Free 65 meg drumset soundfont!

[pljones]

Latest soundfont -- Thrash Blues Guitar!

http://www.sf2midi.com/index.php?page=sdet&id=6475

It's a pretty specialized sound, but I hope you'll find it useful.

Again, the zipfile came down with errors. Whatever you're zipping with produces dodgy archives . Now I know not to use 7z to try to unpack though.

Crazy velocity layers! But a very nice sound... it would take some careful playing "live" to get it sounding good, I would think... I might also have a look at fiddling with the attacks to soften them if playing legato (which sfz format can detect). It's a little too stacato to sound fluid to me.

Like you say, it's specialised - but I'm sure it can be put to many uses! Now I have to go look for the reggae guitar...

[zeoy]

Downloaded, unzipped fine here. Thanx Geoff!

[Sascha Franck]

FWIW, the download was fast (5 minutes at best, didn't watch) and I've got no corrupted files either (used Firefox).

As far as the kit goes, well, personally I don't like snares with embedded reverb too much, but I guess I could just cut the reverb off.

Conversions to Kontakt unfortunately are rather bad, guess I'll have to do quite some adjustments to make this a useful kit.
In SFZ (free) the levelings (namely velocity response) are quite questionable too. Once you reach a certain (relatively low) velocity, volumes don't go up much anymore, just the samples are switched. Plus, the hats aren't routed to exclusive groups.
Battery import caused SX 3 to crash...

Ah well, guess I'll just have a look at the individual samples - these are sounding quite good, so thanks!

[pljones]

Plus, the hats aren't routed to exclusive groups.

The Open Hat and Pedal Hat are in an exclusive group. The Closed Hat isn't - you're meant to play the Pedal to close the open hat. I don't like it. So if you get my sfz mappings, I've put the closed hat into the exclusive group.

My main gripe with the levels is they were way too high. It was as if everything had been normalised to the loudest hit in the kit, leaving no headroom for playing two hits at the same time. In my alternate mapping, I've heavily attenuated all the hits.

I found the kit dynamics very good, though, with a very comfortable response (on my MK249 with velocity curve C2).

[Gregjazz]

Plus, the hats aren't routed to exclusive groups.

The Open Hat and Pedal Hat are in an exclusive group. The Closed Hat isn't - you're meant to play the Pedal to close the open hat. I don't like it. So if you get my sfz mappings, I've put the closed hat into the exclusive group.

My main gripe with the levels is they were way too high. It was as if everything had been normalised to the loudest hit in the kit, leaving no headroom for playing two hits at the same time. In my alternate mapping, I've heavily attenuated all the hits.

I found the kit dynamics very good, though, with a very comfortable response (on my MK249 with velocity curve C2).

The reason I didn't put the closed hihat into the exclusive group is because it's more like a real drum set -- to close the hihat, you push the pedal down. What I usually do, though, is play both the hihat close AND the hihat closed hit at the same time, the pedal close a bit earlier and much quieter.

The main reason the closed hihat isn't in the exclusive group is because otherwise it would clip itself off when played in rapid succession. I'm not sure if that's the same with your sampler, but it is with mine.

Oh, also, if you dislike the echo, try out the "snappy kit" preset. There's basically only proximity mics in that setup, so you get the really close, dry sound.

[Sascha Franck]

The main reason the closed hihat isn't in the exclusive group is because otherwise it would clip itself off when played in rapid succession. I'm not sure if that's the same with your sampler, but it is with mine.

Yeah, I know... pretty much the same with any sampler.
What all of them do is to simply limit the polyphony of exclusive groups to 1.
This is pretty bad for any ringing samples, especially for, say, those typical rock 8ths, played on opened or semi-opened hats - which you usually put into some exclusive group.

Samplers should actually do that exclusive group stuff by note number, rather than by limiting polyphony. I wonder why nobody's been coming up with that yet.

[pljones]

Yeah, I know... pretty much the same with any sampler.
What all of them do is to simply limit the polyphony of exclusive groups to 1.

Not sfz.

In sfz, layers (actually anything triggered by the same MIDI event, I think) aren't turned off by themselves. So it sounds fine in sfz to have them all in the same group.

sfz format gives you "group" and "off_by": group identifies the layers that can turn stuff off; off_by makes a layer sensitive. I use this so I can have a single key to turn off all the cymbals: they're all "off_by=23" with a silent region on, say, C5 having "group=23" (23 being just some number between 0 and 4Gig). Hitting C5 silences anything with that off_by coded. Neat

[pljones]

Crazy velocity layers! But a very nice sound... it would take some careful playing "live" to get it sounding good, I would think... I might also have a look at fiddling with the attacks to soften them if playing legato (which sfz format can detect). It's a little too stacato to sound fluid to me.

Having played with it for a while now, I really, really like it. You do get used to the layers and it can be very expressive.

What I don't understand is why it sends the CPU meter through the roof on the soft/short notes in sfz+...

[Gregjazz]

Crazy velocity layers! But a very nice sound... it would take some careful playing "live" to get it sounding good, I would think... I might also have a look at fiddling with the attacks to soften them if playing legato (which sfz format can detect). It's a little too stacato to sound fluid to me.

Having played with it for a while now, I really, really like it. You do get used to the layers and it can be very expressive.

What I don't understand is why it sends the CPU meter through the roof on the soft/short notes in sfz+...

That could be because it has long release sounds for the echo. You could turn that layer off.

I kinda regret not putting in longer, non-vibrato tones in that soundfont, but that will all be made up for with my latest upcoming soundfont.

What I concentrate on in my soundfonts is realism. When I sample an instrument, I sample it like I would when I play it. A lot of people that sample instruments just sample tones, but what I do is sample notes in context of phrases.

[-SPYRO-]

Can't download either

What happens with that server? it cuts the download every time I try. (I have been trying from last week)

Does anyone have a mirror for it?

[-SPYRO-]

I'm downloading Opera to see if it works.

[Gregjazz]

I'm downloading Opera to see if it works.

Or maybe try using a download resumer? Oh wait, never mind, sf2midi.com doesn't support those.

[-SPYRO-]

Nothing, Nada, it doesn't work on Opera, it cuts at the same filesize (32.4mb)

hum! maybe they should fix their server on the first place

[Sascha Franck]

Nothing, Nada, it doesn't work on Opera, it cuts at the same filesize (32.4mb)

hum! maybe they should fix their server on the first place

Someone allready hosted the file temporarily.
Just look through this thread.

[pljones]

In sfz, layers (actually anything triggered by the same MIDI event, I think) aren't turned off by themselves. So it sounds fine in sfz to have them all in the same group.

Of course, as I had two closed hats, they _were_ muting each other. They don't any more - I removed their off_by opcodes.

That could be because it has long release sounds for the echo. You could turn that layer off.

D'oh - I had polyphony set at 192, too! Turning it down to 8 made it fine -- I'll try playing with it some more later. Needs some practice to get the most but, as I said above: it's gRRReat! (And no JCM900 in sight.)