272 Merry Orks

April 21, 2015, 9:30 pm

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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.

272 Merry Orks - Kontakt 5

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.

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Iowa Orchestra

August 2, 2016, 10:58 am

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I've scattered Iowa Orchestra variants all through this blog.  I'm putting them here in one blog post to minimize confusion (mine).

Thanks to the University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios, we have the Iowa Orchestra with 15 orchestral instruments including 2 string, 5 brass and 8 woodwind instruments. I've created a WIPs version, an Ensemble version and an Electric version thanks to the generosity of Kontakt scripters..

While the Iowa samples have been criticized, they are the only multi-sampled, multi-velocity layer orchestral instrument samples out there for many instruments. With some editing, first by Blackhole12 and then me and some digital tuning, I think they sound quite reasonable. With a few exceptions they are all the basic sustain articulation.

The main negative at this point is that they are quite short with most samples coming in at about 2 seconds. Having tried my hand at looping samples, I'm both unskilled at the art and far too lazy to loop something like 2500 samples. If anyone would like to loop them please do and let me know.

The first set of instruments contain Big Bob's WIPs scripts allowing for scripted legato and vibrato, fake round robins and playing with wind controllers. The ensemble set of instruments uses Jay Bacal's script to emulate multiple instruments playing at once. The Mickaël Ménager Electric adds electricity, effects and amps to everything. The Basic has no additional scripts.

WIPs Iowa Orchestra

Iowa Ensembles

Electric

Basic

Public Domain samples by the University of Iowa edited by Blackhole12. Kontakt instruments are placed in the Public Domain except for the Kontakt scripts listed. The Electric Scripts and GUI are by Mickaël Ménager, The Ensemble Scripts are by Jay Bacal and the WIPS Scripts are by Big Bob with all rights are retained by their respective authors. Thanks to Matt McKay for heavily rewriting the bigcat GUI script.

The Iowa samples are Public Domain. Please credit LDK1969 for the Electric Violin.

Rest in Peace Big Bob and thank you.

You can add strings with the Cello and Double Bass here and the Violin here.

Index

August 4, 2016, 4:01 pm

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Here are some of the more popular pages on the blog

Big GM Order list of Kontakt instruments

All Keyboard Instruments - Piano, Electric Piano & Organ
Taylor Sampled Synths
Karoryfer Collection
Musyng Kite Collection
MSLP Collection 
Best of bigcat

The Orchestras
Sonatina Orchestra
Iowa Orchestra
VSCO 2 Orchestra
  
Standalone Maize VSTis for Win 32 & 64 & Mac

Necromare VSTis for Win 32

Blogs and Pages about freebies from around the net
Totally free no Kontakt required instruments
Best of Totally free instruments
Free instruments blog  including Kontakt instruments

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you find something useful here.

Drummers Paradise

August 24, 2016, 9:00 am

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Nathan Sheeran sampled eight drum kits, 7 acoustic and 1 house, and kindly shared them. These are great for instant gratification as they load up really quickly and sound good. They are about 3 to 5 megs each and so are great for low RAM situations.

Drummer's Paradise for Kontakt 5

For SFZ versions hit the Karoryfer site

SoundcloudDemo

Samples by Nathan Sheeran
https://m.facebook.com/FLSTUDIO.IRISH.PRODUCER

This is a free download and royalty-free for use in songs. Please do not sell the samples or instruments or redistribute them without the permission of Nathan Sheeran.

No Budget Orchestra

August 26, 2016, 1:12 pm

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Sometime ago Jeff Glatt started creating the No Budget Orchestra for SFZ. Being me I asked if I could make Kontakt versions and he kindly gave his permission. I got involved in other productive activities like reading old Doctor Who books (1st doctor, Susan was a hottie) and watching TV sitcoms (NewsRadio, RIP Phil), so I'm just now getting around to Kontakting this very nice orchestra. In some ways The No Budget Orchestra is to today what the Sonatina Orchestra was to the turn of the Millennium, an Orchestra drawn from the best Public Domain and Creative Commons samples. Jeff Glatt has worked over the samples to give them greater cohesion and done an insane amount of looping. If you have never tried looping you have no idea of the time and talent needed. It is half science and half art and 100% pain in the Pataki. So kudos to Jeff for all his hard work.

