Old 10-29-2017, 04:20 PM   #1
Reason
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Posts: 976
Default Creating a sample set?

I've got an idea that I may or may not bother to follow up on, which is to create a full set of samples of guitar harmonics. The idea would be to tune/capo to allow for a fully chromatic set with no pitch shifting.

I know nothing about setting up for velocity layers and round robins, aside from that I'd need multiple recordings of each note.

I'd be going in direct, for convenience and to allow for consistent volume across recording days, and would use the max sample- and bit-rate I have available, which I believe is 24/96.

Once I was done recording and editing, I'd have a bunch of wavs. I don't know how to either make a full vst, or even how it should be packaged as just a sample set.

Total waste of time or totally fantastic idea? Suggestions on what to do and what not to do?

Thanks!
Reason is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2017, 04:58 PM   #2
pipelineaudio
Mortal
 
pipelineaudio's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Wickenburg, Arizona
Posts: 14,047
Default

We have a mess of people who are experts at that subject on this very forum. I bet you could load this all up into Maize Sampler
pipelineaudio is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 02:06 AM   #3
sinkmusic
Human being with feelings
 
sinkmusic's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: decepticon mothership in a hidden place inside a mountain
Posts: 3,754
Default

On the user side, mapping layers is quite time-consuming.
Also, many users don't like a specific VST for each sampleset they have.

So my advice would be to provide neither "only raw waves" or a vst, but the waves in a folder with (if possible) several popular formats so that they only have to drag & drop the .nki (or .exs, .als etc) in their native sampler of choice
sinkmusic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 06:47 AM   #4
dub tree
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 308
Default

http://vis.versilstudios.net/sfzconverter.html

That tool can help you auto-map your samples in the SFZ format. He has some videos showing how to use it, but basically, it depends on your file naming scheme. This route is nice because the utility and the required sampler(Sforzando) are all free.

Kontakt also has a similar feature, so as long as you maintain a consistent naming scheme, you can at least get all your stuff mapped to the right key and velocity zones without too much hassle.

That way, you can focus all your headaches on the actual sampling/editing processes.
dub tree is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 09:25 AM   #5
Tod
Human being with feelings
 
Tod's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Kalispell
Posts: 14,745
Default

I think you've got a great idea Reason, I don't know of any sampled harmonics that were recorded like that.

As already stated, naming them in a meaningful way will make it much easier to load them in a sample player. I nearly always use numbers, padding the single digits starting with 01, that way they fall right into place with many sample players. Also including the note names is important

Things to consider before you start are, number of layers, will there be Round Robins, will you do them in half steps or whole steps, to name a few.

Reaper is an excellent app for editing samples, with the ability to create custom actions, you can really speed up the process.

Heh heh, I'm going to be creating another steel guitar library sometime in the near future and I'm wondering how I might get the harmonics in the same manner you're talking about.
Tod is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 12:02 PM   #6
Reason
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Posts: 976
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by sinkmusic View Post
On the user side, mapping layers is quite time-consuming.
Also, many users don't like a specific VST for each sampleset they have.

So my advice would be to provide neither "only raw waves" or a vst, but the waves in a folder with (if possible) several popular formats so that they only have to drag & drop the .nki (or .exs, .als etc) in their native sampler of choice
These are good ideas, thanks. I'm a complete beginner at this though, so I don't know how to start to create the .nki etc files.

Quote:
Originally Posted by dub tree View Post
http://vis.versilstudios.net/sfzconverter.html

That tool can help you auto-map your samples in the SFZ format. He has some videos showing how to use it, but basically, it depends on your file naming scheme. This route is nice because the utility and the required sampler(Sforzando) are all free.

Kontakt also has a similar feature, so as long as you maintain a consistent naming scheme, you can at least get all your stuff mapped to the right key and velocity zones without too much hassle.

That way, you can focus all your headaches on the actual sampling/editing processes.
That tool looks very helpful, thank you!
Reason is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 12:20 PM   #7
Reason
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Posts: 976
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tod View Post
I think you've got a great idea Reason, I don't know of any sampled harmonics that were recorded like that.

As already stated, naming them in a meaningful way will make it much easier to load them in a sample player. I nearly always use numbers, padding the single digits starting with 01, that way they fall right into place with many sample players. Also including the note names is important.
I haven't really thought this out yet, but maybe something like

31F#485:
31 31st note
F#4 Pitch
8 the guitar string
5 the fret it was played at

Due to the nature of how harmonics work, it seems I'd need to make a decision to list them in ascending pitch order, like a piano, or from low string to high string, low fret to high fret. The former seems to make more sense since this would be used in a piano roll / with a keyboard, and the latter would not be intuitive to anyone but guitarists, who probably have a guitar already anyway.

