Ableton announced that they’d be doing an orchestral sample library — called, logically enough, the Orchestral Instrument Collection — way back when Live Suite came out last year. But Orchestral Instruments actually didn’t ship then. As of this week, it is shipping.

You can buy the whole library for US$599, or you can pick up sections a la carte for $189 (or, oddly, $159 for Orchestral Percussion). Like the Essential Instruments Collection, the samples come from SONiVOX, with high-fidelity and low-fidelity (read: lightweight for performance) versions. There’s also something new called "SmartPriming" for system resources. I haven’t yet gotten my hands on this, so I can’t comment yet; obviously, it comes down to how important Live integration is to you, or whether you’d prefer a third-party orchestral library.

The a la carte sections, though, makes me think of Garrison Keillor’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra skit. (It’s Classical Music humor. My apologies.) One way to choose sections: think about which God would want you to buy. Excerpt:

But for a Lutheran who feels led to play in an orchestra, the first question must be: are you kidding? An orchestra? Are you sure this is what you want? Do you know what you are getting into? Opera. Is that anyplace for a Christian? Don Juan and Mephistopheles and Wagner and all his pagan goddesses hooting and hollering, and the immorality — I mean, is anybody in opera married?

Not to give away the punchline, but not surprisingly harps and percussion (think about the patience required to be an orchestral percussionist) win out, so that could theoretically guide your purchase decision here. Just remember:

The French Horn takes too much of a person’s life. French horn players hardly have time to marry and have children. The French horn is practically a religion all by itself.

Software is different, of course. A Young Lutheran’s Guide to Music Software, anyone?

As mentioned last week, the OLPC project has provided some 8.5GB of Creative Commons-licensed sound. Unfortunately, in an all-too-familiar scenario, the servers didn’t stand up to its instant popularity. Good news — most of the content is available now via torrent, with additional content on the Internet Archive.

We need a Few Good Seeds, so grab that torrent and seed it! (I am…)

Official OLPC sound samples page

Internet Archive links

olpc-sound-samples on Mininova (should be on other trackers, as well)

And previously…

8.5 GB of Free, CC-Licensed Samples from the OLPC Project, and OLPC Music Tools

Oh, yeah, and no one need feel guilty about using the samples. That was kind of the idea. (Not to mention, this could be a good sample source for working on projects for the OLPC.)

“Sure, the OLPC project is supposed to do wonderful things for children of the world, but what has it done for me, lately?” Well, if you fancy yourself one of the Earth’s children, the OLPC organization has assembled 8.5 gigabytes of sample content that’s free and Creative Commons-licensed — free to acquire, and free to use.

Jacob Joaquin, who runs the terrific thumbuki blog and the Csound Blog and is part ofthe team developing Csound for the OLPC’s XO laptop, shares the news via Dr. Richard Boulanger at Berklee. (See the press release as a zipped .doc.)

Plenty of people contributed top-notch sound: the Berklee College of Music, Csound developers around the world, electronica celebrity BT (himself a former Berklee and Boulanger student, among other alums), M-Audio and Digidesign, and the Open Path Music Group.

They’re donated under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so you can “freely create, compose, mix, remix, share, distribute and redistribute these samples and use them for any purpose as long as you clearly attribute the source.” That means anyone, anywhere can make use of this library — no OLPC required.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Sound_samples

Csound, OLPC Style

Whether you like the OLPC laptop itself or not, there’s plenty going on with the project. There’s the immediate impact of the hardware and software, yes — and plenty of opportunity to praise or criticize its utility there (perhaps the mark of a good, ambitious project). But there’s also the secondary impact. The OLPC has captured imaginations in terms of what future computers might be, and what they might mean to more of the population of the planet. More importantly, perhaps, it’s building a family of open source, Linux-based (and cross platform technology-based) tools, which could ultimately outlive the hardware platform. I have my own doubts about the OLPC itself, but the ideas for open sound making are about more than just that hardware. (For instance, just testing Processing, Arduino and Java on this kind of mobile platform can improve that software.)

