Monkey Island Flute

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I'm trying to find a flute vst, soundfont or whatever that is similiar in tone to the monkey island flute

I have some, but most of the ones I got are asian sounding. I've been searching around google but I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for. Does anyone know where to find a sound like that?

[Rozovian]

Sounds like a recorder. Do note that it doesn't need to be played, nor sampled, with that much breath noise, and a lot of what makes it cool in the special edition intro (and probably the special edition overall wherever else it's used) is the technique used on it. Note pitch and breath timing aren't in sync, which is possible on real instruments but might not be on soundfonts (depending on how your soundfont player/sampler handles them).

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Sounds like a recorder. Do note that it doesn't need to be played, nor sampled, with that much breath noise, and a lot of what makes it cool in the special edition intro (and probably the special edition overall wherever else it's used) is the technique used on it. Note pitch and breath timing aren't in sync, which is possible on real instruments but might not be on soundfonts (depending on how your soundfont player/sampler handles them).

Thanks Rozovian! Quality tips as always. I forgot what the hell a recorder (instrument) was actually. I think I might even have one from when I was a little kid kicking around somewhere lol.

[zircon]

Yep, it's a recorder. Best part is that was performed by Will Roget (aka bustatunez), an OC ReMixer and forum member He also worked extensively on the music and audio system, and was an arranger on Monkey Island 2: SE as well (along with myself, Jeffball and dannthr.)

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Yep, it's a recorder. Best part is that was performed by Will Roget (aka bustatunez), an OC ReMixer and forum member He also worked extensively on the music and audio system, and was an arranger on Monkey Island 2: SE as well (along with myself, Jeffball and dannthr.)

Dude, that's freakin' righteous! Reason I was asking this is because I'm doin' some tunes for a game (not a blockbuster title, but a cool game none the less!) and one song I'm doing is influenced by the Monkey Island sountrack. I dug through some boxes in the basement and I can't find my old recorder sadly.....doesn't matter much since I wouldn't remember how play it anyway lol.

[dannthr]

Yeah, in all fairness, we were pretty fortunate to have Will and Jeff as accomplished musicians playing flute, recorder, and violin, and more--it made all of our jobs so much easier with respect to getting the right sound.

For the mock-ups, I did get a Pan Flute library from Precision Sound, but I didn't like them enough and ended up getting all of those sounds replaced by Will.

I did however use Westgate Studios Flute libraries on a few cues and it worked well enough that we didn't have to get Will to record on all of them. After all, the dude was super busy making what I consider to still be one of the most complex interactive music systems ever implemented in a shipped game (and the freaking game is 20 years old!).

Will is a natural-born awesome killer dude.

[Garpocalypse]

Note pitch and breath timing aren't in sync

Could you elaborate on what you meant by this roz? Is this an actual technique for pipe instruments or is it a recording trick where the mouth of the player was recorded seperately then chopped up over the recorder recording. hehehe.

I just started playing a pipe instrument, the shakuhachi, and being a string player most of my life this has been quite an eye opener. So far I can play all the notes fine in Otsu (except for getting some half steps from playing half covered holes) but the Kan octave is giving me tons of problems. Back to experimenting...

[Rozovian]

Could you elaborate on what you meant by this roz? Is this an actual technique for pipe instruments or is it a recording trick where the mouth of the player was recorded seperately then chopped up over the recorder recording. hehehe.

I just started playing a pipe instrument, the shakuhachi, and being a string player most of my life this has been quite an eye opener. So far I can play all the notes fine in Otsu (except for getting some half steps from playing half covered holes) but the Kan octave is giving me tons of problems. Back to experimenting...

Sure. On some types of instruments, the sound comes from hitting something - a piano string, a drumskin, or something else. That thing is also where the pitch comes from - different keys hit differently tuned strings, which is why pianos have a ridiculous amount of them.

Other types of instruments, such as woodwinds, brass, and bowed strings, make sound separate from where they get their pitch. On string instruments, the left hand sets the pitch of a string, and the right hand plays it with a bow. On woodwinds, your breath sets the volume while your hands set the pitch.

Because they're separate, you can crescendo and descrescendo all you want within a note (or at least until you run out of bow or breath), or on a natural exhalation/movement play a lot of notes.

The easiest way to work with this is to make sure your instrument responds to a midi cc (expression cc11 tends to be the usual one for this, but for woodwinds you might have the breath controller cc2, and some might have the modulation cc1 routed to do this - just find the right controller thing), and just use that as your bowing/breath strength while the notes themselves have short attack, high sustain, and fairly short release.

it means a lot more work with humanizing, but unless you overdo it, or have crappy strings/woodwinds/brass to begin with, it's usually worth it.

Because brass sounds a lot different at low breath strength than at high, it's a relatively difficult instrument family to simulate, so the average soundfont probably won't let you do realistic breath changes with it. For this, you might actually get closer to a believable instrument with fm synthesis or a combination of synthesis techniques than with samples without some kind of morphing/crossfade technique.

But whatever. Basic answer to the question: Piano makes sound by hitting one thing at pitch x, woodwinds need hands for pitch and breath for sound. it's a natural consequence of how the instruments work, and it gives you some options of how to make different sounds and emote with it.