No Budget Strings

Solo Violin - LDK    Solo Violin - Kake    Violin Section    Solo Viola
Solo Cello - BWV   Cello Section  Double Bass -  DS  Double Bass Section

No Budget Brass

Solo Trumpet   Trumpet Section     Solo Horn     Horn Section

All instruments are Creative Commons Attribution : Jeff Glatt.

Also Solo Violin - LDK: LDK1609@freesound.org, Solo Violin - Kake: Kake 85
Solo Cello - BWV: Bwv66, Double Bass - DS: Drogomir Smolken and Ludwik Zamenhof
Solo Trumpet Mute Samples: Mihai Sorohan

Index

September 26, 2016, 6:50 am

≫ Next: Sound Modules

≪ Previous: No Budget Orchestra

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Here are some of the more popular pages on the blog

Big GM Order list of Kontakt instruments

All Keyboard Instruments - Piano, Electric Piano & Organ
Taylor Sampled Synths
Karoryfer Collection
Musyng Kite Collection
MSLP Collection 
Best of bigcat

The Orchestras
Sonatina Orchestra
Iowa Orchestra
VSCO 2 Orchestra
No Budget Orchestra
  
Standalone Maize VSTis for Win 32 & 64 & Mac

Necromare VSTis for Win 32

Blogs and Pages about freebies from around the net
Totally free no Kontakt required instruments
Best of Totally free instruments
Free instruments blog  including Kontakt instruments

Whats new?
I've been slowly making Kontakt versions of the No Budget Orchestra instruments.
Updated the Sonatina Choir VSTi and made an experimental Violin VSTi.
Added parts 3 and 4 to the Bender Roma Equator Taylor Sampled synth.
10 multi-velocity layer presets, drummy, guitary, all kinda stuff...

Thanks for dropping by and I hope you find something useful here.

Trying out this whole Twitter thing...

bigcat instruments @bcinstrument

And Facebook too
www.facebook.com/bigcatinstruments/

Sound Modules

October 5, 2016, 1:22 pm

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Do I ever get tired of messing about with the labor of Mattias Westlund? Apparently not as here is the entire (I'm pretty sure) Sonatina Orchestra in a single 1 gig VST module (650 meg zip). 20 instruments and over 50 articulations. Note that the piccolo is tucked into the flute instrument and a few other instruments are tucked around. This is based on the idea of a free Rompler by the great Sample Science who created the Orion Sound Module. While they may not be Sampletank 3 and Miroslav 2, they cost a lot less. Hopefully there is some fun to be had here. Note this is Windows 64 bit, if there is interest I'll try to whip up a 32 bit version.

Sonatina Orchestra Module - Window 64 bit

Soundcloud Demo

 Creative Commons Attribution: Mattias Westlund

Happy New Year

January 3, 2017, 10:08 am

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I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year. After doing a fair bit of work on the VSCO2 and SSO Orchestral Romplers along with quite a number of band type VSTis last year, I took December off and watched lots of Black Friday Blurays and DVDs. I also splurged and got Bravura Brass, Percussion and Colors on sale which are very nice. Also I picked up the Pro version of VSCO2. I work on the free community version as you know, but messing with the Pro version gave me some ideas. It is really very nice and I suggest it if you are looking at adding an orchestra to upgrade from the Factory Library in Kontakt as it has a nice chamber feel, a lot of articulations and lots of neat rare instruments, especially in the woodwinds.

So I've started experimenting with the VSCO2 using the Modwheel for volume control and cross fading as many folks like that option. I found a great free script that can sound quite good and make the velocity layers merge together smoothly as you go loud to soft. It can cause phasing problems, but the VSCO2 was built by Sam and friends to minimize such problems. So my next few months are going to be about getting nicer versions of the VSCO2 up for both Kontakt and VSTi.

