There is a full band's worth of instruments and the Iowa and SSO orchestras, with some solo orchestral instruments.


Some of the things to take a look at are the new Double Bass.
The improved Cello now looped.
The tighter hand edited Violin.
The full WIPs version of the Sonatina Orchestra.
The tighter hand edited Salamander Piano.
The tighter Taylor Sampler Synths, with over 25 presets from a new synth.
The digitally tuned Soprano and Alto Sax.




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Karoryfer Collection

June 29, 2016, 12:03 pm
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The man known as DSmolken and his group Karoryfer Samples have sampled and released an amazing amount of original instruments for the SFZ format. These are completely free instruments released under the Creative Commons banner. Fortunately for me, Mr. Smolken doesn't seem to object to me creating Kontakt instruments from his efforts. So here is a collection of those instruments thus far. Note that Karoryfer has many more instruments including interesting synthy and glitchy types that fall outside the range of this blog and others that I just haven't gotten around to Konverting.

Pasta Bass - Baritone Guitar


To start off here is are four different versions of a Squier Bass VI recorded by Space Coyote. The spaghetti has round wound strings, the rest are flat wound. The tagliatelle is muted, the linguine is picked and the fetuccine is fingered and I also included a mild version without the highest velocity layers. They are sampled every three notes, in three velocity layers (four for the fetuccine) and have three or four round robins.

Creative Commons 3.0 Unported : Credit Karoryfer Samples


Cute Emily Guitar - Solid Guitar


I redid the Kontakt conversion of the brilliant D Smolkin's cutest creation. It now has 4 velocity layers and release samples and a great script new shell from Mickaël Ménager that lets you kick up an amp right in the instrument along with other cool effects.
Thanks to FLWrd for spotting a couple bad notes. They should now be fixed.

Creative Commons 3: Credit Karoryfer Samples


WereSax - Alto Saxophone
 
A nice Sax from our sample man. Mickaël Ménager's script and GUI provide the Electrification of the Sax. For those who want a more traditional Sax, there is also a WIPs Kontakt version without an amp simulation on board. The version on the Karoryfer site is very adventurous and well worth picking up.

Creative Commons Unported 3.0: Credit Karoryfer Sounds


272 Merry Orks - Lady Death (Metal Vocalist)

One of Karoryfer's more interesting projects was this vocal sampling. Being me, I had to try Kontakting some of the samples of the nice lady. This is very experimental.


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
Creative Commons Unported 3.0: Credit Karoryfer Sounds

 Karoryfer Cello

DSmolken and the lovely and skilled cellist Kamila Borowiak have teamed up to give us a great instrument. Actually they have given us two instruments. Mr. Smolken has reworked the cello to include things like vibrato and legato and all the sustain samples are looped for endless play. This download includes both the SFZ and Kontakt versions.



Here is the previous version if you want to use the 'Electric' Shell or the older SFZ version.


The Kontakt version uses the script and shell by Mickaël Ménager.It has all kinds of effects that usually would be used for an electric piano or guitar so you can 'electrify' the cello if you like or just let it be a nice acoustic cello for an orchestra.


Creative Commons 3.0 Unported: Credit Karoryfer Lecolds 
Copyright 2016 Karoryfer Lecolds. Royalty-free for use in all non-commercial and commercial productions. If you want to distribute these in a different sampler format or as part of a larger sample library, please be kind enough to inform Karoryfer Lecolds.


Meat Bass - Double Bass

Karoryfer sample machine D. Smolken sampled and then re-sampled his Double Bass. You can find both versions here. The latest is the Karoryfer Meat Bass with over 400 samples of Arco and Pizzicato. The Arco has every third note sampled in five velocity layers with both up and down bowing which alternate as round robins. The Pizzicato is again every third note sampled with four velocity layers and four round robins. There are also some cool percussive noises from C3 to C4 if you use the G#4 key-switch. This version is definitely more polished than the original and sounds quite good in an orchestral setting.


The earlier version is the D. Smolken Double Bass, which was created before the Karoryfer name as best I can tell. It is rougher, but has its own earthy charm. The previous Kontakt version had some problems, so I fixed it up a bit. It has some great cello 'noises'.


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Suprise Piano

July 1, 2016, 3:29 pm
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Reading David Byrne's book about music I was inspired to be weirder. So I tried to create something odd. In this case your hit a key and one of five pianos will play. Oddly when you just hit one key at a time it sounds pretty bad, but often it seems folks play several notes at once and in some sort of sequence. This tends to average out the various pianos somehow and sometimes creates some other piano sound. It is lets be kind and say experimental and you might significantly hate it.

Surprise Piano
 Soundcloud Demo

I tweaked the volumes just a bit on this nki and you can replace the old one with this one if you like.
Alternate nki

This uses the City, Iowa and Skerratt London Public Domain pianos and the Salamander and VSCO 2 Community Orchestra Creative Commons Pianos. The blame rest entirely on my shoulders.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International: Simon Dalzell and Alexander HolmFeel.
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VSCO 2 Kontakt

July 5, 2016, 5:39 pm
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Sam Gossner had a dream. After creating the original VSCO which was nice little orchestra, he wanted to create something bigger and bolder. Collaborating with dozens of friends from both sides of the pond, he created a new chamber orchestra. Two years in the making this version at its largest (and most expensive but still quite reasonable) has 300 instruments.

However he didn't forget you and I, the freebie loving population of the world. He has put almost 2000 samples under a Creative Commons Zero license which is similar to Public Domain. These include 16 string, brass, woodwind and keys instruments along with lots of handy orchestral percussion. I've been busily working on the strings, woodwinds and keys for Kontakt. Meanwhile Sam has put out an SFZ version that includes everything but the percussion which will come later. The brass are next up for me and then I'll try to figure out the percussion, which I've never understood. Thanks to CCLarry for helping me iron out some glitches and Fleer for his continuing moral support.

Thanks especially to Sam for making these samples available. I've written across the years to a number of the commercial orchestra makers and tried to get them to let me use some small subsection of their samples maybe from older versions with the promise of full credit, links to their sites etc... I never heard back from a single one. This free Community Orchestra had nothing to do with me, but after my failed attempts, I realize how rare it is for a commercial product to allow a subset of its samples into the freebie world.



includes Solo Violin & Bass, Violin, Viola & Cello Sections

VSCO Brass for Kontakt 5
includes Trumpet, Trombone, Tube & French Horn

 includes Solo Flute, Clarinet, Oboe & Bassoon

includes Upright Piano, Organ and Harp

Demo



VSCO 2 Instruments: Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal : Versilian Studios / Sam Gossner
Piano & Organ also : Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal : Simon Dalzell of Ivy Audio

Note the name VSCO 2 is used to give attribution to the sampling project from which these samples were taken. It doesn't imply any form of endorsement.
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Thanks for 2 million downloads

July 26, 2016, 4:42 pm
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Thank you for checking out these creations across the years.

Wow talk about a hobby that has spun out of control. 2 million downloads and almost 100 gigs of files on the server, though to be fair there are many wave file dups in there. Lord knows how many versions of the City Piano and the Iowa Orchestra I've inflicted on you all.

Thanks to DSmolken, Sam Gossner and many others for making so many free samples available recently and keeping the free digital instrument community energized.  Thanks also to all the message boards that give free advertising to all these free efforts across the globe and the internet.

Keep the free movement going and give legal options to folks looking to make low cost music. Wow I've been watching way too many political conventions!
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