Creating round robins and legato repalcing lower harmonics

[Deanodirector]

Hi, I've been using the free VSCO 2 CE library, sonatina etc. and one of the big limitation is the lack of round robin samples. I had and idea and thought someone here might know.

I've tried to make round robins by pitch shifting other notes but it doesn't sound right. As far as I know this method changes the timbre of the notes.

If I take the first few harmonics of another note, change their pitch and combine them with the original note, replacing its first harmonics, would that make a convincing note?

I've had a listen with an eq and i think pitch shifting the lower harmonics sounds good. What would i use to split and recombine them? thanks

[Samulis]

VSCO 2 CE has round robins (2RR) on all short articulations, at least if you are using the official SFZ implementation.

The main audible issue with not having RR is the attack profile remains the same; the actual sustain part being the same is not as audible unless it is very specific/inconsistent at the start. Just changing the sustain portion of the sample with EQ can help, but borrowing harmonics from another note will lead to problems if you are using non-phaselocked samples as the intonation will drift (though your idea might work with staccato samples).

One approach you can try is to overlay very start of the staccato samples with the sustain samples (just be careful because too much will audibly phase). You could similarly use attacks from other articulations as well. You can do all of this natively in SFZ using opcodes, or bake some "new" samples.

A fancier option with woodwinds and brass at least is to record separate articulations of just the attack/articulation (and possibly air) sound, without making a tone. The recordings do not need to be consistent with the originals and can simply be created at home. These can be overlaid onto the existing samples to provide a bit more variation, especially if in a different number of RR.

[Deanodirector]

Thanks! I was using the bigcat rompler and trying the Sfz files i see they do have 2 round robins! thanks very much for the comment and for making the VSCO 2 CE library free.

Do you have any plans to make the standard library available in anything other than kontakt? Decent sampler for example?

[Samulis]

Thanks! I was using the bigcat rompler and trying the Sfz files i see they do have 2 round robins! thanks very much for the comment and for making the VSCO 2 CE library free.

Do you have any plans to make the standard library available in anything other than kontakt? Decent sampler for example?

Yes, the SFZ version is the only official/"fully spec'd" version of VSCO 2 CE. I have no control or influence over the 3rd party versions, so they can leave out (or add) whatever features or samples they want. (this is a natural and inevitable consequence of using the CC0 license)

Unfortunately the full library is too large and complex to be released in formats other than Kontakt (~62,000 sample files). It took us about a year to build & test the Kontakt patches in the first place, and would take as much if not longer to port to another format, which isn't economically feasible. The Professional Edition works fully in the free Kontakt Player, so it can be used without purchasing Kontakt.

[Deanodirector]

Fair enough, thanks for the response!