tenor banjo sample

[Veerstryngh Thynner]

Greetings all!

For the last ten years, or thereabouts, I have been searching for tenor banjo sample.

A couple of weeks ago, I seemed to have found what I had been after for so long: truly excellent tenor banjo samples ('Vintage Jazz Guitars and Tenor Banjos'), produced by a US company called Bardstown Audio. However, the owner, Kip McGinnis, informed me that, of recently, all Bardstown libraries have been licensed to Big Fish Audio - the latter thus becoming sole distributor. And further inquiry learned that Big Fish don't/won't "do" tenor banjo.

Elsewhere in these forums, extensive and thoroughly helpful advice with respect to technological setup has previously been received (thanks once again, AnthonyCFox!). Acquiring halfway decent sample, though, remains the biggest headache of all. Incidentally: my style of playing is 'chord melody' (the bottom A serving as melody string; the other three - CGD - for accompaniment, largely) - and of course I'd like to see any tenor banjo sample reproducing this as accurately as feasible, under current state of the art - my electric tenor guitar thereby serving as controller.

Googling 'tenor banjo sample' only yields hardware (i.e. acoustic instruments, chord charts, tablature, video tutorials and the like). And in searches for generic virtual musical instruments, banjo (let alone tenor banjo) rarely crops up. Although it does in the Philharmonia Orchestra website, surprisingly: downloadable banjo sample featured indeed. Yet I'm under the impression that, somehow, this won't be capturing chords. Sourceforge and CNet haven't been tried yet.

I'm now increasingly thinking of having my own acoustic tenor banjo professionally sampled. Since I have no previous experience with samples/sampling, I still don't know where to start. And as to whether the financial picture will be within reasonable boundaries is something else I'd like to hear about.

If any Londoners are reading this, I'm hoping for their advice. And, possibly, some suggestions as to where to go to for further information.

tnob

[tnovelli]

Truly excellent, professional quality, eh? I think my neighbor's got a tenor banjo... could be interesting to sample it, but more like a study project than pro-quality. Better than the lousy banjo samples I know of, but certainly not something I could charge money for - so I wouldn't want to spend too much time on it. It's a thought, though.

I imagine you record each string at open position, 2nd fret, 5th fret, 5th, 9th, 12th... and at each note you'd want several 'layers' from loud to soft. Then you chop the recording up into a bunch of WAV files, and create a SFZ 'instrument file' to map MIDI notes/velocities to WAV samples. For your chord-melody playing style, you might need separate MIDI tracks mapped to separate 'instruments' - at least one for the A string and one for the other three, or 4 individual strings. (Can your guitar controller generate 1-midi-channel-per-string output?)

I suspect that 3 notes recorded separately won't really sound the same as a chord played on the instrument, but sampling every imaginable chord would be completely impractical, right?

[Veerstryngh Thynner]

Hi there!

Truly excellent, professional audio quality is asked a bit too much, perhaps - if I have to create something out of nothing myself. On the other hand: that there are loads of virtual musical instruments available out there is indisputable fact.

Many virtual acoustic/electric/jazz/resonator - you name it! - guitar instruments amongst those; on the market for years. Or even freely downloadable. And lots fully well capable of reproducing single string as well as chords. But not a single (tenor) banjo, in the course of some ten years?????

In other words: creating polyphonic virtual six-string guitar instruments is technically perfectly doable. But a polyphonic virtual four-string BANJO instrument not???? Although banjo has two strings fewer to take into account????

You'll have to admit that's just ridiculous!

I don't yet own a guitar controller. I'm aiming for Fishman TriplePlay - but it'll take a while before I have enough funds to buy one. Hence, I'm wondering if a professional recording studio could be of any help. But I'm hitting a wall here, too.

So even lousy banjo samples would still be better than none whatsoever...

tnob

[AnthonyCFox]

Acquiring halfway decent sample, though, remains the biggest headache of all. Incidentally: my style of playing is 'chord melody' (the bottom A serving as melody string; the other three - CGD - for accompaniment, largely) - and of course I'd like to see any tenor banjo sample reproducing this as accurately as feasible, under current state of the art - my electric tenor guitar thereby serving as controller.

Here you go: https://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/node/43 it will play in LinuxSampler and with a sequencer or polyphonic midi controller (Fishman Triple Play Roland anything else ) you can play chords and melody simultaneously like with a banjo or piano or guitar. You can hear a banjo in the demo on the page at -1:05.

[Veerstryngh Thynner]

AnthonyCFox, you're a scholar and a gentleman! An absolute superduperhyper star, in other words! Again!

Thank you so much for looking into this!