I'm also not sure how to indicate sharps and flats, although I could probably check out a piano library and just copy that method.

Quote:
Things to consider before you start are, number of layers, will there be Round Robins, will you do them in half steps or whole steps, to name a few.
I'm thinking at least 3 layers and 2 RRs would be a minimum for usability, but 6 recordings for each note might be a bit more to bite off than my nascent skills can chew. WWTD?

Quote:
Reaper is an excellent app for editing samples, with the ability to create custom actions, you can really speed up the process.
Glad I've got the right tool for the job. Any suggestions on what kind of custom actions would be useful?

Quote:
Heh heh, I'm going to be creating another steel guitar library sometime in the near future and I'm wondering how I might get the harmonics in the same manner you're talking about.
Can you do slide harmonics like on a fretless bass? Actually I'm guessing that would not work, since on a fretless bass you're changing the length of the string and the harmonic pitch "rides along" with that change, whereas with a slide, the slide "is" the pitch, if that makes sense.
Reason is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 12:26 PM   #8
karbomusic
Human being with feelings
 
karbomusic's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 29,260
Default

I think it's a cool idea, my first concern is with all that work will it turn out sounding mostly like a garden variety synth - because the notes are so pure and very near a pure sine wave. I might sample a handful for fun, nothing serious like you are thinking though.
__________________
Music is what feelings sound like.
karbomusic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 12:31 PM   #9
sinkmusic
Human being with feelings
 
sinkmusic's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: decepticon mothership in a hidden place inside a mountain
Posts: 3,754
Default

One more little advice :if you're a beginner in this area, i'd recommend thinking twice about the "naming scheme" and google a bit more about what's already there : there are some "nearly standards", which some samplers use for automapping. So, don't try to "reinvent the wheel", which might cause issues if user try to use your samples in another sampler. Instead, sticking to some standards can be a great timesaver in some situations.
sinkmusic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 03:30 PM   #10
dub tree
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 308
Default

Grow Your Own Samples (youtube)

This video might be worth checking out. It's under 20 minutes, and shows one of the Spitfire Audio guys (who are one of the major players in orchestral sample libraries) explaining how to go about making a sample set, and includes a link to the free "Moon Guitar" library that he demonstrates making in the video.
dub tree is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2017, 03:53 PM   #11
Tod
Human being with feelings
 
Tod's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Kalispell
Posts: 14,745
Default

I recently recorded my Yamaha Acoustic guitar using both my fingers and finger nails. For this I had the most elaborate setup in Reaper I've ever done. But I was trying for half steps with 64 layers in 2 RRs. I had it setup on a "Take" system and the lowest recorded levels were around -40.0dB with the highest around -1.0dB.

I would record something like 15 to 20 takes at a time. First I would go through and delete any takes that sounded bad. Then I had actions to go to the transient of each sample and move back a certain amount of ms and split it. The ms back depended on the average of the number it took, based on several takes. Then I used the action to "explode all takes in order".

From there I had an action that would move them to a designated area where I would sort them by their dB levels. There's a lot more to it than that but that's kind of the basic idea. These are some of the toolbars I created at the time. There is some redundancies but when I'm in midst of this, I'm not concerned about that.



Naming the samples. What I did was number the levels for each particular note. Then I setup folders for each note that included 2 RR folders.

For example, I had a "FingerNail Samples (Dry)" folder. In that folder I had 15 folders, "01_D2_Nail" to "15_E4_Nail". In each of those folders I had 2 more folders, "Grp_1" and Grp_2". Then in "Grp_1" I'd have the samples, named "01_D2_Nail_Dry_Grp1" to "48_D2_Nail_Dry_Grp1".

That might sound a little complicated, but it was the way it worked best for me, which is the point. Use your own naming convention, but do it in a way that doesn't confuse you, so you can load the samples in any sampler without problems. In all honesty, I make most of my samples with the idea that I might give them to other folks, so I do try to name them in a way that makes sense.

If you look at the names that other developers use, even the major ones, many if not most have there own sceems and they are very confusing, but that's probably on purpose.

In the case of guitar harmonics you won't need many layers. In fact, you will probably be best off with 1 layer per note. The reason is, less than 24 to 32 layers will give you problems with the levels between layers. That is, unless you normalize all your samples. Many folks don't understand what "Velocity Intensity" is. It's the way a sampler will apply volume levels to the samples, and if you have only a few layers with levels that are spread out, there will be audible gaps betwen the layers. So if you use only 2 layers, normalize them to the same level. Then when you apply the "Velocity Intensity" it will still keep the attributes of the note, such as the attack sound and timbre, but will be distributed properly across the dB level spectrum.
Tod is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 02:36 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.