Terrible piano

There are countless beautiful sampled pianos, but what if you're not in the mood for a nice, quality piano sound? If this is one of these days and you want some bad, broken, out of tune, lo-fi piano with eerie sound, I may just have something for you.

This set has been recorded by accident. I happened to need to wait some hours alone in a room with this old upright piano, which has been quite obviously kept there purely for decorative reasons. I started to play around with it, recording notes to portable recorder. To make it somewhat interesting I picked rater unusual microphone position, I placed it under the piano. It barely fit the space between the floor and the instrument, and so the recording has a sort of claustrophobic, creepy vibe. If you have ever wondered, how would piano sound from a cockroach perspective, this is it.

It has been cut to samples and patched into an instrument in Kontakt. The piano was way out of tune, surely it hasn't been serviced for decades, if ever. I made a rough attempt at fixing the tuning in Kontakt, it still sounds broken, just not as much as before. Kontakt patch offers both tuning versions, it also has an EQ, convolution reverb and mono/stereo switch. Here's how it sounds, once again murdering a classic for demonstration purpose.

http://www.fairlyconfusing.net/docs/terrible_piano.mp3
First part is re-tuned version, then there's part with original (de-) tuning, then there's part in mono and finally mono + some reverb.

There are no velocity layers or round robins in this set. Not even all notes are sampled and the noise floor is noticeable. There are however release triggers. There are 41 samples for the range of 83 notes, totaling 87 samples with release triggers and some pedal noise samples. To save disk space and bandwidth, the original 96/24 stereo recording captured with Zoom H2n, has been down-sampled to 41,1/16 in SOX.

The download - 71MB zipped, is free to grab and use, contains 87 samples in wav format and patch for Kontakt sampler. You will need full version of Kontakt 4.2 or newer to open the patch. It will only work in demo mode in 'Kontakt Player'.

Update: Following a suggestion, I added 'fake random round robin' mechanism to Kontakt patch. It is using random different note samples to mimic round robin functionality. It can create some crazy sound variations at the cost of sound realism (as samples are being re-tuned in sampler). There is extra knob labeled 'fake RRR', when it's set to zero, the effect is off. If you already downloaded the whole pack, you can get new resource file here, as only the instrument script has changed.

Update 2: here are mappings for sfz, place them in root folder, along with Kontakt patches.

The wineglass drone.

It is one of my oldest sampling projects and one I consider the must successful, sonically. I guess everyone interested in music (or not) has been trying playing glasses as a kid. I have. When I started to play with samplers, I thought of that and I wanted to try to capture that sound. I picked a wineglass, some brown water (which due to some plumbing problem was the only color available at the moment) and a spoon. I tuned the glass carefully adding drops of dirty water with a spoon and took 12 recordings, about 40 seconds each. It sounds rich and organic and it downtunes in a pleasant way, doing well with a lot of reverb. I have been using it for a couple of years, but just recently I took it a step further, creating loop points, so the drone can go on indefinitely. I also created mappings for sfz and Kontakt adding some extra functionality in Kontakt's patch. Here's a little example of solo wineglass:


And another one, solo too, which was the first improvised take on the drone, (there is a little noise when downtuned, which can be heard here):
And here's an example of butchery on Beehtoven's work, which proves the wineglass as fine tool for murdering a classic:
 
The Wineglass Drone is available at Loot Audio.

The instrument itself is 130MB in 12 wav files, mappings for sfz and Kontakt. You will need full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 4 or newer to open Kontakt mapping. Sfz version is missing GUI and some controllers, it can be opened by various samplers. Loop points are in the files, so it should be easy to load it to any sampler.