I want to thank everyone for coming by the blog and trying the instruments. I hope you mange to find something useful here and maybe even get some joy out of some of the creations.

I also want to thank all the great freebie instrument developers. This has been a great year for free orchestral instruments. A few years back only the Sonatina was really out there. Now the VSCO2 community is out with something like 3000 samples in SFZ format (and others;). The SFZ No Budget Orchestra is being built and updated with interesting techniques that go beyond traditional sampling. The Virtual Playing Orchestra is a great compilation of the many orchestra samples available into a very playable SFZ orchestra. The Alpine Project has put out a ton of great sounding solo orchestral Kontakt instruments using many of these available samples and Noah has a special touch of magic that he adds to these instruments.

Thanks for reading my New Years ramblings.

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VSCO2 Rompler

February 15, 2017, 6:14 am

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Note this needs Windows Vista or later, it won't work on XP.

Well here it is the new VSCO2 Rompler. Most obviously, the look is much nicer. Thanks to Sam Gossner for hooking my up with the artwork of Simon Autenrieth. The New GUI also includes a Reverb knob. Reverb is more important as the default release times have been shortened to allow for sharper performances. Also this orchestra is recorded pretty dry, so reverb is needed to wetten it up. If you are mixing it with the Sonatina Rompler you will notice the difference as the Sonatina is wetter out of the box.

Another improvement is round robins for most of the short articulations and quick percussion hits. Also the 'Old Trombone', 'Upright 1' piano and a lite piccolo patch have been added. This takes the total of samples to over 2000 and gives 25 instruments. The strings have solo violin and double bass and small violin, viola and cello sections. Brass and woodwinds have five solo instruments each. Remember this is a chamber orchestra, so it is intended for a smaller and more intimate sound. Traditional a chamber orchestra would be brought into the home of a rich man, maybe a noble, to entertain his family and friends. So imagine you are a medieval baron as you listen.

Thanks to Sam Gossner and his crew for this collection of samples. Take a look at the Community Edition on his site. You can find the samples, SFZ versions and much more. If you enjoy the sound you might invest in the pro edition. I did and I'm quite enjoying it. The fun exotic instruments like wooden flutes, baroque recorders and unique brass make it worth the price of admission.

My full blog for VST instruments.

Full Version 2 Rompler contains all the instruments below it.

Instrument	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Full Orchestra	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU

Soundcloud Demo kindly created for me by Sam.
Demo of the Harp, Res Evil 3, Res Evil Main Hall by WhiteNoiz

Creative Commons Zero: Versilian Studios / Sam Gossner
Piano and Organ sampled by Simon Dalzell of Ivy Audio
Version 2 Artwork: Simon Autenrieth


Version Two Individual Instruments

Instruments	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Violin	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Violin Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Viola Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Cello Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Double Bass	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Trumpet	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
French Horn	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Trombone	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Old Trombone	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Tuba	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Piccolo Lite	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Flute	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Oboe	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Clarinet	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Bassoon	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Piano	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Upright 1 Piano	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Organ Loud	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Organ Soft	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Harp	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Percussion	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Timpani	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Marimba	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Xylophone	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Glockenspiel	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU

Version One Instruments. Top row is all 18 instruments and 50 articulations in one rompler.

Instrument	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Full Orchestra	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Violin	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Violin Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Viola Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Cello Section	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Double Bass	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Harp	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Trumpet	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Horn	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Tenor Trombone	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Tuba	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Flute	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Oboe	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Clarinet	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Bassoon	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Piano	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Organ	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Percussion	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU
Chromatic	Win 64	Win 32	Mac VST	Mac AU

VSCO2 Chromatic contains the Marimba, Xylo and Glock.  

