Medieval Music Tapes Archive

Medieval Music: Tape Archives

Audio tape reels archived from the library of the Society for Old Music in the care of Clifford and Audrey Davidson. The tapes contain concerts, recitals and presentations of medieval and renaissance music, recorded between 1970 - 1980. Instrumentation includes: choir, organ, string, wind, and percussion.

A few of the tapes were in poor condition, and were processed with audio filters. Most are presented as direct digital transfer, with minimal editing. (leveling, and cutting out applause)

Captured on Akai GX-255.

Sounds Inspired by Arrival: Sample pack & Bitwig presets

Sounds Inspired by "Arrival, 2016" (originally designed by Jóhann Jóhannsson)
This project is a learning exercise, to develop deep listening and sound construction methods, based on films. A work in progress that could be updated with more content.

   

Sample Pack:

Download: "Arriving" Sound Pack

Samples of the instrument playback in WAV format.

Bitwig Piano Presets

Various piano recordings brought into Bitwig multisampler. The captured sounds were stretched and blended across all the octaves possible. Not extensively sampled set, but could work for some piano lines or textures.

• Download: "Clifford's Piano" V1
• Steinway grand piano; cover closed. Recorded very close in a muffler in small room. It sounds very soft and dull. strong for low and high keys, weaker in the middle. I plan to go back with more mics and more varied placement.
• Download: "Mall Piano"
• Bluthner grand piano; cover open. Recorded nearby with sensitive mic setting in a large open hardwood gallery. Captured after hours in the mall at night, still noises in the distance. This has brighter sound.

Sampling: Air Sounds

Sounds of Air:
Recordings of breath, wind, and air, produced with various household items.

Bitwig Presets:

• Paper Tube Flute
• Pipe Rough Air
  
• Plastic Pipe Hiss
• Plastic Pipe Puff
• Plastic Pipe Slap
• Ambient Road Noise

Sample Packs:

• PaperTube Flute Samplepack
• PipeSounds Samplepack
• WhipStick Samplepack
  
• Ambient Night Road Noise
  

Movie Inspired Sound Mix: "Rabid, 1977"

 During the Halloween season, I developed a few sounds and mixes inspired by the 1977 movie Rabid by David Cronenberg. Here are a few of the samples made in the process of watching.

Download: Rabid Textures Samplepack

D64 · 70sTextures D3B

D64 · Rabidish - Cominghome

D64 · 70s Textures D1a

Bitwig: Spring Theory

A spring reverb is a physical box with some short springs in it, a transducer, and a magnetic pickup that detects the vibrations. It can simulate a decaying reverberation based on how many springs, and the tightness of them. Typically used with guitars; sounds metallic, and echoed.

After listening to some reggae and "surf rock" style music, I became interested in creating a spring reverb in Bitwig. Here are some resulting presets that give a "springy" sound. The theory was to create a very short delay period with generous feedback. The higher resonance is cut off with a lowpass filter. the delay is inside a reverb with a small size to provide more vibration. the second version has some macro controlled parameters and a distortion at the end.

Within Bitwig there are probably many ways to create this type of device. starting with the basic delay, and reverb device.

spring theory #1:
an effects layer with 3 different tuned delays.

spring theory #2

chain with reverb and delay inside wetfx. rotary at the end to give channel variation.

spring theory #3

nearly the same as above, but with macros to control parameters and a distortion on the end.

• Download: Spring Reverb with Macros
  
• Download: Spring Reverb 02
• Download: Spring Reverb 03

Roland XP-50 Sample Pack

Roland XP-50 Samples

A workstation keyboard from the 90s. It has a unique sound that might work well in different situations. Drum kits coming soon.

The samples are recorded and named, but not adjusted in any way yet. I'd like to normalize each one so the creation of a sampler instrument will be easier.

There are dry recording of the raw samples for the General Midi patches. Also the same set of sounds with the default FX enabled. I think that includes a bit of chorus and reverb.
The FX ones are in FLAC format.
The dry samples are WAV.

Soon I'll get the drum kits up here. I've got about 90% of them recorded and organized.
Also included is a bunch of presets for Reaper ReaSamplomatic 5000. Layed out in a pretty basic manner, most sound ok. The pianos did not map very well.

TX16Wx Sampler Programs

I've been working on learning about the free sampler plugin from CWITEC, "TX16Wx". It's a free VSTi plugin sampler that is very advanced. Similar to Kontakt in function, but has an open structure based on XML format.

