This might be a little too nerdy for you, but if you want specifically video-game sounding samples, you might want to try an NSD player. Its an application that plays .nsd files, which are dumps of the sound information from Nintendo carts. They have individual sound effects, as well as the music for the game. The interesting thing is that these sounds are made by a tiny synth on a chip, with a couple of saw and square oscillators, etc. The NSD player that I messed around with allowed each synth channel to be isolated, so if, for example, you wanted just the bassline of Mike Tyson's Punch-out, you could just Mute 3 of the 4 channels and you'd be all set.

As far as these being free from copyright claims, they're probably very not. But fuck it, just start brushing up on your "recontextualization" arguments.

And sorry I don't have any link action, try googling nsd player, I'm about to leave work, and with it, the internet, any second now.

hbc wrote:This might be a little too nerdy for you, but if you want specifically video-game sounding samples, you might want to try an NSD player. Its an application that plays .nsd files, which are dumps of the sound information from Nintendo carts. They have individual sound effects, as well as the music for the game. The interesting thing is that these sounds are made by a tiny synth on a chip, with a couple of saw and square oscillators, etc. The NSD player that I messed around with allowed each synth channel to be isolated, so if, for example, you wanted just the bassline of Mike Tyson's Punch-out, you could just Mute 3 of the 4 channels and you'd be all set.

As far as these being free from copyright claims, they're probably very not. But fuck it, just start brushing up on your "recontextualization" arguments.

And sorry I don't have any link action, try googling nsd player, I'm about to leave work, and with it, the internet, any second now.

I would be much more interested in find some sort of emulator that would let me make my own 8-bit-ish noises and sample those, or play old toys (simon sez ect) like a synth with a keyboard, does something like that exhist? Like I said I am new to this sort of thing...

unless i'm missing something, it sounds like you're wanting to delve into the chiptune world? go check out this site:

http://8bitpeoples.com/

check out what these guys are doing (nullsleep and rushjet1 are my favourites) and if you dig, there are forums and contact links galore to get you started.

a quick warning, it's all pretty convoluted and difficult to get at first. and i don't do it, so i'm sorry i can't help, but the guys over there are all really cool and just about advancing the music, so they'll be glad to answer questions.

but this will be your best bet if you want to have any musical control over what's happening. i don't think there is anything like an "8-bit sounds keyboard" like you describe.

good luck!

sack of smashed assholes wrote:

japmn wrote:Come to the Chicago Cultural Center before a classical or Jazz concert and sit in the audience seats with a small recorder while the orchestra or band tunes or does sound check. You can record huge, reverb drenched swells of random instruments that are completely legal to use if not completely unidentifiable. I have volumes of this shit at home.

World Music Fest (late september) is a great time to get strange shit and we have multiple concerts a week, year round.

from what I gather, that is basically what the free sound project site is about, people record just about anything, and upload them for free use. from thunder, and rain, to busy subway stations.

the musical chairs project I'm working on (footer) is going to be turning all the submitted pieces into fair use samples. around July 4th, we'll have it up and running, and you can sample the stuff to your heart's content.



cheers,



Faiz

yaledelay wrote:I would be much more interested in find some sort of emulator that would let me make my own 8-bit-ish noises and sample those, or play old toys (simon sez ect) like a synth with a keyboard, does something like that exhist? Like I said I am new to this sort of thing...

what about an old analog synth. something like a roland sh 2000 or a korg ms 20, they will create all these bleeps and blops you're talking about. play around for a while and record everything and then later cut the samples that you like.

btw. I would really look into these sample-cd(r)s. there are thousands. you're paying around 50 $ for a huge collection of (cleared) sounds that somebody worked on for days or weeks. it's great to make your own samples if you want loops and drones and stuff like that.

yes.

roll your own samples.

I second bass driver suggestion about getting an old synth. I also suggest Dave Smith Instruments' Evolver. My friend has one and this thing is the coolest synthesizer ever, it's monophonic but has so much possibilities. It's kinda hard at first to understand how the thing works, but once you understand it, it can be really awesome. I have a two minutes audio file of my friend playing with the evolver, I can upload it if you're interested.

