Does anyone know any sample libraries with extensive coverage of Baroque and renaissance instruments?

Getting such in-depth specialty samples will probably be pretty hard. Most just deal with general orchestral instruments.

Try East West http://www.eastwestsamples.com/

As someone who owns and uses a multitude of sample libraries I'd have to say that the closest youll come to realistic Baroque instruments is VSL (Vienna Symphonic Libraries) but they are expensive.

East West and the other major players mostly cater for Hollywood style sectional orchestration and general film scores.

However, the solo instruments found in Garritan Personal Orchestra can be used to create quite convincing Baroque period arrangements. And it's a very cheap library.

Your not going to find however, as far as I know, period correct instruments such as a Baroque oboe, or gut stringed instruments.

Thanks I'll take a look.


I listened to some of the samples on their website, I'm not sure if they sound like early music. Do you have a specific volume of their collection in mind? To my ears the renderings sound too thin, there isn't any harmonic field.

Hollywood type scores or video game scores too?


Actually what about game music sounds? Are there any good libraries for those types of sounds? They can substitute for baroque instruments for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbANlM6nW4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWuNf4gxwuM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT12DW2Fm9M (just the beginning theme of love part)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCb-KSpQoKA&feature=related

Are there any good libraries for these kinds of sounds? (again, entire scales that you can construct music with, not just the "sound effects" like wind and bell effects)

Thanks.

There's nothing that really distinguishes orchestral game music from other scores. The composers will be using the same tools. People like Jeremy Soule are naturally going to use state of the art stuff like East West since they do this for a living.

Garritan seems to be the go-to choice budget solution. I've also run across another one which was actually a synthesizer using acoustic modeling or something to mimic orchestral instruments. Can't remember its name.

While not samples, I have/use a Proteus 2 MIDI sound module (c.1990) made by E-mu Systems that has some pretty convincing orchestral sounds. No where near comparing to East-West samples, but pretty convincing. Sometimes you can find them used on eBay for not too much money.

But I just did a search and found these samples made from a Proteus 2:

http://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/soundfont/e-mu-proteus-2-orchestral-soundfont/product_info.php/cPath/44/products_id/209

Instead of buying their sound font samples, I think you'd be further ahead in finding an actual machine. Not really all Baroque and renaissance instruments, but some of the harps and horn sounds are pretty convincing...especially the oboes and clarinets.

What is the difference between East-west samples and other samples like the Vienna symphonic libraries?

The difference =

Price, quality and selection. VSL has the most comprehensive amount of modules wich contain every instrument articulation (every note of each intrument is recorded multiple times in every playing style possible) in 24bit. Each note in each style is also recorded multiple times for alternate playing notes to create a more human sound. Everyhting is recorded with multiple microphone positions for stage depth/room emulation.

East West is pretty comprehensive as well. The Platinum version of Symphonic Orchestra has a lot of articulations to choose from, has 3 mic positions, and is recorded in 24bit. The cheaper gold version is only 16bit but only contains one mic position; stage, wich sounds thin and washy. The East West Hollywood Strings library is very impressive however. And Symphonic Choirs is equally so.

ProjectSAM do some very high quality libraries that are used alot in game scores (too much in fact). However, their libraries tend to be based on pre defined multi sections and not solo secions or solo instruments.

The music in most games these days is what is called Mixed Mode music. Usually larger more expensive sections such as full string orchestra and huge epic percussion and brass are made using sample libraries whilst the smaller stuff with guitars, folksy style stuff, and string quartets etc. will be done using live recordings. In the past Jeremy Soule has used to use a mixture of Garritan products and live orchestras. Inon Zur has used East West in compination with live musicians/vocalists. None of them really use one specific piece of software, as their requirements change over time.

Youre examples: The Morrowind Theme was Garritan based. The Prince of Persia music is EWQL Symphonic Orchestra, EWQL RA (primarily), and possibly EWQL Voices of Passion. Not sure about the other two, but they sound very synthetic.

There are no libraries out there at the moment that specificaly cover a time period like the Baroque (except PMI Baroque Organ). You just have to be creative with what is available and you can achive some pretty convincing results.

It is completely out of question for me and my budget and devotion, I found out that you have to buy a symphonic "key" to just use their encrypted material. (obviously, )

Are "synthetic" libraries cheaper than real instrument samples?

Thanks.

Edit: actually one more question. Can you recommend a good scorewriter? I'm looking at sibelius, finale and smartscore x pro.

