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Harmony

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    Why isn't the SFZ format more popular?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Care to share? :D

    http://www.mediafire.com/?zmgqhttzdmy

    The samples as well as the SFZ file are there. I've tweaked it some more and I absolutely LOVE playing with this kit. It's primarily a modification of the GSCW kit but I moved a bunch of stuff, remapped many of the velocity layers, added some toms, removed some of the "performance" samples, pulled in some cymbals from various places, and added chokes for all of them. Personalization rocks :)

    Secret of Mana - Me and my Dragon

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Hey OCR, this is just a little something I threw together yesterday afternoon for fun. I couldn’t stop humming it this morning so I figured someone else might find it catchy too :) Hope you enjoy!

    Tune: Me and My Dragon

    Source: Secret of Mana “The Dark Star”

    Lyrics:

    Me and my dragon, walking 'round downtown

    Minding our own business, but you know trouble’s gonna be found

    Cuz when they see something different, the world, they gotta frown.

    Sometimes if you’re different you feel like you just don’t wanna be around

    anyone...anymore...stay at home...shut the door.

    I put a little hat on my dragon to try to make him norm

    But now I’m walking with a dragon in a hat and the people laugh more

    So I run into an alley just to get us out of sight

    Even though my mama told me never run when you’re right

    And this time I am, cuz this is me.

    Me and my dragon, we’re unique.

    We shouldn’t care what the people think, but we do.

    That’s part of me too. What to do? What to do?

    Why isn't the SFZ format more popular?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    sfz is a nice format, but it's not as powerful as any other commercial format, such as Kontakt or Giga. Considering how cheap it is to buy high-end libraries in high-end formats these days, there is little market motivation to develop a low-end format...
    :| Ah well. Out of curiosity, why aren't the libraries that you guys are developing offered in sfz, for example? Wouldn't that allow people like me, who don't have a proprietary sampler, to buy your product and increase your sales? Is it the copy protection issue I mentioned before? Do you feel the library would lose too much in translation?

    Why isn't the SFZ format more popular?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Samples should be plain old .aiff and .wav and a single .prg file for the placement and other settings anyway.
    Exactly, sfz does away with that aspect of soundfonts. SFZ is non-monolithic, in that the sfz file itself is just an ascii text file where as the samples (.wav or ogg-vorbis) are distributed at your discretion in various folders.

    I guess I can see the marketability issue. It would be incredibly difficult to implement copy protection with sfz in its native form, but for us poor folk who unfortunately don't own Kontakt or similar, it seems like an excellent way to distribute and develop sample banks.

    For reference

    Why isn't the SFZ format more popular?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I've been messing around with it for a few days now, and it is simple, flexible, rife with possibilities, in a word: awesome. It removes most of the restrictions we had with soundfonts and makes the sample sets easy to create/modify without the need for a special editor. Sure, VSTs are great but try building or modifying your own. It took me 20 minutes to grab some samples and build the greatest most playable free drum kit I've ever had using only MS Wordpad. And its all non-proprietary.

    Am I missing something? Why haven't sample developers jumped on this? Why don't I see any sfz gui editors out there (sfzEd is apparently dead)? Where are free alternatives to sfz and VSTsynthFont? :|

    Need a sample, synth, or effect? LOOK HERE!

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Anybody know of a good acoustic piano soundfont with a soft attack? I've been looking for one for a while and all the ones I've found are too hard.
    You can adjust the attack on just about any decent soundfont player, so take your pick of the good SF's that are out there. Clavinova is pretty good, but TASCAM's CVI piano vst (free) is great. You can also easily adjust the attack on that as well.

    Is this good enough for submission?

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    This is cool, but needs work before submitting. I basically agree with everything OA said, but to add some to what he said:

    - I think the arrangement is conservative, but passable.

    - I also like the guitar sound, but it’s drowning in reverb. Tone it down!

    - The bass is kinda dull, especially in exposed areas like 1:40-1:49. A better sample or slightly better sequencing might help, but you could also layer it with something that has a little more life. An automated synth with some bite to it might be cool.

    - If you can’t shorten the attack on the strings pad you have towards the end, I’d choose a different sample or synth.