The sample library is only part of the story; software tools is another part. Powered by Csound, the OLPC team wants to put sound synthesis and music production in the hands of kids — we’re talking serious digital synthesis here, not just GarageBand-style looping. That goal could ultimately go well beyond just the OLPC.

Csound is a free and open source development tool for sound design, synthesis, and signal processing, with a lineage that goes back to original developer Barry Vercoe and in turn descended from the first digital synthesis tools created by Max Mathews. It is the audio/music development system for the OLPC project, with integration with Python (though I’ve heard we should also see additional Java development).

Those geeky details aside, you’ll see in many of the reviews of the OLPC writers mentioning unusual and fun music toys. Those journalists are stumbling upon some of the projects below, and the process is just getting started.

Jacob had shared some brief looks at what he’s working on on his OLPC, but here’s the full overview from Dr. Boulanger, because there’s quite a lot happening:

I usually don’t pick up presets and sound libraries on CDM, but this one deserves an exception. Musicrow has built a preset pack for Arturia’s Moog Modular V. That’s the software emulation of the truly modular Moogs — the ones with patch cords — so this gives you what you don’t get out of the real thing, a set of sound presets you can call upon immediately. Looks like a good blend of “traditional” presets and more unusual ones, and Arturia’s emulation, like the original Moog modular, has a rich set of sonic capabilities.

20 of the 200 presets are available for immediate, free use; if you like them, the whole set is US$39 (EUR29).

Musicrow Modular Dreams

I have to say, as much as I loved the tactile feel of patching on a real Moog modular, and as much as the software sound falls slightly short of the real thing, you can’t beat the fact that you can transport a laptop and save presets! Photo by Erikadotnet.

Native Instruments has released their free KORE player software and the first packs of sounds for the KORE platform today. It’s part of their play to get soundware addicts onto KORE, their all-encompassing instruments and effects package. First, here’s a review of what KORE actually is, as it’s expanded from even what it was when first announced at the beginning of 2007. KORE is…

• KORE software, a tool that can act either as a plug-in or a host for plug-ins, which provides sound browsing, internal effects, and performance controls for combining sounds and effects in semi-modular fashion - ships as KORE 2
• A hardware controller, integrated with the software for high, resolution hands-on control and the ability to audition and switch sounds and performance presets without looking at your computer - also ships with KORE 2
• A sound platform, in which NI presets for existing instruments and effects are categorized and controlled in standardized ways — which doesn’t require KORE 2
• A set of functionalities built into NI’s instrument and effects line that make it easier to browse presets (theirs or your own) in a standard way — again, doesn’t require KORE 2 (though integrates with the hardware if you’ve got it)

So, what’s it all mean? Well, in short, you can get a handful of sounds for free, some good sounds for cheap — but, as often happens, the exciting stuff is at the deep end of the pool when you pay up for the full KORE and get a semi-modular performance environment for instruments and effects, integrated with control hardware. And since we like diving in the deep end around here, you know upfront where our bias is. That said, here’s a quick look at some of the bargain buys to be had, which could complement another tool nicely.

Free, odd soundware keeps on coming — hot on the heels of faux bent instruments and a tape-recorded Roland 606 and 808, here are more sounds to satisfy your need for unusual sounds.

Stephen Haunts was inspired by the cassette-recorded 808, and writes to tell us he’s decided to give something back. He’s uploaded 22 kits from a Korg ElecTribe ER-1, a kit from a Yamaha DD-10 (pictured amusing the awkward fellow at right from the manual), and a Yamaha PSS-80. The Yamahas steal the show: they’re little toy keyboards with a decidedly lo-fi sound. I always admired the Japanese sound designers for their minimalism on these low-end hardware units. You almost don’t need to circuit bend this.

Free Drum Machine Samples by Creature [Haunted House Records]

Stephen, aka Creature, used these samples for his Distant Horizon album featured in Mike Una’s round-up of music from the forums.

Toy drums not to your liking? How about a toy music box instead?

