[LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

[drew Roberts]

On Monday 15 September 2008 19:33:59 Stephen Doonan wrote:
> Roberto Gordo Saez wrote:
> > [...] So why I'm
> > strugling to make those soundfonts? Because nobody else does!
> >
> > [...] There are very few people willing to give their time
> > to create free soundfonts [...]
> >
> > Just exactly like free software, free samples need to be unambiguously
> > placed under a free license by *its author*. And of course the author
> > *must* be identified. Thinking that they are free because the author
> > is unkown is just too much optimistic. [...]
> >
> > So my first and most important goal is to create a collection of free
> > samples for several instruments. Next, it is required to create
> > soundfonts from those samples. With my "demo" soundfonts I just hope
> > to get the attention of some people. We manage to get high quality,
> > free software operating systems, thanks to the collaboration of many
> > people, so I still hope that people start to join to the freepats
> > project, stop using their pirated, "semi-free" or proprietary
> > soundfonts and begin to think about actually working on creating
> > really free, high quality soundfonts.
>
> Personally, I for one wholeheartedly agree with everything you stated
> (abbreviated with ellipses in the quote above)
>
> >> Why Bigger Isn't Better -- by William Coakley
> >> http://williamcoakley.com/articles.php?article=bigger.php
> >
> > This is a quote from the article:
> >
> > "[...] it takes LESS time and LESS work to develop a 3 gigabyte piano
> > than it does a beautiful thirty two megabyte piano[...]"
> >
> > It's true. If only two layers are used, a lot of work is needed to
> > create fake layers in the middle. It is needed to carefully filter
> > higher harmonics and blend the result. It could easily take months of
> > work.
> >
> > But I don't agree with some of the statments given in the article.
> > It is certainly possible to create fake intermediate layers that sound
> > as good as the real ones, but claiming that they can sound *better*
> > than the real notes recorded from the piano is no more than a beatiful
> > way to advertise his soundfonts.
>
> I think it is important to have plenty of samples for the frequency
> range--the full range of a piano from bass notes to treble notes--but
> not so important to have many samples of the dynamic range of each
> sampled frequency/note. I'm speaking of the piano; other instruments are
> probably different, of course.
>
> I think that one of the problems is that soundfonts do not allow
> crossfading of layers (do they?). Instead, layers in soundfonts play at
> their full volume for every MIDI note that is within their assigned
> range of MIDI notes. Therefore you can't specify two layers, both
> extending the full range of MIDI notes, but each attenuating by a fixed
> amount from either the top or bottom of their assigned range of notes.
>
> Am I correct about this? This is the first day I have done any research
> about soundfonts. However, after downloading and trying your very fine
> Disklavier soundfont, I installed the soundfont editor swami and have
> begun to "play" with the soundfont and to alter it in some ways to more
> suit my own particular taste as a musician and piano player. It's fun.
> When I am happy with the sound, I will be happy to upload a copy for
> anyone to use. :-)
>
> > Producing a good soundfont with less layers and half the size would
> > be desirable, but unfortunatelly I'm unable to do that myself alone.
> > If someone is willing to donate his time to work in this area,
> > please let me know, it would be great.
>
> I understand your sentiment. I have volunteered for many things in the
> past, and have always arrived at the angry and frustrated conclusion
> that just 10% of the people who benefit from any particular work do 90%
> of the work. :-)

That may be but take heart. We still have all of this wonderful Free software 
to use as a result of this imperfect process and it is starting to go well 
(gentle please) for other areas as well.
>
> Best wishes,
> Steve

all the best,

drew
http://zotz.kompoz.com