Breaking bread (crunchy percussion)

I was in fairly strange mood that day. I have found quite impressive collection of super dry bread pieces, buns, bread sticks and matzoh, dwelling upon my refrigerator. This stuff was crispy and crunchy and somehow I've seen a drum kit possibility in it. I took them to studio room and started to crush, smash, destroy, break up and take them apart with my bare hands in front of the microphone. Then I cut out some tasty slices out of the recording. I know it was a weird idea, but in the end, it sounds better than one might have expected. Here, listen, it's a short demo made with bread sounds only, with a pint of reverb:



You know, it may be a perfect candidate for your bread and butter drum kit. Get it here: download package - 3MB, 90 samples, wav format, mono 44.1 kHz / 24 bit, and for free. Also there's an example kit, using some of the sounds, in Battery 2 and sfz formats. The samples are split into two folders. '44 raw' contains 74 slices cut out of the original 88.2 kHz recording, re-sampled to 44.1 kHz. In '44 processed' folder, you will find heavily processed samples, basically the samples have been slowed down a great deal, cut and then up-sampled to 44.1 kHz. This way I transformed, crunchy bun breaks, into something more or less suitable to mimic bass drum or snare.

Trivia:
1. Matzoh wasn't kosher.
2. The side product of this production has been given to a friendly family of field mice, who live in my garden.

The Wrench, part 2: Bare hammer

Continuing the story from previous post, I created the second sample set of the wrench. Previously, I've been hitting the middle of the flat side of it, using a hammer with a dampening pad. Now the wrench has been treated with a bare hammer hitting the lower sharp side, which sounds quite different. This set is cleaner and sharper and it does not feature little noisy critters. Also it's heavier, as it has more samples for round robin. Here's a quick improvisation, fiddling with Kontakt's factory effects - auto panning, vowel filter and reverb:



The download - 42MB, includes 9 samples in wav format, mono 96 kHz / 24 bit. There are mappings for sfz and Kontakt 2. This time, I also made a patch for Kontakt 4.24 on which I put a simple, custom GUI, to make myself more comfortable while playing with Kontakt's build in effects. It's the one I used while making the demo. This patch is build of Kontakt's factory graphics and presets, so I don't know, if it will work in newer versions. Again, the download is free, have fun.

The Wrench.

I have this big bicycle wrench, which makes nice sustained tone, like a bell. Recently I recorded some hits to build a sampler based instruments. I hung it by a thread and I've been hitting it with a hammer, which I slapped a dampening pad on, to soften the sound. The wrench was dangling freely, twisting and swinging around, creating a sort of vibrato effect. I picked five samples and mapped them in round robin. The wrench would vibrate for quite a while, but for practical reasons I cut them down to about 20 seconds, still at lower notes it can go on much longer, so it's suitable for long lasting low drone sounds. This thing is dark, gritty, fairly unstable and full of little noises, those noises are mostly the thread tearing the edge of suspension point. Some may find them annoying, but I would say it's instrument's character. It works best with some deep reverb on, here's an example:



Download package - 25 MB, 5 samples in wav format, mono 96 kHz / 24 bit. There is a mapping for Kontakt 2 (or newer) and a draft version for SFZ. In Kontakt version you can use mod wheel to control release time. Also there is bonus Kontakt program with a pad sound, where the samples are layered in stereo. Both programs are dry, so you may want to pick your own reverb. This wrench is free to download and use.

Technics M33G feedback loop tone generator

This is the effect of a silly experiment and an exercise to learn a bit about sfz format. I took an old cassette deck, Technics M33G and I created a feedback loop by connecting signal output with input. The tone could be controlled with volume deck's volume knob, for some reason I don't really understand. Then I connected deck's phone output to Audiofire sound card and captured the whole scale available from manipulating the magical volume knob, to create this little sample set. I used G-Tune VST to monitor sound frequency, trying to catch exact frequency for each note. The knob didn't work linear and was rather sensitive, so some notes were a little off, which I think adds some character to this set.

Sound demo:


The files are 96kHz/24 bit, range it E4-B0, plus the lowest sound I could get. Above E4 the deck would go rocket high frequency, so it was rather impossible to match higher notes. Lowest tones are hardly tonal, but I recorded them anyway. More info in readme.txt

Download package - 10MB, includes samples in wav format, mappings for sfz and Kontakt 2.2.4 or newer. Free download.

And here's the discussion at KVRaudio.