Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Printable Version +- Scoring Central (http://scoringcentral.mattiaswestlund.net) +-- Forum: Technology (http://scoringcentral.mattiaswestlund.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Samples & Sample libraries (http://scoringcentral.mattiaswestlund.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=8) +--- Thread: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries (/showthread.php?tid=525) |
Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Terry93D - 12-20-2018 So on Facebook I'm a member of the VGM Academy group. I don't comment much (and post not at all) but a few days ago someone posted this: Quote:Hello, everybody! I'm a mexican composer. New member here, but looking to get practice and connections. I mosty arrange using synthetic sounds, since I have almost no practice in recording orchestral instruments. I wanted to ask a couple of things: a) Do you know a good affordable sound library for orchestral sounds? b) Do you know any good online resource to learn orchestration? Thanks! I saw this and read it and realized that yes! This is something for which I have a level of knowledge adequate to help them. So I wrote a small book. Quote:1: the SONiVOX Film Score Companion is reasonably inexpensive, but the software is, frankly, not very good. There's no disk streaming which means it's a nasty RAM hog. They are monotimbral; you'd need a separate instance for each section of the orchestra. I've heard various other problems with it, too, which have been detailed over at the Scoring Central forums. I would recommend only as a very last of last resorts - I might even go as far as to warn you against purchasing it. This option is a difficult one for me because the sounds are fantastic; warm, rich, lush, etc.; but the front end is awful. You thought I was exaggerating. Anyway, having written so much, I realized that I could probably, with a little bit more research, turn this into a fully-fledged article. So I'm thinking of doing just that. Since I know this forum is filled to the gills with people more knowledgeable then I, about free and affordable libraries, and not only that but people who have recorded and compiled and created such libraries - three of which I mentioned in my post (SSO, VSCO2, and VPO) - I figured you all could, possibly, help. Even so much as direction as to what to research, and where, would be helpful. This is stuff that you all are experts at. I am a dilettante. If you can help in any way, however minor, I would appreciate it. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Paul Battersby - 12-20-2018 You have a good collection of information there (and thanks for the glowing review of Virtual Playing Orchestra). For your article, one thing to consider is including links to all the libraries and also including this new library: Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra It's been mentioned in another thread here. It's current introductory price is $119 (and apparently even works with the free version of Kontakt) so maybe it belongs on your list? RE: item #5 : just recently, the download for Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra is no longer available. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Terry93D - 12-20-2018 (12-20-2018, 01:42 AM)Paul Battersby Wrote: You have a good collection of information there (and thanks for the glowing review of Virtual Playing Orchestra). For your article, one thing to consider is including links to all the libraries and also including this new library: Ah yes! Links. Of my original comment I replied to it with a list of all links mentioned (including to this very forum w/ regards to the issues with the SONiVOX VSTs) but I did not include it for brevity's sake - and forgot to even mention it. xp In any case, though, you are quite correct, and I will include links in the article. The Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra, huh... the increasing amount of affordable orchestras is a wonderful thing. It's good to have such a variety of choices. I certainly shall include it. Thank you! RE the Sonatina Symphonic: That is unfortunate to hear. A developer on Github by the username of peastman has a "2.0" available, though I had intended - for the sake of completeness - to include both versions. Oh well! I'm sure there's a back-up somewhere; perhaps on Archive.org. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Mattias Westlund - 12-20-2018 (12-20-2018, 02:00 AM)Terry93D Wrote: RE the Sonatina Symphonic: That is unfortunate to hear. A developer on Github by the username of peastman has a "2.0" available, though I had intended - for the sake of completeness - to include both versions. Oh well! I'm sure there's a back-up somewhere; perhaps on Archive.org. peastman is on this forum and there's an SSO 2.0 thread here somewhere As for removing the original SSO package, I basically had to since my bandwidth limit is exceeded every month and 90% of the b/w was SSO downloads. For me it's more important having my site and the forum running smoothly than offering a very dated orchestral library. I'm sure it's out there somewhere though, if you look around. