Free new Rhodes soundfont

Sampler and Sampling discussion (techniques, tips and tricks, etc.)
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DKeenum wrote:Jeff,

I'd like to see you try your hand at a wurlie. Like the rhodes, I have yet to find a wurlie sample-set that I am completely happy with. The electro-mechnical refill for reason has a good one, but I want one with a little more sustain and some dirt.

I don't think you have a wurlie, I'm just venting.
Skarbee's Wurli is right up there IMO.

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Enjoy, and don't hesitate to let me know what you think!

Jeff,
Jeff,

Your rhodes soundfont blew me away......I also enjoy the low end growl and rattle with the clear highs....

Reminds me of George Dukes old recordings like Brazilian Love Affair (track 6:sugarloaf mountain, keyboard solo starts at 1:37).......thanks for giving this away for free!

Ciao,

Gavin

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Sampling guitars (at least without any specialized player VSTi) won't work. Just don't waste your time!
There's partially great patches allready (such as the Yellow Tools guitars), but none of them is cutting it at all when it comes to things such as strumming. Fingerpicking might be OK though.
There are 3 kinds of people:
Those who can do maths and those who can't.

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I was thinking of renting a Wurlie and sampling it, but there are two pretty decent alternatives. MrRay is has a nice Wurlie mode, check it out. Also, have you tried http://sullivang.net? He has three soundfonts, all excellent:

Yamaha CP80 electric baby grand
Wurlitzer EP200
Hohner Pianet T

These are in Gigastudio format, but using CDXtract or Extreme Sample Converter they convert just perfectly to soundfonts. (The demo for CDX works; for ESC you need to pay or it truncates the samples to 8 bits or something like that. But ESC is the very best loop editor I've ever seen and well worth the $50.)

Acoustic guitar would be a real challenge. I did find what seemed to be an excellent classical guitar sample set, and furthermore it used some guitar-specific convention that allows lots of articulation. Haven't used it yet, though -- just played the demo which was great.

Sasha, I realize the limitations. If I do it, it'll be for fingerpicked parts, not strumming. So far, most stuff I've heard samples open notes and uses those samples for all notes -- which sounds terrible! Even my Ensoniq MR76 synth is this way. I would probably sample all notes stopped in the first position, using the octave below for open notes, and above A4 I'd do all stopped notes starting at 5th fret (or something like that).

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Hi Jeff, where is your site? I had tried to link to it from mine at http://www.shannonmcgill.com/electronic ... dfont.html

Do you want the soundfont hosted at the emn site? or will your site be coming back? Is the sf hosted elsewhere yet?

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Usually is in the address he put above, but since the soundfont has been succesfull, i believe that maybe he have some bandwith issues.

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I'm offline for a short while thanks to a domain name service provider who doesn't bother to send warning notices. My domain should be registered with a new provider soon.

Also, two new features coming soon: a looped version of the Rhodes that's 12M, and a stereo version that I'm tearing my hair out trying to loop right now. The stereo version just has mild stereo pitch-shift doubling on it to give it some image. I'd rather use a plugin effect, but so far I haven't found a decent free or cheap real-time pitch shifter or chorus that delivers the sound I want (which you'll hear when I post the font).

Instead, I used CoolEdit 96 pitch shifting with a lot of careful realignment wave editing and mid-side encoding to create the sound I was looking for, and it's smooth as a baby's butt. It works summed to mono, too. Looping it takes a lot of the life out of it, though. I can't seem to retain the floating image and also the good sum-to-mono behavior of mid-side encoding. :(

Also, there's a Wurlitzer on consignment at my local music store, and it's a great playing one too. If it's still there in a month or so, I might just find out if I can rent it and do a quick sample project. :)

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Oh, please do the Wurli :-) I love the Wurli!

Especially that Supertramp song "Dreamer", what a cool song. Has that awesome Wurlitzer right through it.

It would be so lovely to get a Wurly soundfont that is as good as your Rhodes. I'd even pay for it!

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Meanwhile, the Wurly at sullivang.net is a good one. It's gigastudio, but converts nicely to sf2 using Extreme Sample Converter or CDXtract.

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If anyone wants to check out the beta for the stereo Rhodes, it's a 10 MB download for a 30MB soundfont:

jRhodes3b-looped-beta.sfArk

Here's a short MP3 DEMO.

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learjeff wrote:If anyone wants to check out the beta for the stereo Rhodes
Hi Jeff,

How can it be a stereo Rhodes since the original Rhodes is... mono? :?:

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Hey lear- I could sample my wurly. its a late 60s ep-200 (not the 200a). I need to fix one key but its flawless otherwise.

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The stereo version just has mild stereo pitch-shift doubling on it to give it some image.
I'd use a plugin, but I haven't found one that sounds very good.

Compare:
=> Mono
=> Stereo

The stereo soundfont also has a little compression applied and is louder, I should compensate for that to make a better comparison. But I'm sure you get the idea.

S_A_P, have you sampled a keyboard before? It's a tedious process and 80% or more of what differentiates a good soundfont from a weak one. Also, GB isn't sufficient for the task -- the metering isn't good enough and it only records 16-bits. Thanks for the offer, though -- if you do want to try it out let me know and I'll be happy to give you guidance. One bad key is no problem. For my Rhodes I sampled every 4th white key and that was fine. I suspect that would work well for Wurly too.

The tricky part is sampling multiple velocity layers and being reasonably consistent for each sample in the velocity layer. A Wurly needs at least 3 and probably 4 or 5 layers. (A Rhodes needs more than 5, but that's the most I've done so far.) I can play with good dynamics control, but when I have to play one note in isolation and hit the right velocity, I find it's very hard.

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learjeff wrote:
The stereo version just has mild stereo pitch-shift doubling on it to give it some image.
I'd use a plugin, but I haven't found one that sounds very good.

Compare:
=> Mono
=> Stereo

The stereo soundfont also has a little compression applied and is louder, I should compensate for that to make a better comparison. But I'm sure you get the idea.

S_A_P, have you sampled a keyboard before? It's a tedious process and 80% or more of what differentiates a good soundfont from a weak one. Also, GB isn't sufficient for the task -- the metering isn't good enough and it only records 16-bits. Thanks for the offer, though -- if you do want to try it out let me know and I'll be happy to give you guidance. One bad key is no problem. For my Rhodes I sampled every 4th white key and that was fine. I suspect that would work well for Wurly too.

The tricky part is sampling multiple velocity layers and being reasonably consistent for each sample in the velocity layer. A Wurly needs at least 3 and probably 4 or 5 layers. (A Rhodes needs more than 5, but that's the most I've done so far.) I can play with good dynamics control, but when I have to play one note in isolation and hit the right velocity, I find it's very hard.
I have sampled my rhodes before, and got decent results, but I only used 2 velocity layers(at the time I had to fit it on my AWE 16 sound card. so it was limitied to soft/medium velocities. I suspect that te wurlitzer would need more layers than a rhodes as the "bite" in a wurly only truly comes out at 100% velocity. Every wurly soundfont I have heard before sounds like a dog barking through its asshole at hi velocities. I was considering giving it a go using nnxt, but the electromechanical refill is good enough for now....

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thank you very much for sharing this, Learjeff.
It sounds really good and clearly you spent alot of time on it.

I've only downloaded the stereo version so far, and I have just one little nitpick. I noticed very quickly that alot of the samples have somewhat late attacks. Opening up the sf in Awave it looks like you can shave between 2-7ms off the start of many of them. I wish I had a way of uploading files to you, because I went thru and trimmed the attacks off all the samples that needed it to save you some work.

Anyway, thanks again and keep up the good work.

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