One additional query, though: if I understand you correctly, this sample will also work with Behringer Guitar Link?

tnob

PS:

I just found out (e.g. a couple of hours after posting the above) that the (London) Philharmonia Orchestra provides lots of FREE musical insrument sample, too:

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/explore/make_music

Almost every symphonic orchestra instrument is represented - plus a few peripheral (see below). I don't yet know what Philharmonia's sound quality is like. Yet with previous discussions on Sonatina's in mind, useful to mention as viable alternative, I think.

To my not inconsiderable surprise, the list also contains banjo (and mandolin; and guitar, a.o.). My main interest here is banjo, of course - but I have no idea of how to check as to whether Philharmonia's banjo samples are monophonic or polyphonic.

Could somebody have a look for me please?

tnob

[AnthonyCFox]

One additional query, though: if I understand you correctly, this sample will also work with Behringer Guitar Link?

No. The Guitar Link is a USB interface not a midi converter. It brings the audio from your guitar into your computer which you can then pipe into audio applications like Guitarix, Rakarrack, or Amplitube 3 (works in wine and is my favorite).

I just found out (e.g. a couple of hours after posting the above) that the (London) Philharmonia Orchestra provides lots of FREE musical insrument sample, too:

http://www.philharmonia.co.uk/explore/make_music

Almost every symphonic orchestra instrument is represented - plus a few peripheral (see below). I don't yet know what Philharmonia's sound quality is like. Yet with previous discussions on Sonatina's in mind, useful to mention as viable alternative, I think.

I saw this when you mentioned Philharmonia Orchestra earlier and it is an amazing resource which I suspected existed but had never run into before. For your purposes it's not really usable as it is, it's just a collection of mp3 files with no scripting to make them accessible to a sample player.

It could be put into sfz format though, but that's not a trivial thing to do. I've spent some time looking into creating sfz files, I going to take a stab at creating one. No guarantees though, even if I can do it, I may dislike the work more than I desire the finished project; so, we'll see... Maybe, other people will join in and help; there's plenty to go around. I'll start with banjo as it is the top of the list.

[varpa]

I might wonder why you could not check these samples yourself... Anyway, I was curious and find that these are monophonic samples in mp3 format. Mp3 format is rather unsuitable for a sampled instrument, since it is lossy, and also because linux-based samplers do not typically read mp3 so you'd have to convert to something else and lose even more audio quality. Also, Philharmonia does not include release and noise samples which are desirable to make a sampled instrument sound more realistic. So I would say Philharmonia samples are not all that useful.
You can find some SF2 (soundfont) banjo samples, in particular GM (General Midi) sound fonts will contain a banjo as program 105.

Also, I do not quite understand why you want to play your real banjo and convert it to midi with a Fishman device (or guitarix) and use it to play banjo samples on your computer. Certainly, a lot of sound quality and subtlety will be lost in the translation.

[AnthonyCFox]

...these are monophonic samples in mp3 format. Mp3 format is rather unsuitable for a sampled instrument, since it is lossy...

Yeah, I discovered this too. I don't want to make junk, so I'm going to pass on Philharmonia and look for something else. I did spend some more time looking at the scripting of sfz's and it's definitely within my skills range, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

[Veerstryngh Thynner]

First of all, many thanks to AnthonyCFox, for his efforts.

Your proposition is hugely appreciated, of course. And I'm very much looking forward to hear how you fare. PMs welcome, if you feel like it.

And to varpa:

I might wonder why you could not check these samples yourself...

I did check those Philharmonia samples myself - but couldn't get any sound of them, somehow, in first instance. When I finally managed closer inspection, I only saw single notes. Philharmonia's should be regarded as monophonic then, strictly speaking.

The banjo demo in Digital Sound Factory AnthonyCFox pointed out to me sounded as combinations of arpeggio, single string and chords. He also confirmed that Digital Sound Factory's can be played as chords, so should be regarded as polyphonic, logically. But for all I know there may even be sample appearing as monophonic, but still capable of producing chords nonetheless - I have no way of telling.

In short: as to deciding what's suiting my purpose best, I simply don't yet know what features exactly to look for in a sample - all this being very new to me. Hence, my request was for an eye way better trained than mine.

Also, I do not quite understand why you want to play your real banjo and convert it to midi with a Fishman device (or guitarix) and use it to play banjo samples on your computer. Certainly, a lot of sound quality and subtlety will be lost in the translation.

I'm not sure if you're referring to my acoustic tenor banjo or my electric tenor guitar( on which a little more slightly further down).

Easiest would be to grab a mike, a stand and my acoustic tenor banjo and record tracks directly in Audacity or Ardour; I totally agree. But because my acoustic instrument is very loud and the separation between me and my next-door neighbour wafer-thin, this never was an option.

