FREE - Les Paul Custom SG Samples + VST...!!!

[chokehold]

this sounds like it took a big effort to make, if i had know you were doing this, i would have let you charge....maybe put a donation button on your page for your trouble

Nah, that wouldn't be "the spirit".
You gave something to the community for free, I played around with it and I think it's only fair that the result should be free as well.

I'm still learning a lot, and small fun projects like this one don't really qualify as work, they're more like experiments. Reaching limits, trying out things, pushing boundaries, setting and reaching goals, and especially learning a lot while doing all this.

To be honest, the hardest part was making those darn Epi knobs. Knobman rulez, if you know how to rule it. Turns out I didn't, or at least not well enough.
Now I do, that's enough return for me.

And I finally got around to playing with some of the new features in Pixelmator. They've been smiling at me for weeks now, but I never had anything to throw them at.
Thanks to your samples - I could finally unleash them.

So I really can't ask for more, I got everything that I wanted to get out of this project.

Hope you can enjoy it a little as well, and that all this doesn't look too much like I'm drawing the attention away from your noble act that started it all in the first place.

[BERFAB]

this sounds like it took a big effort to make, if i had know you were doing this, i would have let you charge....maybe put a donation button on your page for your trouble

Nah, that wouldn't be "the spirit".
You gave something to the community for free, I played around with it and I think it's only fair that the result should be free as well.

Nice. I like the philosophy.

Well done, guys.

-B

[egbert]

Very generous of Krim and Choke - thanks for sharing. Nice work with the graphics too.

[Melodyshine]

Totally out of tune.

[Kriminal]

Totally out of tune.

Samples or VST version?

[chokehold]

Just sent some of the single samples through ReaTune, some are more off than others, but all are a little.

Already trying to correct it as good as I can, seems the first update will be due soon. ^^

[Kriminal]

I used a korg tuner (hardware) and GTune vst while i was recording....i dont see how they can be out of tune

[chokehold]

Well, ReaTune also said they're out of tune. From note to note as well as generally all a little off.

I shot all the samples through ReaTune and let it correct them, now everything (when using the plugin) should be in tune … at least more than before.

Also updated the GUI so it now displays how the string groups are divided.

(My) original post updated.

Updated versions can be downloaded here:
http://free.chokehold.net/kriminal-lp-sgc/

[planetearth]

I used a korg tuner (hardware) and GTune vst while i was recording....i dont see how they can be out of tune

Don't worry, it happens to everyone, it seems. Electric guitar and bass samples made for IK Multimedia and Cakewalk's Dimension (respectively) all had samples that were out of tune. They were made by different developers, too--and they charged for them! Cakewalk eventually fixed Dimension's tuning problems; IK wasn't quite as helpful.

Steve

[egbert]

Samples for stringed instruments need to be individually tuned (tuning corrected to concert pitch by resampling) to be tolerable played from the keyboard. Obviously, real guitar performances are never that perfectly in tune.

[Lode_Runner]

I used a korg tuner (hardware) and GTune vst while i was recording....i dont see how they can be out of tune

I haven't heard just how badly out of tune the samples are, but here are a couple of my guesses as to how they might be out of tune:

Using the tuner you may be tuning open strings. If your action and bridge compensation isn't set up right, the fretted notes might be out of tune with the open strings.

Also, following on from that (you probably know this as a guitarist but here I go anyway) I guess the whole thing with guitars is that the frets are spaced according to an ideal scale length. However, because you have to effectively bend strings down to fret them, they go slightly out of tune, with the thicker gauge strings being more effected. That's why bridges are compensated to be a bit off the ideal scale length. While that fixes up the pitch differences between open strings and some frets, it can result in other frets being slightly off. Not enough to bother a guitarist, but someone testing the frequency of samples for concert pitch perfection might be needing to retune some notes.

Then there's the possibility that if the strings are new they're not holding their pitch.

I should shut up now and stop being a nerd.

[egbert]

I used to build guitar and bass instruments in EXS24 back in my Logic PC days. I would use a digital tuner to tune the instrument and then record the samples. I then ran each one through Cool Edit to get the average pitch and if A4 (say) was 7 cents sharp, I would enter the compensating pitch offset (-7 cents in this case) into the details for that sample in the instrument specification. Rinse and repeat for the whole instrument and you have a perfectly tuned instrument. You can do the same in Kontakt or whatever sampler you are using if it is fully featured.

A more professional approach is to use a sample editor that lets you save a perfectly tuned resampled version of every source file - you can use a very high level of resampling precision (eg 256 sinc) and not worry about the CPU load as you are doing it offline. This is how pros doing serious stuff - like Orange Tree Samples or Pettinhouse would do it - as I understand it.

Alternatively, you could tune each note precisely before recording its samples and you wouldn't need to use the samplers resampling algorithms in that case. This might be worth doing where you are recording notes on every fret (full chromatic) and not expecting a resampling engine to fill in the gaps for you - eg pitch shifting a G sample down to F# or up to G#.

There is another issue of course - when you pluck a string on one of these instruments with a finger or pick you stretch it and therefore the attack and the earliest part of the decay where the amplitude is greatest is a leetle bit sharp. This can be quite an issue with thick strings (eg of 7 string guitars). Futhermore, - a thick string is sort of "out of tune with itself" due to the inharmonicity of thick strings - their harmonic series diverges from the frequencies of an ideal string (f, 2f, 3f ...) and tends towards those of a rod (where the harmonics are sharp).

[chokehold]

The instrument is in-tune now, new (and hopefully final) version uploaded.
To celebrate, I threw together a quick sound demo.

http://soundcloud.com/chokehold/krimina ... -sg-custom

No bass, standard SD2 grooves in background.

Used some Ambience to get the Rhythm part wider and a TAL Reverb II default preset for the ... well, not melody, not solo, but the twang in the middle.
The amp sim is Kuassa Creme.

I only used my mouse to put this together, as I don't have my MIDI keyboard here with me at the moment. I'm sure anyone with a MIDI controller will be able to get far better riffs out of it than I managed.

[Totolitoto]

Thanks to both of you!

[jackoo]

Thank you so much for this

Cheers!