Virtual Playing Orchestra

[ssj71]

FWIW I just downloaded it with no problem using FF on ubuntu.

[Lyberta]

Zips are handled as usual and I have no problem dling from other sites.

I have cookies disabled, AdBlock Plus with lots of filters and uMatrix which disables all 3rd party requests.

EDIT: Alright, it started downloading from One drive when I enabled iframes from livefilestore.com.

EDIT2: Oh, the license file is funny.

If you're using this free orchestral sample library to make music, then licensing is easy. You can do whatever you want with the music you make, even sell it commercially.

Nope, you are making a derivative work of the samples and you have to obey the license of them. For example, if some samples are NC then you can't make commercial music with them. In Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films it was determined that even sampling a 2 second guitar chord without permission is a copyright infringement. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_iss ... c_sampling

It doesn't work for the SFZ files though, because they are more like a tool which you use.

Also:

No Budget Orchestra
https://nobudgetorchestra.net/

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Nope, only Jeff's SFZ files are CC-BY-SA, the samples use various licenses and I would not recommend anyone to use No Budget Orchestra if they care about copyright and have no time to go through all the samples and determine their actual license.

My dream would be making a libre orchestra consisting of only CC-BY-SA samples so you can only make CC-BY-SA music with it. Oh well, maybe in the future.

[Paul Battersby]

Nope, you are making a derivative work of the samples and you have to obey the license of them. For example, if some samples are NC then you can't make commercial music with them. In Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films it was determined that even sampling a 2 second guitar chord without permission is a copyright infringement. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_iss ... c_sampling

It's not quite that simple.

From the same Wikipedia page In regards to the case you quoted, just a little further down the page:

In the United States, the case has been less favorably received. Most recently and significantly, the Ninth Circuit rejected its reasoning explicitly in the 2016 VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone (Madonna) case: "We recognize that the Sixth Circuit held to the contrary in Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films, 410 F.3d 792 (6th Cir. 2005), but—like the leading copyright treatise and several district courts—we find Bridgeport’s reasoning unpersuasive."[4] A number of District courts have rejected the decision explicitly or declined to apply it,[5] including courts in New York,[6] Florida,[7] California,[8] and Louisiana.[9]

There is also this from here:

There has been a second important US case on music sampling involving the Beastie Boys who sampled the sound recording of a flute track by James Newton in their song "Pass the Mic." The Beastie Boys properly obtained a license to use the sound recording but did not clear the use of the song (the composition on which the recording is based including any music and lyrics). In Newton v. Diamond and Others 349 F.3d 591 (9th Cir. 2003) the US Appeals Court held that the use of the looped sample of a flute did not constitute copyright infringement as the core of the song itself had not been used.

I don't think that any of these court cases actually apply to the use of individual sampled notes. It appears to be about sampled recordings of a performance of a melody or rhythm.

Even though you're not free to copy, duplicate, make derivatives, give away, modify and sell, professional libraries like EWQL, CineBrass, Hollywood Strings, are you restricted from using these libraries to make and sell a song?

[j_e_f_f_g]

use No Budget Orchestra if... have time to go through all the samples and determine their actual license.

You can easily determine the "actual license" of any NBO instrument just by looking at the license.txt file in the instrument's folder. It's incorrect that freesound.org doesn't provide you a license for any given sample(s). If you download a "pack", you get a zip file containing the wave files uploaded by a particular contributor, as well as a text file containing the license chosen by that contributor. Those NBO license.txt files are the "actual licenses" as assigned by the creators, and supplied by freesound.org. NBO is one of the few free libraries that organizes samples with their original licenses in the same folder, so there's no guessing what particular samples have which license. Most libs just give you a single readme file that lists the names of all the contributors, but doesn't identify what particular samples were contributed by whom. (For example, sonatina). Therefore, you don't know what samples have which particular license.

And those "GM soundfonts" you use are even worse when it comes to documenting individual samples. There are 128 instruments in the GM set. You think the single author of a given GM soundfont did his own sampling of 128 instruments, including esoteric ethnic instruments like sitar and koto? Of course not. He simply collected lots of samples from many sources, and put them all together in one soundfont. And he probably didn't bother doing any copyright vetting because a lot of that stuff was released by musicians who didn't bother to supply a copyright notice with their contributions.

In fact, if you cared about licensing, NBO would be the only free lib you'd be using, because it's the only one you've used that definitely allows you to "determine the actual license" for any given sample.

[Paul Battersby]

You can easily determine the "actual license" of any NBO instrument just by looking at the license.txt file in the instrument's folder.