    - The drums could be a lot stronger if you:

    1) work on making the sequencing less mechanical. This is especially true where the drums are exposed, ex. 0:09-0:30. I’d start by trying to mimic a real drum part that you think might fit this song.

    2) bring up their volume, maybe lower the threshold on the compression while you’re at it

    3) Take some of the reverb off (especially for the kick). Again, they’re drowning buddy!

    Hope this helps. Good luck :)

    Sonar 8 worth it?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Oh really? Well there is problem with the Sky kit, the snare is not loud enough and it takes forever to load up, each and every time I select it or load a project that uses it. Which kits are you referring to? I might have some or might not.

    Try the GSCW drums. They sound great,they are highly playable right out of the box, they're free, and someone has been kind enough to convert them to SFZ format. With SFZ its just a matter of editing an easy-to-read text file for any modifications that you want to make. They are big though. Loading them up in sfz uses 210MB of RAM for me.

    KVR thread:

    http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=103752&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

    Place to download samples+SFZ files (DrumKit-2 is much better than DrumKit-1):

    http://www.drealm.info/sfz/GIRO/

    Sonar 8 worth it?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I bought Studio 6 and although I'm happy with it, I think I'll be buying Producer edition from now on. I don't really care about the Synths, but I REALLY want v-vocal and the -64 mastering plugins. The ability to work with video sounds like it may come in handy too.

    But a little off topic, don't discount the power of soundfonts. It's still a great format that's really easy to customize, and they're highly portable. Oh, and although that Sky kit sounds really great, I can point you towards some SFZ drums kits that are absolutely fantastic.

    long live SF2 and SFZ!

    OCR01807 - Chrono Trigger "Close Door All Way"

    in ReMix Reviews & Comments

    Posted

    Nice work Star, as usual. The whole ambient section towards the end is tres sweet, and the stutters at 5:37 are spot on. Props on the mastering too. You've got a very rich track on your hands; it feels incredibly full at every turn with just the right amount of edge -- whatever that means :). Awesome stuff all around.

    haha, gotta say it: Everytime that drum break that first comes in at 0:15 repeats, I want to sing "Rewind, dniweR!"

    tetris remix ('c' theme) WIP

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    introduced the kick a little (just a little) more subtly in the intro
    Hmm, I don't hear a difference. But hey, if you like the kick, you like the kick :P

    I do hear a difference in the master EQ; sounds like you pushed the highs a little too far to me. It can be grating, so I'd scale that back. If you want more high end sparkle without adding harshness, I'd do it with a harmonics exciter like x-cita (which is great, but crashed one too many times for me) or dominion (which is awesome, but may require you chaining a few together before getting the same excitation impact as x-cita).

    The new song structure is slightly better imo. Nothing too drastic, but I do think that it drags a little less.

    the effect randomly 'scrambles' the sample each time, so unless we do something different it'll probably end up sounding unique for each export
    That sucks. I'm too controlling to live with something like that. What are you using to scramble it? dBlue's Glitch will scramble it randomly for you but with repeatable results based on a seed value.

    tetris remix ('c' theme) WIP

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Hmm, pretty sweet. I like the distortion that fades in and out on various synths and the panning is nicely not over done. I think the conceptual nature of the song is pulled off well, in that the neither the tempo change nor the ending feel forced or cheesy

    I think the introduction of the kick at 0:17 is way too early. There's nothing leading up to it and it is unpleasantly shocking to me. I'd either fade it in gradually using the volume or by automating the attack from something long to something shorter.

    Lengthwise I think it starts to drag a little, but that would probably be fixed if you varied up the main line of the synth that comes in at 0:47. You do some doubling and delay work, but it still just doesn't change enough for me. Maybe some filtering automation, interesting harmonies or layering would work.

    Overall, nice work :)

    noise with reason

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Just FYI, if you have an integrated realtek device, then to disable it you first need to turn off the onboard sound device in the BIOS. Then you should be able to disable it in your OS (for windows you can delete the device from the device manager in the control panel). Although I don't use Reason, I had a similar problem (actually many problems) with SONAR before I disabled the realtek device. Obviously, this is all assuming that you're not using the realtek device as your primary sound card.

    You're narrow-minded about music
    Seconded. Keep that garbage to yourself.
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