Computer Music Also Does Free/Alchemy and SFZ

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Feb 132015
 

A couple of things:

One, the March issue of Computer Music Magazine is doing a huge Free VST/Sample focus, so you don’t need to speak Japanese to learn all about free VSTs. They’re doing a big tutorial on Synth1, too, which I think is worth reading if you’re interested in Synth1. It’s a pretty powerful free synth that has been around for a while.

Also, if you’re looking for the Alchemy player, CM’s crazy software bundle that comes out each month has the Alchemy Player in it. It’s not the same as the full version of Alchemy, which I love, but it’s better than nothing.

There’s a bunch of other free stuff they stick in there software-wise every month. Most of the “CM” versions are essentially demo versions of real products, with some of the juicier features removed, but you can use them all you want as they are. It’s a good way to demo products you may not even know you might need. (Or you may not need. You won’t know until you mess with them a bit.)

Two, I totally forgot that Alchemy will load SFZ format files. I just spent 20 minutes playing with the violins in SSO, creating a really neat pad in Alchemy with them. It’s dead simple to do, too, since Alchemy supports the format. Such a shame that they got bought out, and we’ll probably never see the new version of Alchemy. Good for them that they got the money, but bad for us, since Alchemy is a brilliant piece of software.

I’m kind of bummed that all of the Alchemy add-ons are unavailable now, but now I can go into my SFZ files and make my own. So it’s part loss, part win.

Free Orchestra Sounds and Free Sample Players

 Music, Technology  Comments Off on Free Orchestra Sounds and Free Sample Players
Feb 052015
 

I’d love to get some of the top-shelf orchestral libraries, but I don’t really have $2,000 lying around. And I love Free Things!

So I’m going to suggest taking a look at Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra. It’s free as in free speech and free beer. The quality is good, not great, but that’s all I need at my level.

The SSO library uses the SFZ open format, and the only player I can find anymore is the free SFZ sample player at Plogue. I tried to find the Cakewalk SFZ player, but all I got were 404 errors.

Plogue also kindly assembled a bunch of free samples for the SFZ player from Garritan, Digital Sound Factory, Analog Industries, Patch Arena, and Plogue as well! And they’re free!

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