Sinfonietta v3.6 (16 April 2003)

Thanks for trying Sinfonietta, a selection from my soundfont orchestral compilation, Sinfonia.  It’s for users of Creative Labs’ SB Live and Audigy sound cards (and hopefully other soundfont-capable MIDI hardware, but I haven’t tested it), and was compiled and edited from various sources by Jeremy Dimmick. I am grateful to Jeremy Levy for his kind permission to incorporate his fine trumpet and trombone soundfonts into Sinfonia.  For further details on copyright issues, see the end of this text file.

The rationale behind Sinfonietta is simply to offer the instruments I use in my MIDI sequences posted at Floating World. Sinfonia is a wider selection of orchestral instruments that’s my basic working orchestral soundfont, as a partial GM bank. I haven't gone for variation banks or departed from GM layout, basically because I post my orchestral sequences at the Classical Archives, which requires GM compatibility. The idea of Sinfonia/Sinfonietta is  to offer a basic working library of soundfont instruments which are good for all-purpose classical work.  Some of my selections and editorial decisions may seem odd, but they're basically the result of my own needs as a sequencer:  lots of instruments (notably oboes!) sound great when you preview a few notes in Vienna, but when you actually try to play a tune with them you discover they’re no use at all.  I’ve resisted sample-size-inflation for the sake of it, and gone for flexibility and useability over actual sound quality where a trade-off had to be made. A beautiful sound that can’t actually do what I want from it musically must be jettisoned in favour of a more bog-standard one that can phrase.  In this respect I think my practice is different from the majority of soundfont-bank editors, and so I hope serious classical MIDI music makers will find something worthwhile here.  My own sequences posted at http://come.to/floatingworld/ will hopefully give you some useful demos; there’s also a few brief mp3's there.

Sinfonia and Sinfonietta are compilations, not original work, and whatever merits they have are largely due to the work of others (acknowledged below). You may wonder why on earth you might need another of them. (Actually, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably downloaded it already, so perhaps this doesn’t apply to you. Or perhaps you’re kicking yourself already.)  Well, my excuse is firstly that I think I have a good ear for the process of selection and modification, and secondly that this is a specialist soundfont whose aim is simply to play classical MIDI files as well as I can manage it - it has no pretensions to being an all-round performer, which always leads to compromises. It just hopes to play orchestral and chamber music as decently as I can manage.
    Ultimately, it represents my own taste; if you don’t like it, you know what to do! (If you’ve got specific suggestions, though, an email is always welcome, to: fworld@clara.co.uk).



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HISTORY
Version 3.6:
This new release has just minor changes, mostly to optimize the soundfonts for the Audigy 2 (and Audigy) soundcard.  Users of the SB Live may find that some instruments (e.g. the flute and violin) now sound too "dull": the Audigy series seem to find more information in the high frequencies.  Live users may want to fire up Vienna (or equivalent) and change the filter cutoff levels, either at Preset or Instrument levels. To minimize problems with note cut-off when the polyphony runs out, I've also simplified the string orchestra a bit to reduce its hunger for polyphony; the loss of one layer doesn't seem to harm the timbre appreciably, especially with the new filtering.  But there are still times in my MIDI sequences when there are just too many notes, and one needs to start rendering some MIDI tracks to audio to prevent cutoff.

Version 3.5:
A fairly thorough tweak throughout, improving minutiae. The most significant is probably the solo violin, where I’ve worked on the samples a bit to make them a bit more euphonious. Unfortunately the excessive vibrato isn’t fixable, but this is better than it was.

Version 3.4:
Added cor anglais and brass ensemble, and various instruments are tweaked or fixed: the flute, trombone, tuba, solo violin and viola, timpani and string orchestra have been modified.

Version 3.2a:
Added mixed choir.

Version 3.2:
Main change here is another modification of the trombone, using two instruments by Jeremy Levy, velocity layered.  I’ve also corrected the very slightly flat tuning of the flute, and (because no update would be complete without some minor tweak to the string orchestra) there’s one of them too.

Version 3.1:
minor tweaks and fixes, including a new and improved version of Jeremy Levy's trombone kindly provided by the author

Version 3.0:
A good number of revisions and additions; full contents list is below.
    Instruments replaced or revised: another build of my string orchestra, now a bit sweeter than before. Trumpet and trombone are now provided courtesy of Jeremy Levy’s excellent soundfonts. New pipe organ. Pianissimum's velocity-layered filters modified a bit. Various other minor tweaks in the interests of consistency.

Version 2.3: 
Minor tweaks here and there, for balance and consistency, and dropped the solo viola, which turned out (when I came to use it) not to blend well; the violin was much better (it's better in the lower register than up top anyhow), so I’m now using it for viola too.

Version 2.2:
A bit of further tweaking: minimising the noise problem on the highest samples of the grand piano, reducing the excessive built-in reverb and release time on the string orchestra, cutting back the harpsichord's key noise a little more.

Version 2.1:
Replaced harpsichord with a nice new instrument by Matteo Tocchetti; I’ve tweaked it a bit for balance with the other instruments here, and to make the mechanical noise of the instrument’s action more discreet (it’s still there, but less intrusive.)  You can get the original version at http://listen.to/HammerSound.  
    Corrected an oddity in the bottom register of the flute.  Ditched some non-orchestral percussion instruments that were wasting space in bank 0.