Our friend Tom at Music Thing has repaired and sampled his Fisher Price record player music box, then uploaded the results to the open source soundware site Freesound:

Sampling a Fisher Price Music Box Record Player [Music Thing]

You may remember said Fisher Price kit from the tongue-in-cheek Fisher Price turntable “review” by DJ Tech Tool’s Ean Golden.

What’s great about both these sound collections is they’re actually different enough to give you some real inspiration musically. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to take my handheld recorder around the house and grab some other sounds.

How do you make the Moog legacy of instruments accessible — assuming you can’t afford a studio full of vintage gear? One choice is to model the instruments virtually, as developers like Arturia have done. That provides real-time control, but models may not be perfect, and if you want more than one instrument, you really need more than one model. Others have reimagined some of the Moog sound designs on more modern instruments, as Craig Anderton did recently with Cakewalk’s Rapture.

IK Multimedia, working with veteran sample house Sonic Reality in collaboration with Moog Music, have taken the “museum” approach — put samples of everything in a single box. And what an ambitious collection they’ve got, as we noted when the product was announced. But can you win over even someone who owns some of the real gear? We put that question to our own Lee Sherman, who’s been diving deep into the tool. Mindful of the tradeoffs, he’s got some insight into just how useful they were able to make that sampled content.

SampleMoog can’t help but be greeted with some degree of skepticism. Even virtual analog synths like Arturia’s Minimoog V don’t go all of the way in reproducing the Moog experience. How can something based on samples even come close?

Pristine digital technology — some people just can’t resist putting it in the service of recreating grungier, noisier sound-producing tech. Hot on the heels of Indirect-to-Digital - by-way-of-tape samples of the TR606 and 808, here are some digital recreations of circuit-bent noisemakers. Of course, I generally prefer to see circuit bending producing actual, DIY hardware — see our Circuit Bending Challenge — but it’s still an interesting exercise. (And it’s worth sampling some of this gear for live performance, especially when you can record sound before something, um, breaks. At least if it’s my project.)

Rekkerd.org finds not one, but two projects:

• Eric Beam releases Circuit Bent TR-505 samples, samples of a bent TR-505 “DeComposer”, captured “with pristine TC-Electronic A/D converters.” (What, no Marantz portable? The hardware in-progress pictured above.)
• de la Mancha releases Bent, a free “circuit-bent resynthesis” effect, with tempo-sync granulator effects, and jittering, morphing, and jittering morphing pitch. Windows VST.

De la Mancha’s stuff is great, and with some granular effects, you get a “bent” creation that can only exist in software. In fact, maybe “faux” is unfair in that case. Software doesn’t have the reputation of hardware circuit bending, and there’s not the immediacy of a contact point on a physical circuit. But you can certainly find just as many, if not more, strange and organically accidental “discoveries” when working with code and patches.

Digital samples got no soul? How about digital samples of tape and cassette samples of classic Roland instruments? Huggie from New Zealand (and Goldbaby Productions) has been producing some lovely sample libraries from favorite gear, free and payware. He’s posted two of the best as freebies to the CDM forums. The hook: they’re recorded on analog before being sampled again.

There’s a TR606 recorded to an Ampex 1/2 inch 2-track tape machine, which appeared around Christmas. And this week, we got a superb 808 samples set recorded to a portable Marantz deck. (Funny, I’ve spent some quality time with both recorders, so that adds extra nostalgia.)

Less this all be chalked up to simple novelty, I have to admit you get a nice, warm sound out of the results. I’m dropping these on some Drum Racks in Ableton as we speak.

And here’s what it sounds like in action:
Cassette 808 Demo [mp3]

Free Tape606 sample pack… Merry Christmas! [CDM forums in December]

The Cassette 808 sample pack! Old skool and free… [CDM forums]

Free Stuff @ Goldbaby (other goodies, too, but for these scroll to the very bottom and look for Tape606 sample pack and The Cassette 808)

Thanks, huggie! Good stuff. Anyone else with soundware they want to share, please let us know.