Free General GM Set?

[nasenmann]

f**k yes, i'm happy my helicopter joke helped spawn some creativity

Don't wanna get too grandiose on thoughts of what could be, but it would be awesome if a project/discussion like this could go into long term, and a few people would join in over time to slowly build up a consolidated GM-ish library, without any stress and forced completionism.
Sadly i can't be of much help atm, neither have kontakt installed nor am i good at sampled instrument construction beyond the basics.
I'll just watch interestedly for now. Godspeed on compiling/refining the list for now bigcat! Swell job.

[hueynym]

I was stunned that not only are there no decent free bagpipe instruments, but I couldn't find any bagpipe samples to try making my own. I do think that bagpipe plus baby would be a lovely duet. They should compliment each other perfectly if you could get your friend to record them.

Tuning a baby is harder than it sounds.

[bigcat1969]

JDK88, That soundbank midi project looks interesting. So it would automatically pick out the instruments for the track and begin playing per the midi instructions? That would be quite clever! Then basically anyone could double click on a midi file on their computer and it would start playing the music.

Thanks Nasenmann for inspiring the helicopter! It would definitely be cool to build up a really good GM library with lots of participation and new instruments from folks with musical and technical ability. While I was pleasently surpsied at the general quality of the first 80 instruments, I ran way out of my depth on synths, so we could use expert help there. I'm also starting to really run into problems the farther I go down the list. I'm going to try to build some of the sound effects 'instruments' myself.
I'm hoping that the paid GM library that was discussed earlier might be a really good one and not too expensive or possible at the risk of starting a riot that Sampletank 3 comes out and does the same thing at a reasonable price. Still being me, I'm always in favor of free (but not piracy), which makes me a bit of a KVR rebel I suppose.

You make me laugh Hueynym!

[Dench]

Interesting.

[JDK88]

JDK88, That soundbank midi project looks interesting. So it would automatically pick out the instruments for the track and begin playing per the midi instructions? That would be quite clever! Then basically anyone could double click on a midi file on their computer and it would start playing the music.

There's nothing clever about it. Any media player that supports midi files with soundfonts should be able to play it back. XMPlay, for example.

[Ben H]

There's nothing clever about it. Any media player that supports midi files with soundfonts should be able to play it back. XMPlay, for example.

Noobs!

Interesting.

Indeed.

[nasenmann]

honestly the synth sounds should be the smallest problem. there are enough skilled veteran synthesists on here who i'm sure would enjoy contributing their take on these synth cliches, when they can see this project is going places.

shakuhachi, sitar and other world stuff would seem harder to come by at a high quality level.

btw regarding the announced GM library and its pricing, i'm torn on that. on the one hand if each instrument is really meticulously sampled the $400 price is kind of warranted. it STILL has to compete with stuff like ST3 though, falling into the rompler bracket kinda, and that practically means you have to do price dumping to stay competitive.

Doing a commercial GM-ish library just doesn't seem that rewarding financially these days. that is unless you're a relatively big company and can afford to do lots and lots of sampling and regain the costs by marketing the product to a large customer base.

[hueynym]

Just to point out, hephaestus have already stated that the $400 was "pre-mature" and it will likely be much lower. However, I have more faith that they'll come out with version 2 of their full product long before ST3 ever sees the light of consumer day.

The issue with getting "good" samples of things like the shakuhachi or other world instruments is that the equipment and expertise vary so widely. The difference between using 16bit and 24bit sampling is huge on system resources, and only negligible sonically for a majority of instruments - especially once mixed and mastered, but so many people think they MUST use 24bit samples because they're "better" have a tendency to muddy the sample pool.

[bigcat1969]

Yeah newbies, I loath them, I can't.... oh wait a minute... I didn't know that.

I'm sure curious what will shake down in the Hephaestus GM library and how good and expensive the final results will be. Of course will Sampletank see the light of day before I'm six feet under is another fun question.

[JDK88]

There are quite a few gems in the Erans MSLP samples.

[bigcat1969]

When I get around to it, I'm gonna try to get a Kontakt library out of the MSLP fiddle. I did a funky Saxophone of the MSLP samples. They are fun, not always what you expect, but interesting. I hope to use them more in the future.

[evilantal]

Edit: removed link

[bob bobwood]

As regards the site listed by evilantal, there was a discussion about it a while back. I believe the general gist being that some of the content is probably ripped off.

Edited after link was removed.

[hueynym]

Post dedacted

[evilantal]

lol... didn't know about that
Just turned up in search results

Better steer clear just in case! Removed the link in my post as well.