Version 2.0:
Added new instruments: celesta, glockenspiel, xylophone, tubular bells, nylon guitar, concert harp, slow strings (don’t use the things myself, but for those who do, I used the same samples as my string orchestra and just modified the attack and release times), recorder.  Also a further small tweak to the string orchestra, softening a nasty attack in two of the samples.

Version 1.3: 
String orchestra revised again, mostly to improve balance between the sections.

Version 1.2: 
Improved string orchestra, layering the original with other solo and ensemble string sounds



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Installation Instructions

The soundfont is in a self-extracting archive made with sfArk and sfArkXTc.  These are FREE archiving program specifically for soundfonts by Melody Machine. You can download them from http://www.melodymachine.com/.

When you’ve decompressed the .sf2 file, load it into memory in the normal way, using the SoundFont applet in Creative’s AudioHQ or your own choice of soundfont managing software. 
	You should also set an appropriate environmental preset: for Live users I suggest taking Concert Hall and modifying it to set the reverb to about 25-33%, chorus to 10 or 15% (according to taste), and then set the reverb and chorus levels on all the Source tabs to 0 (leaving original sound level at 100%) so that only MIDI playback is affected by these settings, then save it as, e.g., Concert Hall 2.  Audigy users: you can do much the same, but the levels are now expressed in decibels rather than percentages. I’m not convinced they quite work as they should with the current drivers - the effects seem rather more subdued than with the Live - but try reverb at about -4.4dB, chorus about -11.8dB.

And enjoy!


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Contents and acknowledgments:

GM#	instrument		derived from (blank = can’t remember)

040	violin			Cadenza
041	viola			Cadenza
042	cello			mostly from Phoebia, top sample from
				Cadenza (fudge, but it works)
043	contrabass		Symphony Hall
045	pizzicato strings	E-mu 8Mb bank
047	timpani			Orchestral Percussion (E-mu)
048	string orchestra	E-mu 8Mb bank layered with their ‘Concerto’ 	
				collection of solo and ensemble string patches 
				(tweaked) and ‘String Ensemble 3’ from Cadenza
052	mixed choir		JNSGM 2.0, from Kurzweil samples
056	trumpet			JL_Trumpet (Jeremy Levy)
057	trombone		Orchestral Trombone & Conn6H (Jeremy Levy)
058	tuba			FantaGM (tweaked)
060	French horn		E-mu 8Mb bank
068	oboe			E-mu 8Mb bank - stopgap (still!)
069	cor anglais		English Horn 1 (E-mu)
070	bassoon			E-mu 8Mb bank
071	clarinet		E-mu’s 8Mb bank (vibrato removed)
072	piccolo			can't remember, sorry
073	flute			262k flute by E-mu (revised for tuning 
				and articulation)

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For further information and MIDI files visit http://come.to/floatingworld; and don’t forget to check out the internet’s great soundfont resources:

HammerSound (http://come.to/hammersound)
UpMetal Studio (http://www.soundfonts.it) - it's back!
Bananaquartz Studio (http://www.bananaquartz.com)

AWOL:
Hybrid (http://www.hybrid-sf.co.uk/) - hopefully back soon
SoundFont Central (http://soundfontcentral.blessedhope.org)
The Sound Site (http://thesoundsite.ismi.net)

and check out:
Güray Dere's soundfonts (http://http://www22.brinkster.com/guraydere/)
Warren Trachtman's piano sounds (http://www.wstco.com/pianosounds/)

I post my MIDI files to the Classical Archives (http://www.classicalarchives.com) and Classical MIDI Connection (http://www.classicalmidiconnection.com).

Email me with comments, queries, whatever: fworld@clara.co.uk

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Note on copyright: Sinfonia is based on soundfonts collected from all sorts of sources, usually modified to a greater or lesser extent. It seeks to respect authorial copyright: nothing here derives from sources that aren’t available for free, or where an author has requested that his work should not be exploited in this way.
    There is, however, a grey area, specific to soundfonts derived from E-mu. A few come from their soundfont-giveaway of a couple of years back; they ARE free, but the small print does not license users to modify or redistribute them. Here, basically, I’m ignoring the terms of the license agreement, and you shouldn’t use this soundfont if you’re not willing to do the same. My rationale is a pragmatic rather than legally-convincing one: the whole soundfont community does this in practice, and I think it spectacularly unlikely that E-mu or Creative will take any action against it. If problems arise, Sinfonia will be withdrawn. 
    A similar, perhaps slightly murkier, issue arises with soundfonts drawn from E-mu's 8Mb bank (essentially, Sinfonia originated as a personal modification of this bank). This is, strictly, a commercial product, but it’s bundled with all Live cards and, I believe, AWE memory expansion cards, so that everyone likely to use this soundfont already has a copy of the bank. Again, this is a legally untenable argument, but not I hope morally so. If you feel differently, reach for that delete button.
    I reserve no authorial rights with respect to the instruments in Sinfonia. A credit to me as editor if you use this bank in its entirety or part, would be welcome.  Because the soundfonts I’ve used are distributed on a not-for-profit basis, I must also stipulate that Sinfonia should not be used in whole or part for any commercial project without explicit permission from the soundfont authors.



Nunc scripsi totum, da mihi potum.