New GM soundfont - "CompiFont"

• Jan 20, 2016 - 23:51

Hello everyone! Ladies and Gentleman - I hereby present you the CompiFont, which basically is a compilation of many, MANY soundfonts into one - GM bank.

LINKS FOR DEMOS:
https://soundcloud.com/compifont

LINKS FOR SOUNDFONT: (can be downloaded as 2 divided parts: Orchestral and the rest or all in 1 .SF2):
Orchestral part on MEGA.co.nz
The Rest on MEGA.co.nz
All at once on MEGA.co.nz

Or on the website:
http://pphidden.wix.com/compifont

Short history of the font.

I have seen CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth a while ago (I wonder if it was a year ago or more) and i felt kinda nostalgic about all the MIDI... but I also realised that all the GM soundfonts just doesn't seem to fit my ear. I decided to create my own GM .SF2. Something made out of precisely picked out samples out of every single SF2 file that I will stumble upon. I've made some research on how to make one, found out a program to do it [Viena by Synthfont, many thanks for that]... and spent quite some time on it.

Tributes

What does it comprise? The list is really, really long.
Out of the GM soundfonts used during creation were "Merlin Gold" (Merlin Pixel Arts), "Titanic 200 GM GS" (Congrats Luke Sena!), "Personal Copy" (Jim Roe), but also many more for reference like "Masterpiece" (found on http://fox-gieg.com/rkhive/banks.html), DrummGS, Joe's Best GM, Hubbe64... even good old Gravis Ultrasound was listened to! I am also very greatful for Keppy, creator of the best piano soundfont for the insight on how SF2 piano can sound.

I should credit "some" samples as well, which list is incomprehensibly long, and i don't remember all the ones used. There are some certainly worth acknowledging.

PIANO:
Yamaha 9ft Grand, Grand Piano Y-LP1, Clavinova P6 and Yamaha C5 used alltogether and tuned for the best performance as well as some piano instruments of unidentified origin (sorry for all the people that worked hard on all those samples, i simply lost track. The misc piano instruments came out of E-MU Proteus 2000 samples package with minor/major tweaks. There is also Clavinova Grand from one of the famous soundfonts.

GUITARS:
Enormous FG460s II Live Guitar Pack (complete recommendation!), Kamac Distortion Guitar and "Overdrive Guitar" the changes were major here and included samples swapping, Narubasso... sf2?, LesPaul guitars pack, Jackson Distortion Guitar....

WINDS:
UoI Trumpet NV4 + Roland trumpet, Trombone from Crisis, Custom(ly) made Trumpet Muted, French Horns from soundfont package that I happened to find on my HDD, Tweaked "Flute (TB)", Ethan's Bassoon, CLARINET, Piccolo CK....

STRINGS:
Cadenza Double Bass, Solo Viola, Super PizzStr and for the "All around strings": "STRING ENSEMBLE11", Strings 2LL + Strings1RR;

DRUMS:
Walthius, Melotti Drums, JD_Drums and Drumkits made from Royalty free Wave samples

Download and ENJOY!


Comments

Thank you for the huge work!
It's a pity that you can't credit all the samples because such a soundfont will never make it into MuseScore. We need to make sure that all samples come from suitable licensed soundfont. It would have been pretty cool if we could see which one are ok and which other are definitely not and would make us (and you, since you distribute it) legally liable (even if it's unlikely anyone complain...)
Also, sorry to go into legal again, it would be great if you could attach a license to the soundfont for the parts that you did yourself (the compilation, the instruments based on public domain samples etc...). It would ease the reuse and remix of the soundfont in the future. If you don't care about what people do with this soundfont, I would suggest putting somewhere that this soundfont (or at least the parts you own) is licensed under CC0 https://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/

In reply to by [DELETED] 5

Greetings,
As I understand, MuseScore seems to be on GNU GPL license, and gnu.org states that Creative Commons should not be used with GNU license.

I will try to get the names of authors of the fonts. It may take months though, unless there are signatures of some sort.

Regards

In reply to by Richard Roma

CC0 is not like the other CC license, it just helps the user to put his work in the public domain and it's definitely compatible with GNU GPLv2. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses

Even if it wasn't, it wouldn't be a problem to distribute it with MuseScore if we had permission. The soundfont is used by MuseScore but not linked. If a soundfont is distributed with MuseScore, its license doesn't need to be compatible with GNU GPLv2. However to enable the distribution of the soundfont itself, for example in Debian, CC0 works.
That being said, I'm not a lawyer, you can get help to choose a license on https://www.debian.org/legal/ for example.

In reply to by Richard Roma

Hi,
I just downloaded and tried your CompiFont. You have done a huge and wonderful job! Now the scores I've written sound good with MuseScore. Nothing to do with the FluidFont! I hope you can get all the free licenses needed for CompiFont to become the MuseScore font by default. Best.

Some of us that are MAC users might like to try your sound font, but you've placed it out there for download in a way that MAC users can't get it. Sure, the error message says we can download some other browser, but those browsers are PC browsers. Can't you post one that isn't zipped or is zipped in a way that a MAC can handle?

In reply to by sirwizard

Sorry if this is harsh, but it's rather obvious that you have some fundamental misunderstandings about computer technology. That's okay. Sifting through the morass, if you mean what I think you mean, it's not at all true that it's "out there for download in a way that MAC users can't get it." The best advice that I can give you is to ask somebody to sit down at your computer with you and take care of it.

Hmm, I'm interested in this.
In the Future what I hope to do is test SoundFonts throught Tchaikovsky test. Orchestrator Thomas Goss says that late Romantic period music are the ones that "expose" the weak points of any sound system since they do not have "modern, repeated elements" and all that that can work to cover it up. I'm going to see how this sounds and then run it through the test.

In reply to by Dillon R.

Hey Dillon!

My French Horns sample consists mainly of instruments: French Horns Leg and French Horns Real. To add extra crisp, additional samples play together with them, with different settings.

1. http://beatproduction.net/sound-kits/producer-drums-and-samples-megapac…
French Horn Section (3,076KB).sf2 from this megapack

2. Trombone from Crisis Soundfont

Link:
https://mega.nz/#!FQZjBYRA!sOIA4XTZgz15ppLMtDFKfjNfKpD8ndzTAbABzrekqN0

In reply to by Dimitrie Carvalho

You can load each sound font into MuseScore. The sounds in the mixer appear in the order they appear in each sound font. The order of the sound fonts is same as in the synthesizer. You can move the sound fonts up in the list with the arrows, so put the ones you want to use most at the top of the list. The first trombone in the mixer will then be the one from the first sound font in the mixer. The first French horn in the mixer will be from the first sound font with a French horn and so forth. I hope the explanation makes sense and you English is very adequate.

Richard,

Thank you for releasing this sound library! I have been a Finale and Sibelius user for many years. The problem for me is that I write for Jazz Band and use my ears for deciding if the arrangement is balanced correctly and in the best register for each section. To me, Finale and Sibelius sound like kids toys. So it's really hard to judge what the performance outcomes of live players would be, if the sample library sounds are not authentic sounding. However, your samples are very authentic sounding; so I have a much better idea of what the live outcome will be. I was going to upgrade to Sibelius 8 from 7.5, but instead, due to your sound library, I am going to switch to MuseScore and get a better sounding music creation tool. Plus save myself a ridiculous upgrade fee of $299 (for only one year). Thanks again . . .

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