World Instruments, couple questions

[Connor Helms]

First off, is there a way to adjust the ranges of the instruments? For instance, there are many sizes of dizi, some go well below the range of the patch in garritan. Kontakt allows you to drag the sample mappings around, Im looking for that kind of thing, rather than adjusting the tuning by semitones and then having to write everything say a major 6th higher.

Also, under the instrument controls tab where it lists the knobs and CC numbers of say, breath noise, flutter amount, etc.....there's no CC for vibrato amount? Is there no way for me to adjust this using CC commands written into sibelius?

[rbowser-]

First off, is there a way to adjust the ranges of the instruments?...
Also, under the instrument controls tab...there's no CC for vibrato amount? Is there no way for me to adjust this using CC commands written into sibelius?

Hi, Connor - Congrats on getting World! It's a great Library, with a huge selection of instruments.

Adjusting the range is possible, but there's a definite limit to how far you can change the range of low or high samples before the sound won't be acceptable. That's a given, since our ears are sensitive to when samples have been stretched too far.

With that understanding, what you need to do is edit the SFZ file that controls the Library's samples. If you've never edited an SFZ file, the idea can sound daunting, but once you open one of those files and take a look, much of it will make sense after a little bit of study.

Go to Program Files>Garritan>World>Instruments to find the particular SFZ file you want to look at and edit. It's always a good idea to drag a copy of the original on to your desk top in case you make mistakes in your edit and need to start over.

Using your example of the Di-zi, open the China folder, click its SFZ. It will open in your computer's Notepad. Scroll down until you get to the data for the regions. You'll see <region>. Each sample has been programmed for a "lokey" and "hikey," and the numbers used to designate those low and high keys are the MIDI note numbers. For a point of reference, middle C is "60."

Simply change the values the way you want. When you save the edit, you need to change the "Save as type" in the pop-up from "Text Documents" to "All Files." That will retain the .sfz extension.

Your second question: Vibrato amount is controlled by AfterTouch, also called Channel Pressure, which is a MIDI control in a special category by itself. In some cases you can use CC131 as a substitute if you can't access AfterTouch directly.

Randy

[Connor Helms]

Thanks, I was able to successfully adjust all the regions to my liking, took about 10 minutes just for the dizi. One thing I noticed about the vibrato amount adjustments, it cannot work polyphonically, so if I have two dizi in a stave they are both stuck on the same amount. I tried C131, A, and ax,y where x is the pitch (c4 being 60) and y is the vibrato amount. You can see on pg 6 where it mentions all this for sibelius:
http://www.sibelius.com/helpcenter/r...i_messages.pdf
Thats definitely a feature Id like to have, it would prevent me from feeling the need to have two scores, one for written and one for sample playback where each instrument has its own stave.

[rbowser-]

Thanks, I was able to successfully adjust all the regions to my liking, took about 10 minutes just for the dizi. One thing I noticed about the vibrato amount adjustments, it cannot work polyphonically, so if I have two dizi in a stave they are both stuck on the same amount...

Hello again, Connor - Great! Thanks for reporting in on how the editing worked for you. Now that you've done that once, and familiarized yourself where that part of the code is, future edits will take you much less time. As long as you're happy with the results, that's great.

Just understand that if you make edits in an SFZ file that render the instrument broken, tech support won't be all that sympathetic with the problem. That's easy to avoid though as long as you keep a copy of the original SFZ that you can always revert to if needs be.

Your second issue is about the way MIDI works. When instruments are on the same MIDI channel, there's no way that any controller can effect each of those instruments differently - the instruments are responding to data on the same channel.

In DAW software, the situation you describe is easily avoided, because each instance of the Di-zi would be on its own MIDI channel, and you'd be free to record separate controller data.

If there's a way to combine two MIDI channels on one stave in Sibelius, I don't know what it is, but that's what you would need to do to have the amount of control you'd like.

In other words, having those two instruments responding to the one stream of data is only logical, and it's not a failing of World, it's just the only way MIDI can work.