For my first experiments as to transition to electric/electronic, my acoustic instrument seemed the most logical starting point

Decreasing volume output seemed doable - to some extent at least; but not nearly enough in practice, to my liking. Adaptation to MIDI also had to be abandoned soon. Subsequently, an electric tenor banjo (a Deering, I think) was tried out - but this equally proved far too noisy. The only alternative remaining, therefore, seemed developing some way of playing banjo by electronic means. Or giving up playing banjo altogether.

By this point, I began thinking of a flat-body electric banjo instrument.

I found exactly such an item online, as a matter of fact: made in the Hebrides and wildly expensive. Only a bit later it so happened that I came across a cheap secondhand 3/4 flat-body electric guitar. But it took a while before its potential as a noiseless "banjo" dawned on me. A guitar maker I knew agreed and, moreover, was willing to put in some adaptations. Thing is, though, that my electric tenor still sounds like an electric guitar.

At this stage, I started looking around for some virtual banjo substitute. And I still am: my only tangible result being a Korg multi-effect processor including a "banjo body" simulator not remotely credibly emulating banjo. Then, two weeks ago, truly superb Bardstown Audio stuff cropped up, all of a sudden - only to prove thoroughly unobtainable just as rapidly. And only yesterday or the day before, AnthonyCFox showed me Digital Sound Factory's Old World Instruments - the best outcome so far.

This now has been my whole yield over the course of some ten years.

By the way: guitarix is staunchly monophonic, too, as I recently discovered, so if I want my playing style adequately reflected, it doesn't come in the equation.

tnob

[AnthonyCFox]

I did check those Philharmonia samples myself - but couldn't get any sound of them, somehow, in first instance. When I finally managed closer inspection, I only saw single notes. Philharmonia's should be regarded as monophonic then, strictly speaking.
...

By the way: guitarix is staunchly monophonic, too, as I recently discovered, so if I want my playing style adequately reflected, it doesn't come in the equation.

Your concept of polyphonic vs. monophonic isn't clear to me. You'll find that 99%+ of samples (other than loops) are composed of single notes. You call that monophonic but in actual use, with a sequencer or midi controller (keyboard, Triple Play, etc.), those notes can be played simultaneously to make chords, pedal point, counter point, etc. and that is polyphonic.

Saying guitarix is monophonic leaves me stupefied... If I play an open E minor chord on my guitar with guitarix, I can hear every single string, ringing loud and clear simultaneously. What could be more polyphonic than that?

Maybe if you tried explaining what you want, using different terms, it will be easier to understand.

[raboof]

By the way: guitarix is staunchly monophonic, too, as I recently discovered, so if I want my playing style adequately reflected, it doesn't come in the equation.

Your concept of polyphonic vs. monophonic isn't clear to me. You'll find that 99%+ of samples (other than loops) are composed of single notes.

When guitarix is used as an audio-to-MIDI converter (get guitar input, produce MIDI output, use the MIDI output to trigger a sampler), it is monophonic.

Indeed guitarix is much more suitable to be used as an effect, and indeed used like that it's obviously polyphonic.

[raboof]

I did check those Philharmonia samples myself - but couldn't get any sound of them, somehow, in first instance. When I finally managed closer inspection, I only saw single notes. Philharmonia's should be regarded as monophonic then, strictly speaking.

No, a sample library almost always has single notes, and it's the samplers' job to play them simultaneously, turning them into a polyphonic MIDI instrument.

[tramp]

By the way: guitarix is staunchly monophonic, too, as I recently discovered, so if I want my playing style adequately reflected, it doesn't come in the equation.

Your concept of polyphonic vs. monophonic isn't clear to me. You'll find that 99%+ of samples (other than loops) are composed of single notes.

When guitarix is used as an audio-to-MIDI converter (get guitar input, produce MIDI output, use the MIDI output to trigger a sampler), it is monophonic.

Indeed guitarix is much more suitable to be used as an effect, and indeed used like that it's obviously polyphonic.

Guitarix isn't monophonic, in fact the audio-to-MIDI converter which was once included was removed longer then a year now. Simply because it didn't/can't suit professional needs. The GxTuner LV2 plugin include a monophonic audio-to-MIDI converter, but this one isn't even better, so you can use it just for fun.

And as we are in the "samples forum" here, here is a neat guitarix (ex)sample:
https://soundcloud.com/pupkovem/peschikna7

[AnthonyCFox]

When guitarix is used as an audio-to-MIDI converter (get guitar input, produce MIDI output, use the MIDI output to trigger a sampler), it is monophonic.

Is that what he was talking about? *shrugs*

[tramp]

When guitarix is used as an audio-to-MIDI converter (get guitar input, produce MIDI output, use the MIDI output to trigger a sampler), it is monophonic.

Is that what he was talking about? *shrugs*

That's what coming around when people just repeat what they have read/hear somewhere, and then claim it as there own experience.
In fact, guitarix didn't include a audio-to-midi-converter.