Creative Commons Zero: Versilian Studios / Sam Gossner 
Piano and Organ sampled by Simon Dalzell of Ivy Audio
 
By downloading and using anything on this site you agree to this Limited Warranty & Liability.  

Freesound

March 22, 2017, 9:21 am

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Here is a collection of 5 toy piano type instruments.

Toy Pianos for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Creative Commons Attribution: Beskhu,  Corsica_S, Poissonmort

Creative Commons Sampling Plus: Tombola

Public Domain: Taylor Sampled

This chap named pjcohen has put up some really nice drum, cowbell, harpsichord and standup acoustic bass samples. Bass is up first. To quote the gentleman.
"This standup bass was sampled using a direct pickup as well as stereo overhead mics for some room ambience. Articulations include a normal pizzicato, or finger plucked note; a stopped note as performed with the finger; a stopped note performed Bartok style; and some miscellaneous sound effects: a slide by the hand down the strings, a slap on the strings, and a knock on the wooden body of the bass. Do enjoy; feedback is welcome!"

pjcohen standup bass for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are placed in the Public Domain.

Sauron974 placed five Shofar samples in the public domain, "An 18" ram's horn shofar being sounded from a few feet away."

Sauron974's small shofar for kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are placed in the Public Domain.

I asked over on the Cakewalk forums for any ideas for instruments. Fleer suggested a deeply sampled pan flute which I have utterly failed to deliver, but in searching I found this really cool instrument. Made by Mr. Shoes as he explains, "I used a 3/4 in. diameter PVC tube stopped at one end and water to create all of the notes. the notes have even temperament. they may be slightly off in terms of tuning at the top end, but overall, I'd say not too much." There are 20 samples and I stretched the ends a bit so you have over 2 octaves of PVC pipe and water goodness.

Mr. Shoes Panflute for Kontakt

Note this requires Kontakt 5.6.6 or later.

Instrument and Samples are Creative Commons Attribution: Mr. Shoes.

VSCO2 V2 Kontakt

April 6, 2017, 6:11 am

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Well I'm starting to rework the Kontakt version of the VSCO2 Community Orchestra. Thanks to Sam Gossner and company for the fine samples.
This is somewhat experimental as I haven't messed too much with modwheel cross fading which is pretty standard in orchestral libraries on the sustains. Basically the Modwheel adjusts between the soft and loud samples in a hopefully smooth way. This should give a much better velocity curve than having several velocity layers and jumping between them based on how loud the volume is. The cross fade script is by the Nils Liberg.
I attempted to copy some of what Sam did in the clever Kontakt versions from the full VSCO2 version. This includes using convolution reverb which will hopefully add a nice dimension to the sound. The interface is also very simple with just attack and release knobs and a basic woodgrain background.
This is sort of a beta version, any feedback is appreciated. Eventually there should be a more standard version with staccato and such along with an ensemble version for most instruments.

VSCO2 Woodwinds XFade (Requires latest version of Kontakt)
XFade Script by Nils Liberg.

Soundcloud 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.

Legato Vibrato Piano

April 8, 2017, 6:59 pm

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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 

Mihai Sorohan Choir

May 17, 2017, 5:25 pm

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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 Pytchblendfrom 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. "

NSI Instruments

June 7, 2017, 4:06 pm

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Magenta is a Google Brain project that has created something called NSynth which seems to be extracting the audio DNA from samples and then mixing it all together in a user controllable synth. While I can't give you the synth (it is highly confusing) which will hopefully someday come out as a VST, I can apparently use the NSynth Dataset to create more traditional though possibly funky sounding instruments. So far I've done a grand total of 15 instruments but more are probably on the way as the dataset contains about 1000...

Also I'm trying out Kontakt GUI Maker. The interface is really simple, but it does have a convolution reverb which sounds much better than regular reverb. Note these are all Kontakt instruments and need Kontakt 5.6.6.

PS If you want Kontakt for 125 bucks instead of $400 this month (June 2017) go get free DrumMic'a and register it, then use it to crossgrade to Kontakt during the current sale.