In the shared folder below are programs developed to play with samples using the Tx16Wx sampler. You don't have to own the professional version to play the sounds, but they were created with the pro version. The only difference is a few advanced functions, like embedded fx and group matrix. configurations.

As far as I know, the free version also allows the use of sample-free instruments, using only generative oscillators like sine, triangle, saw, etc...

Download and try the sampler. It's great for putting together instruments for Reaper that anyone can work with. There are some usability inefficiencies that could be addressed, but the tool-set is very complete, and well documented.

Programs for use with the Alpine Collection samples.
They already have a representation in Kontakt, but I wanted to make some of the instruments to learn and practice using the TX16Wx sampler.

TX16Wx Alpine Programs:
So far the following instruments have been configured:

• Viola
• Non-vibrato, Tremolo

Put the files in the instrument folder, just above the "samples" folder for the instrument defined in the filename.

Piano Roll & XP-50 Drum Kits

Roland XP-50 Drum Kit List:

Vertical Piano roll and sample list. A recreation of the spreadsheet of drum sounds that appeared originally in the manual for the Roland XP-50. I was using it to work through sampling all the percussion kits. Some names are duplicated, but when you open the actual sound on the machine, it is usually different in some way. I have most of them recorded. I'd like to put out a sampler pack with all the XP-50 sounds, once it is complete.

Piano Roll with Details:

Here is a reference sheet with a horizontal piano roll showing all the note names, numbers, and frequencies. Hopefully there are not any errors. I put it together as a reference for accurately identifying and naming notes for sampling instruments.

Bitwig Presets

Bitwig Studio has been great fun for experimenting with sounds, effects and compositions. Linked here are some preset I've been working on.

Bitwig Shared Presets

• Roomspace: A quick way to add some extra dimension. There are macros that control the different reverb effects. Starts out very small and can expand to give long decay times.
• Tape Effects: An effects chain with some tape distortion controls like frequency flutter, bass saturation, coloration, and pitch warbling.
• Petrol ChirPurr Bass: Grid instrument inspired by a cool bass sound from a classic drum and bass track. Maybe you'll recognize it.
• 3 Grid Bass Drums: some trials making bass drum sounds with sine waves and envelopes in the grid.
• A few Gen-Percussion: Clap, Bass, Hi-hat.
• Grid ocean waves: Shaped noise source trying to simulate a continuous seashore sound.

I'll try to add more here as I get them organized.

Let's see if sharing some of these instrument presets works:

• Frozen Lands: Instrument layer with some tremolos, scratchy violin sound, and air synth.
• Saxxo: Soft saxy type instrument with only one looped sample.
• Brass Section: a pretty nice layered group of trombones, solo trumpet, and horns.
• Symbiosis: Large dark layered synth chord that descends on release. Scifi sound.
• Rough Industrial: Harsh technological synth. Representing a scifi world.
• Industrial Ambiance: Reverberated scraping. Background industrial atmosphere.
• Concertmate 360: Realistic brand (Radioshack)Toy keyboard. This instrument selector contains all the patches recorded from it; excluding the rhythms.
  
• Korg Poly-800: Multisampled vintage synth.
• Yamaha SHS-10: Multisampled vintage synth. Missing a few patches will update later.
• Roland XP-50: Coming soon. A lot of sampling completed organizing into a selector.
• Alpine Tremolo Violin: Samples adapted to Bitwig from The Alpine Project. Very nice samples. I've been trying to incorporate some of them into working sets for Bitwig.
• Taped Flute: A nice flute sample run through a crappy micro-cassette recorder.
• Bassoon Sustain: Basic multisample bassoon from the Sonatina library.
• Oboes Sustain: Multisample from free orchestra.
• 
  

Inspired by Alien 3: (a few sounds from freesound.org, many others from the free orchestras)

• Creepy Corridor Taps: Tapped piano strings for running away through the corridor.
• Alien Emerging: Some rough deep brass that can be modulated for a revealing effect.
• AlienCymbals: Long slow crash cymbals in octaves.
• Alien Ominous Horns: A few layered low horns and FM synth to fatten it up.
• Dark Suspense Strings: Staccato hit with tremolos. Get ready to run. Tremolo cello is looped.
• Alien Scary Strings: Horror strings from Alpine samples. Modulated and dissonant.

Beckoning sounds: (like in games where an object is nearby and needs to be located) Layers can be adjusted to get the right balance of different sounds.

• Book Tome Soundboard: Instrument layers for representing a mystical book
• Gems Soundboard: Instrument layers with chimes that might represent treasures