Making a Sf2 using Polyphone free editor

• Dec 26, 2014 - 18:29

Hello everybody.

Merry Christmas !

At the begining of november, I had a chance to buy a wonderful digital piano (KAWAI CN24).
As I am not very happy of the several piano soundfonst I found on the net (and considering the fact the MuseScore does not support the VST format), I would like to try creating my own SF2 from my Kawai.
I found the Polyphone software. Can someone give me a help ?
I've never done that before.

Best Regards


Comments

Creating a soundfont from scratch is far to big a topic to be tackled here, and a Google search doesn't produce much of use on this topic.

Your first step is to produce the samples you require from your Kawai. At this stage you need to assess the memory limitations of your computer with regard to the number and format of the samples you produce. If you have the memory resources to do it, then the best keyboard soundfonts are produced with at least one sample per note.

If you want to reflect the changing timbre of the piano when played at various dynamic levels, then you need a set of samples for each dynamic level you wish to represent, which will then be placed in what is known as a velocity split.

Record your samples in mono - there is no benefit to using stereo samples in this context, as you are producing a set of samples which you are then going to place within a stereo soundstage, and all stereo samples do is consume more memory.

Once you have recorded your samples you then need to normalise them so each velocity split sample set is at the same volume.

You then import the samples into your Soundfont Editor, and set loop points for each one.

You then turn the sample set into an instrument and the instrument into a preset. Both of these are also non-trivial tasks!

You can however use VST with Musescore. I have been working with this quite a bit in Windows before the Christmas season arrived, and am currently working on an ebook about it. It involves the installation and configuration of JACK and then configuring MuseScore to use JACK to route MIDI output to a VST host. I shall announce it here on the forums when it is finished.

HTH

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

ChurchOrganist, if you didn't yet, please take a look to Carla http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net/Applications:Carla I didn't try it yet on Windows but I did on mac. If I'm not wrong, it would simplify the setup of MuseScore -> Jack -> Virtual instrument quite a bit since it's a VST host with native Jack support. No need of any Virtual MIDI cable anymore.

@LeBeginner, if you just want a good piano sound, you might want to try Zerberus in the MuseScore 2.0beta2 or a nightly. You can use Salamander Piano SFZ with it http://freepats.zenvoid.org/Piano/
Here is a comparison of Salamander vs the default soundfont in MuseScore 2.0 vs the default soundfont in MuseScore 1.3 : https://soundcloud.com/lasconic/sets/reunion-musescore-1-3-vs-2-0

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