You can take some text files or other system files and change their extension to WAV. then load it into something like Wavelab and you'll have tons of squeaks. If I remember correctly, Wavelab can open system files without converting them. I believe that these sounds you're getting are usually just lots of small bursts of sound, if you want to "extend" the sound you can use some plug-in that has a "hold" function. The hold thing will play your current position in the sample until you turn it off. You can also cut the squeaks and squeals and load them to a digital sampler like battery where you can set an "internal" loop in every sample. You set the beginning and end of the loop(inside the sample) and and the number of times it'll repeat it.

It'll be a nice "concept" to take the recorded HiFi songs, change their extensions to txt, open them in notepad and save them as a text. then load that text file to something like Wavelab, or change the extension again to txt(I believe it won't be music file again once you saved through a text editor). That way you'll be using your band's stuff for your new stuff.

eliya wrote:I second bass driver suggestion about getting an old synth. I also suggest Dave Smith Instruments' Evolver. My friend has one and this thing is the coolest synthesizer ever, it's monophonic but has so much possibilities. It's kinda hard at first to understand how the thing works, but once you understand it, it can be really awesome. I have a two minutes audio file of my friend playing with the evolver, I can upload it if you're interested.

the Dave Smith Evolvers are ridiculously expensive.

I bought my:
Roland Juno 6 polyphonic synth
Baldwin Discoverer desktop organ
Yamaha CP 25 electronic piano
Yamaha YC 30 combo organ
Casio SK 5 sampler
Casio Rapman
Lowrey Duo Symphonic Organ w/bass pedals, two keyboards and leslie

for less than the cost of an evolver (combined).

If you compare my keyboard collection with the Poly Evolvers, you could add:

Moog Taurus II w/Bass Pedals and flight case
two hand-built Harmoniums

and still come out with some change.

Evolvers're beautiful instruments, but that's just wasteful.

now I did buy an expensive Nord Lead 2, which may be the same level of stupidity, but I use it every week and have played about 100 shows with it.

If you're going to get that much use out of it, you should definitely look into the DS Evolvers. He's the guy that made the Prophet synths for Seq. Circuits. Hifi used the Prophet 600, innit? If you're just looking for sample sounds, buy some good cheap gear and get cracking at making patches.

I see the evolvers going for 400-450 second hand. In Israel's standards that's not too expensive, especially with the current dollar rate.

I'm not a synth guy and am not familiar with all the synths you own, I do know some of them. The evolver can make some sounds that I believe your synths can't. It's got fat killer lows and crystalic highs, but it's not just that, you can use it for everything and manipulate it in any way you want. Also, it's half analog and half digital. 2 oscs are digital and 2 osc are analog, the filter is all digital though. anyhow, this thing is awesome.
I didn't find the nord lead being too similar and the sounds I heard coming out of a nord lead are pretty much different than those coming out of the evolver.

besides, it's not fair! You got some smoking deals on your stuff!

It's as if a thief said "I got all this stuff for free, see this rolex? I didn't have to wait till my grandfather died to get it, I didn't even have to work for it!"

eliya wrote:I see the evolvers going for 400-450 second hand. In Israel's standards that's not too expensive, especially with the current dollar rate.

nice price!

eliya wrote:I'm not a synth guy and am not familiar with all the synths you own, I do know some of them. The evolver can make some sounds that I believe your synths can't. It's got fat killer lows and crystalic highs, but it's not just that, you can use it for everything and manipulate it in any way you want. Also, it's half analog and half digital. 2 oscs are digital and 2 osc are analog, the filter is all digital though. anyhow, this thing is awesome.
I didn't find the nord lead being too similar and the sounds I heard coming out of a nord lead are pretty much different than those coming out of the evolver.

sure, but the evolver can't sound like my combo organ or my electronic piano (all analog piano synth btw) or any of my other keybaords. It does what it does, and my collection does what it does, too. i just have a huge range of sounds and tones and key styles to choose from instead of just one keybaord.

besides, it's not fair! You got some smoking deals on your stuff!

that's what I'm telling him to do. Instead of buying an expensive synth for a sample library, keep an eye out for great deals and build your sound with them.


though i would totally buy an evolver if I found one for a good price.

it's an excellent synthesizer.