"THE KITCHEN SINK" - a free percussion library for Aria!

[rbowser-]

MP3 DEMO

Your free copy of "The Kitchen Sink" Aria percussion library
plus MIDI file of the demo
and Word Document of the instrument list posted below

It's easy to use. Unzip the folder wherever it's logical and handy for you on your hard drive.

With an instance of Aria open in your music app, choose "Import" and direct the browser to where you unzipped "The Kitchen Sink," and click on the SFZ file. That should be the first file at the top inside the folder, and its icon will be different from the .wav files.

There they'll all be, all these kitchen sounds I recorded, spread across the entire width of the Aria keyboard. Truth be told - this has just about everything But the kitchen sink.

Note that when you import an SFZ file, Aria's fader won't respond, but the files will play correctly. Use the volume faders in your music app to control the over-all volume.

NOTES ON THE DEMO - I used two instances of The Kitchen Sink opened in one instance of Aria. One was just for the kick drum, the second instance was for all the other sounds. That way I could have the kick drum dry and the other instruments wet.

The demo was produced using the Aria built-in reverb, Ambience, on the Jazz Club 2 room.

The MIDI file in the folder posted above has the three tracks heard on the demo - Kick, Kitchen Sink and Jug. Just import it into your app and assign the MIDI tracks to Aria which has The Kitchen Sink loaded into it. This could be a helpful way to see how it all works.

--I wanna hear some nutty, fun music made with this - Hey, it could fit into some not-so-nutty pop music too, like as a substitute for synth drums like the well known ones from Roland.

AND - here's what ya get!---(this list is in the folder so you can print a copy for reference).

SFZ percussion library for Aria, Sonar Dimension, all samplers supporting SFZ

THE INSTRUMENTS
NOTE: Longer sounds, i.e. "cymbals" continue after key off.

Lowest 2 octaves
Plastic 2 litre soda bottle toots
C1
Beer box "kick drum"
C#1
Wooden spoons "side stick"
D1
Beer box and wooden spoon "snare"
D#1
Cook book pages flip "hand claps"
E1
Frying pan and butter knife "snare2"
F1
Beer box and wooden spoon "low floor tom"
F#1
Pot lid and wooden spoon "closed hat"
G1
Beer box and wooden spoon "high floor tom"
G#1
Pot lids "pedal hat"
A1
Beer box and wooden spoon "low tom"
A#1
Pot lids "open hat"
B1 and C2
Beer box and wooden spoon "mid toms"
C#2
Large pot lids "crash cymbal 1"
D2
Protein powder container and wooden spoon "high tom"
D#2
Pot lid and butter knife "ride cymbal"
E2
Cookie sheet and butter knife "chinese cymbal"
F2
Large pot lid and butter knife "bell ride"
F#2
Potato dicer "tambourine"
G2
Large pot lids "splash cymbal"
G#2
Cocktail shaker and butter knife "cow bell"
A2
Large pot lids "crash 2"
A#2
Toy ray gun "vibraslap" (OK, so not found in every kitchen)
B2
Small pot lid and butter knife "ride 2"
C3 and C#3
Protein powder container and butter knife "high and low bongos"
D3, D#3 and E3
Protein powder container and fingers "mute, high open and low congas"
F3 and F#3
Tea kettle and butter knife "high and low timbale"
G3 and G#3
Frying pan and butter knife "high and low agogo"
A3
Dried beans in plastic mixing bowl "cabasa"
A#3
Dried in beans in smaller plastic mixing bowl "maracas"
B3 and C4
Small vanilla extract bottle "short and long whistle"
C#4 and D4
Cheese grater and wooden spoon "short and long guiro"
D#4
Wooden spoons "clave"
E4 and F4
Chopping block and wooden spoon "high and low wood block"
F#4 and G4
Wash board and plastic scrubber - short and long strokes
G#4
Silverware drop
A4
Coke can
A#4
Scissors
B4
Paperbag shake open

UPPER OCTAVE ALL LOOPING AS LONG AS KEYS HELD DOWN

C5 and C#5
Spray olive oil
D5 and D#5
Pepper mill
E5
Drinking straw
F5 and F#5
Shaken not stirred
G5 and G#5
Chips bag
A5
Stacking salad bowls
A#5
Sharpening knives
B5
Garlic press

BONUS INSTRUMENT

C6 through C7
Cheese slicer zither

HAVE FUN!
Randy

[Tim Perry]

Randy, this is absolutely fantastic!

It sounds like you really went all out on this. It reminds me a bit of a music concrete project in one of my courses a couple years ago. As a class we recorded random sounds (toilets, car engines, leaves crunching, traffic, wind, doorknobs, water bottles shaking, keys shaking, etc), and then we were each responsible for manipulating them however we wanted to create an odd sound calash type piece. But you've created an actual instrument along those lines. I'm sure that many of us will have great fun with this, and it might in fact inspire some music of its own.

Thank you so much for providing these great home brew instruments. Also, the sample song is great. I was not expecting such an enveloping kitchen sink experience.

Cheers,
Tim

[englishgent]

Wow! What a hoot! Thanks Randy.

Now I'll have to think of how to incorporate Kitchen Sink into the piece for kalimba and recorder that I was planning.

[reberclark]

This is the coolest thing. You are the greatest Randy. I'm curious - did you sample this stuff in the kitchen itself - or in your studio? A fine addition to our sound sources! Great work. Thanks.

[rbowser-]

Ha! Great - People are starting to find this. Thanks for the posts, Tim, Owen and Chip.

I enjoy your posts so much, Tim - Your enthusiasm is so palpable. I'm glad you're getting a kick out of this little project of mine, and that you also enjoyed the demo I made from it.

