Free City Piano - Final Version, 4 Velocities + Release

Sampler and Sampling discussion (techniques, tips and tricks, etc.)
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Bump for SFZ and to thank MusicMayor for doing the work of converting the piano to a new format.
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Thx , sounds great, thx for the hard work!

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bigcat1969 wrote:Just got back from work and saw your kind offer. I would love to see them in sfz format. I've a buddy who doesn't have kontakt who is always gripping at me to put them in some other format. There are no fancy scripts, basically just the notes. The waves are labeled things like D#4-111-127.wav with the note name followed by the velocity range. I'm not sure how sfz works but hopefully that helps out. The samples are in zip files below. Let me know if this is what you need.
Thanks again.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/mza2r ... amples.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/download/9f8ca ... amples.zip
http://www.mediafire.com/download/66ks5 ... amples.zip
Thanks for sharing. I've got Kontakt 3 and 4. I can do a quick Kontakt3 mapping and post it here (this way it will work with all versions above version 3).

Just two things:

#1: The octave numbering seems one to high. For instance, comparing to my Yamaha P90, your C5 corresponds to C4 on that 88 key digital piano.

#2 The following files appear to be missing:

C#1 111-127
A#7 111-127
C8 111-127

Finally: thanks! This is a really fantastic sounding piano. There's way too few mono pianos. Way too few Baldwins. Way too few dry pianos. And way too few that sound this clear and upfront. This is great.

I'm not sure what your intentions are but if you have the opportunity and will to continue working on this I'd suggest: 1) adding an additional velocity layer or two (particularly in the low and low-medium ranges), 2) consider round robin samples, 3) consider adding a simple release layer per key, and 4) record the sustain pedal noise (might require scripting though - not sure).

Note: these are just my absolute pie-in-the-sky wishes, and are in no way meant to be a criticism. I sampled my Wurlitzer 120 once and the process is super tedious and terribly boring.

Anyway, great results! Let me know if you find the missing samples, and if so, I'll post the Kontakt3 version. If not, let me know anyway and I'll post what I put together already.

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MusicMayor wrote:Maybe the kind gentleman at http://www.drealm.info/ can ultimately host it.
I've no problem hosting the file. I've a few overall comments - not just on this mapping but generally.

As MusicMayor notes, it's easier to deal with the samples if they're kept in a folder separate from the mappings. Kontakt can easily deal with this, using "Save As" or "Save Multi As" with "Patch only" selected and "Absolute paths" unchecked. That way you can have one set of samples with different instruments, without the NKIs getting too heavy to deal with. I'd recommend this generally for free samples -- put the samples in a separate archive, then distribute your mappings referencing the single set of samples.

I'll also note that version 2 of SFZ format make life easier working with "non-local" directories -- and with Plogue Sforzando free on Windows and MacOS, it's a pretty good starting point, rather than being restricted to version 1 of SFZ format. The code looks something like:

Code: Select all

<control> default_path=..\Samples\Close Mics\
where the path is relative to the location of the SFZ file. Then you don't need to mention it again.
MusicMayor wrote:2. I renamed 'A7--111-127.wav' to 'A7-111-127.wav' (removed the double dash after A7) so that all sample filenames were consistent.
I'd recommend against this as people using the bare samples might want to use them with various samplers and mappings. It's better to live with the inconsistency (unless it's fixed "officially"), in my view.

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Thanks for the SFZ version ...

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Thanks for your interest, Funkybot's Evil Twin. I would love for you to map it in Kontakt 3. I came to the party late and only got in on Kontakt 5, which makes it unusable for a lot of folks.

I'm not quite sure about the octave number. I actually had it lower, but was told that the general convention was to map everything an octave high in kontakt. Following this advice, I went and listened to quite a few libraries including some komplete pianos and they were all mapped that way so I did it too.

Yes I was even less experienced sampling than I am now when I did the FF layer and I messed up /left out a couple of notes. For now they don't exist and we'll have to carry on without them. Please post what you have put together.

As for your points they are excellent suggestions. My next planned step is to add a MP and a P layer to the piano. I'm little worried about ambient sound so I'm not exactly sure how they will come out, but the MF layer came out cleaner than I though it would, so I have high hopes. After that I was debating adding a round robin round and maybe eventually two (and getting an extra for the 3 missing notes), though I'm not sure how to do this in kontakt. Other thoughts were to add some layers using the soft pedal on the piano as it gives a different sound then simply playing softer and that would be fun to have. I was also thinking about trying to mess with mic positions, though again ambient noise is an issue.
I am totally lost as far as release samples. I tried a few different things and they sounded awful. Finally I managed to grab a few that sounded OK and seemed to give the impression of a key being released. I was so relieved I just went with those and am afraid to touch anything. I have what I call percussive and staccato samples I want to use at some point and possibly these can be made into release samples?
I'm totally at sea on recording pedal and key releases though I would like to figure it out at this point. If someone really wants to mess about and wade through audio, I can upload the 3 hours or so of my raw sampling attempts.
As you can tell I'm very much learning as I go and I don't have regular access to the piano for recording so everything is a bit hit and miss. That's why I decided not to worry about the missing three notes for now, its not just laziness.