NST Resources (mandatory for instruments to work, only download once)

Because the resource files are bigger than the instruments, I put them in a separate download. This makes every instrument download 90 megs smaller.
Unzip NST Resources in the same folder as the NST instruments you download (in 7-Zip use Extract Here). This will make a NST Resources folder as you see in the picture below. This folder will have 3 files, a .nkc, a .nkr.& a .png file. All NST instruments will use this one resources folder.

Instruments:

Acoustic Piano 00
Acoustic Piano 01
Acoustic Piano 02
Acoustic Piano 03
Acoustic Piano 04  Soundcloud Demo

Acoustic Guitar 00

Acoustic String 00

Acoustic Brass 00
Acoustic Brass 01

Acoustic Reed 00
Acoustic Reed 01

Acoustic Mallet 00

Acoustic Vocal 00
Acoustic Vocal 01
Acoustic Vocal 02

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.

Giving Patreon a try

June 17, 2017, 9:34 am

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≪ Previous: NSI Instruments

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Thanks to everyone for checking out the blog and giving the instruments a try.
If anyone would like to support old bigcat instruments I'm giving Patreon a try and we'll see how it goes, if it goes.

https://www.patreon.com/bigcatinstruments

A kind of index of the blog and related blogs...

Current Project: Kontakt Instruments using Google Creative Commons Samples 

bigcat Keyboard Instruments, Piano, Organ, Electric Piano

VSCO2 Orchestra  VST& Kontakt

Big GM List of Kontakt Instruments

GM List of Standalone VST Instruments

A list of Free Instruments from all over the net - No Kontakt Required

A Blog of Free Instruments from the net, Kontakt, SFZ, VST and otherwise

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An Orchestra - VSCO2

June 26, 2017, 11:24 am

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An Orchestra - Strings WIP

An Orchestra - Brass WIP
An Orchestra - Woodwinds WIP
4 Arps Hold

Note WORK IN PROGRESS. If this was a game, this would be Alpha.

Note: The woodwinds zip has updated string and brass nkis and a nkm file for strings, brass and woodwinds. Just unzip the woodwinds last and it should overwrite the older files.

Note 2: The Arps 4 Hold scripts doesn't use chords instead each note you press is remembered and played by the arp until you press that note again. It can remember at least 24 notes, maybe more. So you can create your own melodies or long risers or such (but a note can't repeat). Put the nkm script in the Instruments folder, the strings.nki in the Strings folder, the brass.nki in the Brass Folder and the woodwinds.nki in the (wait for it) Woodwinds folder.

Feedback is appreciated.

Imitation may or may not be the sincerest form of flattery. When I was watching videos about the new orchestral instrument that does all sorts of rhythms and sequences based on envelopes and arpeggios I wondered if I could do something like that. I don't have the scripting ability or other resources that those fine folks had and it is an excellent instrument. However with a little help from my friends, I did manage to make a chord and arp string machine. This uses Sam Gossner's great VSCO2 samples, my script from Matt McKay and a bit of advice from Evil Dragon.

When you first kick up the An Orchestra - Strings nki it should be in Chord mode in Spiccato and have the Major Chord ready to go. If you play in most of the blue notes you will get a major chord for every note. The bottom couple notes don't work quite right and the top couple just give one note. I really should make them white keys but I didn't think of that.

Anyway you can change the chord type by pressing on the Yellow keys. The C that is Green is the Major that is already in use. The C# is Minor, D is Augmented etc.. on up to the B that is the Dominate 9th. You will see the Chord type on the GUI beside the word Chord. Ain't I clever?

You will also see the words Arp OFF next to Arpeggiator. To start an arp press one of the Dark Blue keys and Arp 1, 2 or 3 will start. Press and hold a Light Blue key to get the sounds coming. If you chose Arp 1 it might take a little bit as that is the riser type arp and it builds volume over time. You can speed this up with the Mod Wheel. Going down speeds things while going up slows them down. Well unless you go to the very top when it sounds like a woodpecker on speed. Whatever Chord you last pressed the Arp will play through the notes over and over until you release the key. If you press a new Chord it won't take effect until you press another light blue key (or the same one).

