Re: [LAU] Yamaha Disklavier Pro grand piano

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. :-)

Best wishes,
Steve

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Received on Tue Sep 16 04:15:03 2008