Soundfont Editing

[raweber]

If this is the wrong forum, please forgive my newbieness. Anyway, I am just getting into soundfont programming and see it as a massive tool in my music production arsenal. Later this winter I'm planning on sampling a djembe to hopefully produce a killer font for it.

There will be more questions on that later. For the time being I'm trying to tweak an existing sound font. I've found a great piano patch - really punchy with a good sustain, which is something that lacks in many if not most synthesized pianos. However, the whole thing plays an octave low.

Granted, I could just play and record the thing transposed one octave, but I'd like to take a shot at fixing this for two reasons. First, I do most of my MIDI note editing in Powertracks in a screen that's sort of a hybrid between a piano roll and a grand staff. I would like to read that "untransposed".

Second, I want to do some soundfont creation, and soundfont editing sounds like a good way to get my feet wet.

Right now I have downloaded Vienna from the Creative site - is there better freeware? I don't see much Vienna discussion here (or anywhere, for that matter). I've messed around with the coarse tuning of individual samples, but that really screws with the sound. I think that I need to reassign where the samples hit on the keyboard.

Any guidance?

[BertKoor]

I think you need to move the keyboard layers, and adjust the coarse. That can be a lot of work if there are a lot of key & velocity layers...

Apart from Vienna there's also Viena: http://www.synthfont.com/ for free, and Awave Studio: http://www.fmjsoft.com (not free, but the demo allows you to save one instrument)

[raweber]

Okay, I figured out how to change the key range of the samples. Now I'm trying to figure out how to load new samples in.

I checked out a few of the tutorials on line, but they all show a Soundfont Tree Window. Mine is blank unless I load an existing soundfont into memory, and then I can't load new samples.

First, how do I get my Soundfont Tree Window to show up, and second, is there anywhere that people creating soundfonts go to talk about it? That is, there doesn't seem to be too much Vienna or other soundfont creation talk going here at KVR.

[BertKoor]

Which program do you use? Viena or Awave?Drag 'n Drop works maybe??
I recall in the tree view there's a seperate list for samples and instruments. Just create a blank instrument and you should be able to add samples. I don't have it at hand right now...

[olepro]

Hi
In Viennea you can add a global modulator and that way change the pitch for the whole patch.

[raweber]

Right now I'm using Creative Vienna. Here's what the opening screen is supposed to look like:

http://www.analoguesque.com/sftutorial2.htm

That little file folder tree in the upper left-hand corner - it's blank on my screen. As I understand it, that's where you load in new samples, but without those file folders, there's nowhere for me to click to add samples (I've clicked everywhere).

As far as the octave transposition, I figured out how to assign the key range of the samples, and just shifted each one down an octave so the keyboard lined up with the appropriate pitches.

So, does anyone use Vienna?

[olepro]

I think you have to add "new" file in the files menu or click on the white icon to the left from the "open" icon.

[raweber]

I used the "new" in the files menu and still get a blank tree. That's what's so frustrating.

[olepro]

Hmmm.... it's some time ago i pulled out my soundblaster card, so i can't even check it out sorry