All the way on the right side are the Articulations on the Red Keys, Arco Vibrato, Spicato, Tremollo, Pizzicato, Arco Vibrato Loud and Arco Vibrato Soft. The short tend to sound better on fast Arps and the long sound better on slow Arps (use the modwheel). Oh the timing is synched to your DAW to 40 beats a minute in your DAW will be a bit slower than 400 BPM.

It makes more sense if you play around with it. The display will tell you the Articulation, Chord and Arp in use. Use the Mod Wheel to change the speed of the Arps.

But what if you don't like the Arp settings? Go change them. You can change the number of steps and clicking on the white bars changes the velocity so play around it is fun. Also try Note Order I used Up which is standerd up you can choose Down, Zig-Zags or even Random and many more. When you get ones you like Save As... under some name or other and it should save your Arps.

Samples are Creative Commons 0 : Sam Gossner. This means you don't have to thank him but he is a great guy so you might anyway. Also he sells a Pro Version that I bought (and I'm notoriously cheap) that has lots more notes, velocity layers, mics and stuff then are here including 90+ instruments with lots of solo orchestral instruments and awesome weird instruments like ancient flutes and an ophicleide which is legal in all 50 states.

My Patreon Page

Flame Studio Guitars

January 1, 2016, 9:26 am

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Flame Studios Guitars

FS Mor Peter Neck for Kontakt

FS Mor Peter Bridge for Kontakt

Soundcloud Demo

FS Ibid Acoustic for Kontakt

FS Golden Key Banjo for Kontakt

FS Panther Both Pickups
Soundcloud Demo of Panther and Golden Key

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.

On a break

October 16, 2017, 6:39 am

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Starting soon old bigcat instruments aka me is taking a break from instruments, the internet and life for a while. I hope to be back sometime Summer of 2018 or so. Thanks to everybody who has sample instruments and put them under a CC / PD license. Thanks to all the freebie instrument makers. It is a great time to love making music and to be broke. I think there are more and better free instruments now then there have ever been. A number of folks are making great free SFZ instruments.

Keep an eye out for Sample Science as he is going to be coming out with a new Player which should be awesome. It may well be the best free VSTi ever. Though tossing him a couple buck to say thanks and cover bandwidth is always nice.

Thanks to my buddy Sam for creating the VSCO2 chamber orchestra. He is a great guy and has a great crew. Simon does awesome stuff with the GUIs. Check out the Pro version of the orchestra.

I'm sorry some jerkish company that makes an android video app of some kind slapped a takedown notice on the VSCO2 orchestra. How they thought files that said orchestra and flute and other instruments in the file name itself would be a copy of their stuff is beyond me. Apparently you can just use the DMCA to take down anything you want off the internet is you have lawyers.

I'm sorry to those of you who have trouble getting the Maize VSTis to work. They seem to work fine for me in Studio One and friends have tested them in other DAWs for me. If a DAW uses standard  I would just download one and try it by unzipping it in your VST folder. If the DAW can find and use it you are set. If not I would try to find SFZ versions. Reaper has problems with the full orchestras but can use the individual instruments.

Anyway good luck with your music and thanks for dropping by and check out the instruments. I hope you find something useful hear.

Sketching Chamber Orchestra

October 28, 2017, 5:11 pm

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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

Flame Studio Guitars

January 1, 2016, 9:26 am

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≪ Previous: Sketching Chamber Orchestra

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Flame Studios Guitars

FS Mor Peter Neck for Kontakt

FS Mor Peter Bridge for Kontakt

Soundcloud Demo

FS Ibid Acoustic for Kontakt

FS Golden Key Banjo for Kontakt

FS Panther Both Pickups
Soundcloud Demo of Panther and Golden Key

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.