Putting this together kept me busy the last 3 days. I wanted to delve into doing more with SFZ code. With the help of the online charts I posted on my SFZ thread, I did more with the coding on this than on the earlier Kalimba. The basic concept really is fairly self-evident when you look at an SFZ file.

An example of some of the simple things I did - Originally the "Jug" was in the upper octave, but that didn't seem intuitively right, to have a low instrument up there. I simply re-wrote what notes should play the sample, and what the sample's tone center was - easy fix.

VOLUME CHANGE - One of the things I kept fussing with was getting the samples in balance with each other. If you find any of the sounds too soft or too loud for what you want, it's easy to fix. Just double click on the SFZ file to edit it in Notepad - you'll see that some of the samples have been given a volume=X or volume=-X value. Change that to whatever you want to tailor the volumes, or add it to samples that don't already have a volume value added.

Fun that you brought up Musique concrète. When I was in Junior High, I was part of a small class of young composers chosen for a class taught at the University of Oregon. It turned out the professor was only interested in teaching us how to create Musique concrète with reel-to-reel tape. I remember the first thing he played for us was all constructed from clips of radio commercials. It was pretty wild stuff back then - the mid '60's. I haven't really thought about it for a long time though. You make me feel that whatever amount of taste I developed for the stuff back then is still with me. I have always enjoyed John Lennon's bit of Musique concrète on The White Album - "Revolution 9."---"number nine - number nine - number nine."

You cracked me Owen, picturing you using The Kitchen Sink, Marce's Recorder and the Kalimba all in one piece--hehehe---good luck with that.

Chip - your reply came in after I started writing this--I had the feeling you'd enjoy this, glad to see I was right.

Good question about where I recorded it - I did it all here in my little studio. I'd go into the kitchen, look around for something else to grab, never letting myself think too long - then I'd drag it back here and record it. - The Olive cooking spray was a bit tricky - I got worried when a bigger cloud of oil mist puffed off the plate that I was pointing the can at than I expected - Nothing seems sticky in here now though, so guess that worked out OK.

Yes, so here I was shaking the cocktail mixer, twanging on the cheese slicer, tooting on the soda bottle et al. I have a mike sitting next to my laptop clamped in a table top goose neck mike stand, fairly permanently plugged into my interface which is easily within reach - It's just so convenient here, I didn't want to break everything down and go into the kitchen. So like the famous mountain coming to Mohammed, the kitchen came to me.

Thank you all, lads. I'm glad my silly little project is eliciting some fun and smiles.

Randy

[rbowser-]

A TIP about using "The Kitchen Sink."

If you look at the list of instruments (and they're all listed again in the SFZ file), you'll see that they're all equivalents of the General MIDI drum map. That means that GM MIDI loops and clips will line up with the way KS was programmed.

In other words, the notes that trigger kick, snare, hats, cymbals, toms in a regular drum module are the same notes in KS that trigger the take-offs on those sounds. The kick is an empty 12 pack beer box being hit with a wooden spoon. Cymbals are pot lids being struck.

That means that if you go to where bongos are in the GM spec, you'll have high and low "bongos" to play in much the way you would samples of that drum. Congas are set up the same way, with a muted drum, and high and low. You could take loops intended for those instruments and see what they sound like in this whacky version of the GM drum set.

And there are plenty of other non-GM sounds added below and above the basic drum kit notes.

But of course you can also ignore all that, and just thump those notes randomly, without regarding the GM drum set at all.

The demo I recorded (posted on the thread starter) started with various drum loops from drum programs like Session Drummer. The way those clips sound with KS as compared to a good sampled drum set is very funny.

I know this off-the-wall percussion set isn't really the sort of thing Garritan users would normally gravitate to - That was the main reason it was an amusing idea to me to do it!

Randy

[Raymond62]

Now that you have transferred your kitchen sink into an instrument, where and who is doing the dishes?

Raymond

[reberclark]

Chip - your reply came in after I started writing this--I had the feeling you'd enjoy this, glad to see I was right.

Good question about where I recorded it - I did it all here in my little studio. I'd go into the kitchen, look around for something else to grab, never letting myself think too long - then I'd drag it back here and record it. - The Olive cooking spray was a bit tricky - I got worried when a bigger cloud of oil mist puffed off the plate that I was pointing the can at than I expected - Nothing seems sticky in here now though, so guess that worked out OK.

Yes, so here I was shaking the cocktail mixer, twanging on the cheese slicer, tooting on the soda bottle et al. I have a mike sitting next to my laptop clamped in a table top goose neck mike stand, fairly permanently plugged into my interface which is easily within reach - It's just so convenient here, I didn't want to break everything down and go into the kitchen. So like the famous mountain coming to Mohammed, the kitchen came to me.

one more small thing...that bitmap of the sink...is it your sink?

[rbowser-]

Raymond sed: "...Now that you have transferred your kitchen sink into an instrument, where and who is doing the dishes?

HA! All items used in the project have gone back to their previous dreary existence of being mere utensils. Such is the fleeting nature of fame and glory.

Chip "Reberclark" sed: "...one more small thing...that bitmap of the sink...is it your sink? ..."

I wish I had a sink like that - so convenient with the two sides, one for washing, one for rinsing. Doesn't that picture look like a robot face though? I could have added a little mechanical body to it.

Randy

[Peter Jeffrey Gale]

Thanks Randy!

I love off-the-wall (or should I say off the shelf?) instruments such as these.

Oddly .. I just may have a use for it soon ...

Should anyone need it ... it might make a good companion for this freebie:

http://jeremiahpena.com/site/2010/05/bathroom-ensemble/

Do we have any members particularly interested in "house" music?