Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:35 am
This is not so much a question looking for help, but a question relating to "how" and "why" - though as I type this I've thought of one of the "how do I do something" variety - which might be useful to know the answer to.
First - I found out how to create a "new" instrument using the AudioFileProcessor. I've only so far tried it with one instrument - a recorder. What is slightly unusual about LMMS is that that only requires one sample. That technique also works in other samplers, but many of the better ones nowadays use many samples, which introduce more "tone" and variety into the sound. That is how and why companies such as Spitfire Audio and Versilian manage to have viable businesses, making higher quality virtual instruments. They also use multiple microphone positions for the samples. Better virtual instruments also use round robin techniques to give more variety into the sounds, and the player may also introduce effects such as vibrato or tremolo - or in the case of a wind instrument like the flute or recorder - flutter tonguing.
I'm not claiming that my virtual recorder is a good one - it isn't - though the recorder I used for the original sample is a reasonably good one - a Moeck. I have others - such as a Mollenhauer, also good. I doubt whether sampling any of these using AudioFileProcessor is going to produce a substantially better virtual recorder. Indeed I did find one firm selling virtual instruments which had a virtual recorder which turned out to be based on a very cheap model which sells in the US. OTOH I have heard a version of a much more professional sounding virtual instrument "playing" a Vivaldi concerto, which sounds really rather good. I doubt that just recording the instruments is going to give a good virtual sound.
What seems to be important is getting articulation details into the generated virtual performance, plus also getting volume and maybe other effects done better.
I have tested "my" virtual recorder generated in LMMS playing simple tunes and there's really nothiing very special or very good about that. It doesn't do legato particularly well, nor perhaps staccato. Perhaps the recorder is an unusual instrument, in that all models really sound quite similar in general tone quality - from the sopranino down to the bass and contra-bass instruments, so sampling just one note off any of them can then be used to generate moderately similar virtual instruments - though without any extra subtlety. That would not be possible with most other instruments. Indeed before I started looking at virtual instruments I discovered that I could play tunes on a soprano or treble recorder, then pitch shift them down an octave or two in Audacity, to simulate the sound of a tenor or bass recorder. It is also possible to use a guitar pitch shifter to do a similar thing in real time - which surprised me.
So - my first question - is there a sampler in LMMS which produces better results which uses multiple samples, like the EXS 24 - now Sampler - in Logic?
My second question - the one I thought of when I started writing this - is it possible to retune any virtual instrument in LMMS to a different pitch - say A=430? I know it's possible to adjust virtual instrument pitches by altering the base note in the sampler, but those changes are only going to be up or down by a whole number of semitones - such as A flat = 415 Hz or B flat = 466 HZ - see https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html and the way to do that has been demonstrated well in a Youtube video by one of the members here.
First - I found out how to create a "new" instrument using the AudioFileProcessor. I've only so far tried it with one instrument - a recorder. What is slightly unusual about LMMS is that that only requires one sample. That technique also works in other samplers, but many of the better ones nowadays use many samples, which introduce more "tone" and variety into the sound. That is how and why companies such as Spitfire Audio and Versilian manage to have viable businesses, making higher quality virtual instruments. They also use multiple microphone positions for the samples. Better virtual instruments also use round robin techniques to give more variety into the sounds, and the player may also introduce effects such as vibrato or tremolo - or in the case of a wind instrument like the flute or recorder - flutter tonguing.
I'm not claiming that my virtual recorder is a good one - it isn't - though the recorder I used for the original sample is a reasonably good one - a Moeck. I have others - such as a Mollenhauer, also good. I doubt whether sampling any of these using AudioFileProcessor is going to produce a substantially better virtual recorder. Indeed I did find one firm selling virtual instruments which had a virtual recorder which turned out to be based on a very cheap model which sells in the US. OTOH I have heard a version of a much more professional sounding virtual instrument "playing" a Vivaldi concerto, which sounds really rather good. I doubt that just recording the instruments is going to give a good virtual sound.
What seems to be important is getting articulation details into the generated virtual performance, plus also getting volume and maybe other effects done better.
I have tested "my" virtual recorder generated in LMMS playing simple tunes and there's really nothiing very special or very good about that. It doesn't do legato particularly well, nor perhaps staccato. Perhaps the recorder is an unusual instrument, in that all models really sound quite similar in general tone quality - from the sopranino down to the bass and contra-bass instruments, so sampling just one note off any of them can then be used to generate moderately similar virtual instruments - though without any extra subtlety. That would not be possible with most other instruments. Indeed before I started looking at virtual instruments I discovered that I could play tunes on a soprano or treble recorder, then pitch shift them down an octave or two in Audacity, to simulate the sound of a tenor or bass recorder. It is also possible to use a guitar pitch shifter to do a similar thing in real time - which surprised me.
So - my first question - is there a sampler in LMMS which produces better results which uses multiple samples, like the EXS 24 - now Sampler - in Logic?
My second question - the one I thought of when I started writing this - is it possible to retune any virtual instrument in LMMS to a different pitch - say A=430? I know it's possible to adjust virtual instrument pitches by altering the base note in the sampler, but those changes are only going to be up or down by a whole number of semitones - such as A flat = 415 Hz or B flat = 466 HZ - see https://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html and the way to do that has been demonstrated well in a Youtube video by one of the members here.