Anyway thanks again and I hope to try out your version.
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That is a good idea especially as the full city, the smaller city piano and the shoot the piano all use the same sample base. I think I'll attempt to make a compressed sample folder using the kontakt compression scheme to use with the pianos and upload that along with my nkis. I'll also fix the A7 name in that pool.
I'm not totally certain of how to do this but I'll give it a go. You are in good company with that suggestion, EvilDragon I remember saying the same thing. I just tend to do what works for me because I'm inexperiance, but this is clearly the way going forward so I'll work on it.

I will leave the current versions up on mediafire as well so I don't break any links.
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Here's the samples mapped out in Kontakt 3.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5nmewlgwjh3ra ... amples.zip

Note that I did two things differently:

1. I adjusted the octave to match my digital piano (which also matches up with other Kontakt piano libraries I use).
2. I went from a 1-90 initial velocity range (instead of 96). That might just sound better on my weighted keys, or maybe just with how I play, but I did like these settings better, so I just went with it.

Round Robin isn't too hard to do in Kontakt. From what I remember, there's a setting for that, and you just layer the samples over each other in the mapping section, designate each as a Round Robin sample, and Kontakt does the rest. Finding the button is probably the hardest part. If you need help experimenting with it, or get stuck, I may be able to help (PM me). I only did it once, so I don't remember offhand, but I'm sure I can look back at what I did, or just figure it out again.

Release samples are tricky to record/edit. What I ended up doing was just holding the note as long as I could until the sustain had ended, waited a few seconds, then just let go of the note with a quick release. The quick release lead to a louder release noise. Then when editing the samples I just found the "plunk" and separated it from the note that preceded it, thus coming up with the release sample. You then just load each of these as a sample layer in Kontakt and set these as the "Release Trigger."

In terms of mapping these release samples, I think what I did was just use one release sample per key (or maybe I round robin'd between 2 per key) and let Kontakt handle the volume scaling based on the velocity (MIDI off notes don't have a velocity, so I think Kontakt defaults to scaling the release note volume to the MIDI on volume). I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I found that approach quite effective.

Finally, don't sweat the ambient noise, just avoid things like car horns, airplanes and bangs. These samples already have a pretty high noise floor when you listen to individual notes, but 1) you don't hear it when playing, and 2) noise can be removed after the fact.

Now, I'm not suggesting you do this (though it's probably well within the terms of use - especially for a non-commercial product), but one possibility for cleaning up noise is to 1) wait until you've recorded everything you'll ever record for this piano, then 2) download the Izotope RX demo and de-noise the samples there (I think it's the best de-noiser out there). You don't need to remove the noise entirely (and sometimes that can sound bad) but you could certainly drop down the volume of the noise floor considerably with really good results.

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thanks

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I put up the kontakt 3 version. Thanks for doing that. Thanks also for the advice. I never knew there was so much to sampling. It certainly makes me respect the folks who do it for a living.
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bigcat1969 wrote:I think I'll attempt to make a compressed sample folder using the kontakt compression scheme
That would leave it still tied to having Kontakt 5 to use the samples, rather than having a single directory with the samples in, shared between all the mappings. 7z isn't bad at compressing WAVs (not as good as FLAC or Kontakt but you save a bit over ZIP).

Oh -- and if anyone making other mappings wants them hosted, I'm happy to do so but please PM me to confirm you're wishes and to discuss any listing requirements on the page, should you have any.

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bigcat1969 wrote:I put up the kontakt 3 version. Thanks for doing that. Thanks also for the advice. I never knew there was so much to sampling. It certainly makes me respect the folks who do it for a living.
No problem, thanks for doing the sampling. You're right in terms of you never really know how much goes into creating a sample library until you start to make one. It can be quite the endeavor indeed. Good luck.

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OK here are the compressed Kontakt 5 samples and 7 nki pianos. Could some please test these to make sure they work before I put them on the main page.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/72sc0 ... kt%205.zip

I will now compress all the samples as wave files, (including the A7 with both 1 and 2 dashes so it works both ways) in one zip file.
Then I'll include include all the kontakt 5 nkis, the kontakt 3 nki and the sfz mapping in another zip file. That way it can be easily updated. Which is what you were trying to tell me right? I catch on slow sometimes.
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Great-sounding audio clips! Thanx a million for sharing.
Thanks & God Bless,
Bro. Charles
Reviewer's Revival Blogsite | Facebook

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Yes, the patches all "work" in K5, but I sure do miss the GUI from "Full Piano" (it's okay, I'm not over-writting the original) But I'm not sure using compressed samples (.ncw) is such a good idea for multiple reference files. Maybe I misunderstood your last post - Anyway, thanks for all the work!

Whatever happened with the piano samples tests??

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