Thanks.

Synthetic libraries are generally free because they are sound fonts that you load into your midi hardware. They tend to sound pretty horrible though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundFont

Sibelius is probably best for scoring. I use Cubase 5 myself (but it's not cheap). For a library I'd reccomend Garritan Personal Orchestra because it has quality close mic'd samples and is dirt cheap at only $149 USD. I beleive that Sibelius 6 bundles it anyway. http://www.garritan.com/

If you like you can listen to some of the music linked below in my signature. I use Garritan at the core of my library.

Hope this helps

Nice stuff BTW. I was listening to several tunes earlier.

Thanks

A little different genre but:

http://www.unsigned.com/raydaider

Great beats. And I love those synths

http://togeostudios.com/ts-blog/free-resources/oatmeal-free-vsti-synth/.....Best freeware synth on the planet. imo.
The skin pack is a must because the original default is severely lacking....but a powerful engine...great sounds.
I recommend the preset banks there also.
(Other synths in that 1st tune....Roland D-50.)

So are the ambience sounds of that final fantasy video made using soundfonts? Wiki says that you can't work with soundfonts on win7, is that true?

To clarify, I'm actually trying to re-create "better" performances of Baroque music with a fantasy bent, and create music videos with them. I thought that if real Baroque instrument samples are hard to get, then maybe I'll just use whatever libraries those FANTASY game composers used.

Thanks.

MO54,
Forgive me if it seemed like I was hijacking the thread a little bit. Ragholio and I were online at the same time, and it might have been better if I had PM'd him....

Not sure about soundfonts & Win 7...I tend to shy away from soundfonts to begin with. .Wav files are always much better, and naturally the higher the bit depth, the better. It seems what a lot of composer/musicians wind up doing is finding the best libraries that seem to interest them, within their budget, and often scour the web for freebies then slog through hundreds if not thousands of sounds to find the ones that really catch their ear for a particular purpose. There always those gems "hidden" in otherwise mundane, yet free libraries. What I have done over time is to hang out in forums of major software developers like Cubase, Sonar, Reaper, FL Studio, etc. and search those forums to find recommendations for a variety of sample sources. Then it's a process of picking the meat off the bones, so to speak. Typically out of 100-200 sounds you may find 1 or 2 you like. I think this applies to libraries that cost a lot of money also....it can be very subjective. Just keep searching and you'll find what you want; or what will work at any rate.

BTW I recommend http://reaper.fm/ to do sequencing/production....it's powerful, inexpensive (fully functional shareware) and being developed by Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp & gnutella, and tightly coded to not be "bloatware" unlike *other* DAW's.......and his customer relations philosophy has no peer. It's more like community.

Anyway, good luck with your project(s).

Thank you. But do you know if the Garritan personal orchestra 4 have sounds like the music of the FFIV trailer?

One more thing, for a simple program like sibelius 6, do you really need 8gb of ram just to simulate a baroque piece of 10 voices or less?

Yes, with Garritan you will be able to create music that sounds identical to FFIV but with better quality, more realistic samples. I write very similar music myself using Garritan. It's an all inclusive symphonic library with bonus steinway piano and harpsichord and brass patches from ProjectSAM.

Heres something similar that I wrote a few years ago: http://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/song_2954616 It uses entirely Garritan Personal Orchestra 2 (an older version of GPO)

In answer to you Sibelius question, I'm not sure. But I used to be able to run a full 80 piece orchestra plus 2 Altiverb reverb plugins in Win7 x64 on Cubase 5 with only 2GB of RAM so I'm sure Sibelius would be less intensive.

Nice sounds. I guess Garritan is my best choice.

A different question, do you know if the program SmartscoreX can do nearly all of the things that Sibelius and Finale can? It's much lighter and simpler than both.

Thanks.

Thanks

I'm sorry, but I can't really answer that question knowingly as I only use the scoring functions in Cubase.

I think your best bet is to do some review googling, read up on the different features of each package and decide what best suits your needs/level of ability. e.g. http://music-notation-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

I tried Sibelius a few years ago and found it to be quite user friendly. But I still prefer Cubase as I've been using it for over 10 years.

I found a review of SmartscoreX http://midi-software-review.toptenreviews.com/smartscore-review.html

A variant of Garritan is being sold for $5 right now, it might be a good idea to nab it while the offer is available: http://www.store.cakewalk.com/b2cus/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=10-DMLE1.00-20E