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - bigcat1969 - 12-21-2018 If only someone had made a VST of Sonatina and maybe even VSCO2 and it was available on VST4Free or VSTBuzz... oh well you can't have everything. Not that I don't love VPO of course but you would think they might get a mention or at least Sam's SFZ version of VSCO the Two Community. Goes away and sulks... And if Mattias will forgive me and doesn't mind, I think this is a mirror I made three years ago for myself and never mentioned to the public (0 downloads atm). I'll run out of bandwidth sometime next year I suspect, but hey until then... http://www.mediafire.com/file/xcmcl628miy4qju/SSO-sso.mattiaswestlund.com-SFZ-Samples.zip/file RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Terry93D - 12-21-2018 (12-21-2018, 12:58 AM)bigcat1969 Wrote: If only someone had made a VST of Sonatina and maybe even VSCO2 and it was available on VST4Free or VSTBuzz... oh well you can't have everything. Not that I don't love VPO of course but you would think they might get a mention or at least Sam's SFZ version of VSCO the Two Community. Goes away and sulks... I will be honest: I completely forgot there was a VST version because I personally have never used the VST versions. I promise that if I do write this article that I'll include links to your VSTs. Likewise, I'll include VSCO 2 CE. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - bigcat1969 - 12-21-2018 Thanks I knew if I threw a tantrum you would! ;P If you want more thoughts about orchestral stuff, surf VI-Control. It is mostly upper end but they do discuss less expensive stuff and sketching orchestras. The instruments bit of KVR is also a useful place to look. I don't know if you want to get into the Kontakt thing. Once a yearish they tend to put on an upgrade sale and if you get free Drummica (sp) you can upgrade to full Kontakt for about $125 otherwise they have half price sales for $200. It has an aging but decent set of instruments including orchestral and choral. Plus Red Room has a free orchestral things for it and Project Sam is going to come out with a free orchestral thing for it. I also got more experimental (with mixed results) with VSCO2 including crossfading, legato and even arps and chords in the Kontakt version. I've done free instrument and free Kontakt instrument lists from around the web. There are a lot of nice pianos for instance which go well with orchestral stuff. https://freedigitalinstruments.wordpress.com/ As mentioned Amadeus is turning heads and UVI has an orchestral suite out for $200. EastWest Symphonic Orchestra Silver is about $100 and Gold is about $200 on sale right now. Mind it and UVI use ILok which I hate. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Terry93D - 12-22-2018 (12-21-2018, 03:57 PM)bigcat1969 Wrote: Thanks I knew if I threw a tantrum you would! ;P Tantrums are well-known for solving all problems, all of them. Your website has an extremely impressive collection of orchestral instruments! There's certainly enough - between the Aspens, SSO, VSCO2 CE, and others - to put together an entire orchestra, or a chamber ensemble of your choice. ---/ Okay. So, I've done a great deal of looking around - for complete orchestras, not for "ensemble suites" (e.g. Palette Primary Colors) or software dedicated to only one section - and I have found more then I bargained for in this respect. (Surely, a good sign for the state of music, if not for me. XD) I've set the price cap for this possible article at $300, since it seems to me that anything that costs more is high-end and may require a better computer than someone just starting out might have. The objectives of this article are much more descriptive then proscriptive, though it is not exclusively either. My goal is to list all options regardless of quality, and to provide demos of all (insofar as is possible) and only present my thoughts after describing it. This so as to keep with my philosophy of "provide all the information" and "write a small book." I have compiled a list of the following, in no particular order...
(In my ideal world, I'd compose demos for it all myself. A single demo for all of them, for direct comparison, and then a unique demo for each, to try and showcase its best side.) RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - bigcat1969 - 12-22-2018 Wow amazing list! Depending on intended use you might whittle it down by combining somethings like orchestras derived from VSCO2 and / or SSO. Possibly leaving out something like the Prosonus which I think requires Studio One Version 3 to use or Varazdin Orchestral which I think requires FL Studio. I might be wrong there. Thanks for doing this it would be a great book for newcomers and even some of us old timers as well. RE: Thinking about an article about free & affordable orchestral libraries - Terry93D - 12-22-2018 (12-22-2018, 01:08 AM)bigcat1969 Wrote: Wow amazing list! Depending on intended use you might whittle it down by combining somethings like orchestras derived from VSCO2 and / or SSO. Possibly leaving out something like the Prosonus which I think requires Studio One Version 3 to use or Varazdin Orchestral which I think requires FL Studio. I might be wrong there. I may consider leaving out such libraries, but if I do that then probably I'd have to leave out Kontakt libraries too, which begins limiting options severely and in any case I personally wouldn't feel right doing it. Yeah, after I finished writing the post I realized "hey, this might be useful to pros that want a cheap sketching library." |