The same should be true of the Virtual Playing Orchestra library. I've preserved the NBO license.txt files and done the same (or tried to) for the other samples I've included as well as kept the source of all the samples transparent. Each sample remains in a subdirectory named to indicate the original source. I wanted to ensure the other library creators kept the credit they deserve.

[Lyberta]

Even though you're not free to copy, duplicate, make derivatives, give away, modify and sell, professional libraries like EWQL, CineBrass, Hollywood Strings, are you restricted from using these libraries to make and sell a song?

They give explicit license for derivative works. Hell, CC Sampling Plus which is used by Sonatina is proprietary but explicitly allows most kinds of use for derivative works.

You can easily determine the "actual license" of any NBO instrument just by looking at the license.txt file in the instrument's folder. It's incorrect that freesound.org doesn't provide you a license for any given sample(s). If you download a "pack", you get a zip file containing the wave files uploaded by a particular contributor, as well as a text file containing the license chosen by that contributor. Those NBO license.txt files are the "actual licenses" as assigned by the creators, and supplied by freesound.org.

Alright, here's the small experiment I made. Let's go to Violin/SoloViolin/license.txt

This sfz's Sustain/Vibrato/Release folders contain samples by MTG. These sounds were extensively modified/looped by Jeff Glatt, who created this sfz version. You can find the original waveforms online at: https://www.freesound.org/people/MTG/packs/20216/

License details
---------------
Sampling+: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
Creative Commons 0: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Attribution Noncommercial: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0

The remaining folders contain sounds by ldk1609. You can find the original waveforms online at:
http://www.freesound.org/people/ldk1609/packs/3560/

License details
---------------
Sampling+: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/
Creative Commons 0: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Attribution Noncommercial: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Again, those are vastly different licenses with very different restrictions. Let's open https://www.freesound.org/people/MTG/packs/20216/

Pack: Oboe single notes by MTG

An OBOE pack! Fascinating, let's open the first file anyway:
https://www.freesound.org/people/MTG/sounds/355137/

This work is licensed under the Attribution License.

Alright, this oboe pack's license is CC-BY 3.0. Not CC-Sampling-Plus, not CC0 and not CC-BY-NC!

Not the violin though. Let's open https://www.freesound.org/people/ldk1609/packs/3560/

Oh, a CC0. Public domain. Well, we determined at least 1 violin "license" (public domain is not a license). Let's scout for more.

Violin/ViolinSect/license.txt

Created by Jeff Glatt
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

Did you record violin section yourself? Don't think so. You probably found it on the Internet without a license. No license = all right reserved = no rights.

Choir/license.txt

This sfz contains sounds by Mihai Sorohan. These sounds were extensively modified/looped by Jeff Glatt, who created this sfz version.

License details
---------------

1.You may not use it for commercial sample libraries (put it on a CD and sell it, sell it online, etc)

2.You may use the sample content as an integral part of your musical composition, in combination with other sounds, for both personal and commercial purpose.

3.I don't accept any responsibility for any damage, loss, liability, injury or upset caused to or suffered by you as a result of misusing this material.

Oh, a custom proprietary license. At least we didn't have to check URLs for the actual license.

DoubleBass/SoloBass/license.txt

This sfz uses samples from Meatbass, a sample library by Drogomir Smolken and Ludwik Zamenhof. You can find the original samples online at:

http://www.karoryfer.com/karoryfer-samp ... a/meatbass

License: creative commons 3.0 unported
Royalty-free for all commercial and non-commercial use.
Copyright 2015 Karoryfer Lecolds.

There is no "Creative Commons 3.0 unported" license. This one is invalid.

Percussion/Cowbell has no license.txt.

Alright, I wasn't been able to find a proprietary samples from freesound. The rest stands though.

And those "GM soundfonts" you use are even worse when it comes to documenting individual samples. There are 128 instruments in the GM set.

You are right here. README of fluid-soundfont-gm:

Fluid (R3) SoundFont

Copyright (c) 2000-2002, 2008 Frank Wen <getfrank@gmail.com>

I hereby release Fluid under the MIT license, as described in COPYING.


Thanks to Toby Smithe for helping to get Fluid included in Ubuntu.

This package, of course, is the original Release 3 of Fluid.


Fluid was constructed in part from samples found in the public domain that I
edited/cleaned/remixed/programmed...

Public domain, huh? That just screams BULLSHIT. I have no idea how Debian maintainers put this in main. Oh well...