I sampled a piano. Which software editor/tool for automatic editing? Free/paid?

[MTorn]

Since the OP was sampling a digital piano, I think the first thing I would do is to figure out how many velocity layers the original hardware uses. Unless it's a very high-end piano, I suspect it only uses 4-5 layers, at most. Either check the specs for that model, or perhaps better yet, listen carefully to all the layers you recorded, and see if you can hear when it shifts to a new layer.

The piano is from Nord Stage 3 --> Royal Grand 3D XL. Earlier I tried to find info about how many velocity layers there are, from nordkeyboards.com, but there seems to be no such info on their site. I would assume that it's thoroughly sampled and it has various parameters which are affecting to the sounds by velocity. I'll try to listen the samples.

Oh wow, I didn't expect something as nice as a Nord Stage 3 to be sitting around at a library - yay, Finland (I'm half Finnish myself)!
I guess I might call that a high end piano, at least with an XL piano loaded up, so it might well have many more layers than I realized. I looked around the web, and like you, I had no luck getting many specs for the sample set. It's 200mb, and that's using their lossless compression, so it might be equivalent of a 300-400mb WAV set.

For reference, if I understand it right, the free 400mb Salamander Grand Piano has 16 layers (plus one key release layer and three resonance layers). However, it's not sampled on every key, it's sampled on the minor thirds, so what's that, every four keys? That way you will only transpose any sample either one semitone up or down, which is quite acceptable.

So it seems that the Royal Grand 3D XL would need to have either lots of velocity layers (10-15?), but not sampled on every key, or fewer layers (maybe 5 or 6), but sampled on every single key.
Of course, if you're not too concerned with redundancy and a bit sample set, you don't really have to match the original perfectly.

[Cypsilonib]

Yeah, the library (Oodi) studio is really something special... other gear in the same studio(5):

- Moog One (8)
- Dave Smith Instruments OB-6
- Korg Prologue 16
- A Modular synthesizer

Full list:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9x2r464lwtos0 ... 5.pdf?dl=0#

[MTorn]

Wow, that’s bonkers… our library has old VHS tapes and a homeless man exposing himself to little old ladies.

I had visualized that you sampled an old Casio piano collecting dust by the children’s puppet show corner. If you have access to those synths, and get hooked on making samples, you can keep busy for years!

[Cypsilonib]

But yeah, I think that it would be too time consuming to start sampling those synths. I have a few analog synths and I'm happy with them. What I might do, if I manage to write some songs ready, is that I'd go to the library and tweak some sounds out of those synths in there and use those instead of the ones I made at home.

Although I think I could maybe sample the drum kit that’s there, even though I don’t know anything about recording acoustic drums. But they are miked up always and there are individual tracks for them put up in the digital mixer console on the computer.

[JeffLearman]

Since the OP was sampling a digital piano, I think the first thing I would do is to figure out how many velocity layers the original hardware uses.

Excellent point. However, I find it's easy to figure out which notes are sampled (or, more specifically, where the note zone edges are) but difficult with any decent modern digital piano to hear the crossover points in the velocity layers.

What I do find with modern digital pianos (like my CP4, and others I've sampled for friends) is that I can get almost as good a result by sampling just the highest layer and using velocity-modulated filters for the lower velocities. In practice, I don't do this, because I find it's a lot easier to just sample a lot of layers (and memory is available now) than to fiddle to find the ideal filter settings, which aren't necessarily the same across the keyboard. Using filters, I can't hear the switches between layers.

Using 7 layers, I can hear the divisions between layers if I try, but when playing, I never notice them. And it's great to be able to edit & remix MIDI parts when my keyboard isn't attached because I was too lazy after the last gig or rehearsal. It's also great being able to edit a MIDI track and not having to sit through the length of the song to re-render the part. And it's also great that I get the same results every time, not having to tweak the knobs on the keyboard and audio interface to exactly what they were when I recorded the part. But I admit, it's more fun to play the keyboard than the sample set. I can't tell exactly what I'm responding to (though I could make a lot of educated guesses) but it just feels better.

[JeffLearman]

oops