Randy

[Slandrom]

Hello Randy

I have problems with the Accordion in JBB regarding the pitchrange. It goes to 81 and I often need 84. I can´t do such a big pitch change in ARIA. I tried doing as you said and no problem, but I don´t know how to save the file. I am on MAC and use the Text Editor, but when I save it will change to a standard .sfz file (text icon) and not the and not the UNIX icon as all .sfz have. Do you know how to do this?

Björn

[Slandrom]

If I only use "save" the icon will be the same. Opening ARIA I can see that the range is extended to note 84, but there is no sound?

Björn

[rbowser-]

If I only use "save" the icon will be the same. Opening ARIA I can see that the range is extended to note 84, but there is no sound?

Björn

Hello, Bjorn - Thank you very much for your posts. Using your question about editing the Accordion makes me see that more detail should be included in this Tip.

In your first post, you were having trouble saving the file. But in your second post, you solved the problem. What you discovered is the same as it is on a PC. When you click on one of the instrument .sfz files to edit it, a simple Save will retain the .sfz file extension.

NOTE: If you are creating a new SFZ file in a text editor, and not editing one that already exists, then you need to make sure your new file is saved as an SFZ file for it to work. On a PC, the Notepad "save" dialogue defaults to .txt files, naturally enough. Click "Save as type," and choose the other option which is "All Files." In the window where you type the file's name, add the extension, with the period, ".sfz." Then your new SFZ file will have the correct file extension.

That is just for when you're creating your own SFZ file and need to do the initial save as the correct file type.

Now, to the editing of that specific instrument, the Accordion in JABB.

--You want to extend the range from 81 to 84. In this particular case, there's a bit more editing that needs to be done for it to work.

The sample involved is in the 7th region up in the main list of regions before the SFZ file gets to the Master section for the Bellows Noise. Scrolling down to that sample's programming, here's what exists in the original file:

<region> offset=2048 lovel=1 hivel=127 key=81 pan=-12.5 tune=0 loop_mode=loop_continuous loop_start=433842 loop_end=480883 sample=81accA5_0001102C.audio

Most of the other Accordion samples are stretched to cover 2 or 3 notes. But this highest sample is programmed only for that high A. The code instruction for what note should be played simply says "key=81." But the other samples in the Accordion, being stretched to cover more than one note, have a low key and a high key listed. The code for that is "lokey=X" and "hikey=X."

Those samples which are stretched in the SFZ file also have instructions for what the original pitches of the samples are . This allows for the proper stretching of the sound. That code is "pitch_keycenter=X."

So to stretch the Accordion to the high C, here's how the code should be changed, and I've used italics for all text that I changed:

<region> offset=2048 lovel=1 hivel=127 lokey=81 hikey=84 pitch_keycenter=81 pan=-12.5 tune=0 loop_mode=loop_continuous loop_start=433842 loop_end=480883 sample=81accA5_0001102C.audio

You can see, I've added "lokey=81 hikey=84 pitch_keycenter=81" and left the rest the same. Now the programming has the proper instructions for what the sample's original pitch is, and for how high it's to be stretched.

As a test, I edited my JABB Accordion like that, and I think I'll keep it that way. It sounds fine!

Randy

[Slandrom]

Thank you Randy!!

That worked perfect and thank you for making the explantation so easy to understand.

I had first changed hikey to 84 under <master> <region> That extended the keyboard to 84 but not the sound. Now I tested and saw that it doesn´t matter what you write under <master> <region>, it seems that the changes I made as you instructed, override the master setting.

It would be interesting to know the meaning of all command lines because there are obviously lots of interesting things you can do here.

Thanks again

Björn

[rbowser-]

Thank you Randy!!

That worked perfect and thank you for making the explantation so easy to understand.

I had first changed hikey to 84 under <master> <region> That extended the keyboard to 84 but not the sound. Now I tested and saw that it doesn´t matter what you write under <master> <region>, it seems that the changes I made as you instructed, override the master setting.

It would be interesting to know the meaning of all command lines because there are obviously lots of interesting things you can do here.

Thanks again

Björn

Thanks for letting me know this worked for you, Björn.

Here's the link to the official SFZ specification. All those various codes are explained. You'll see that some are easy to figure out, some, more difficult. There are some codes that ARIA's programmers use which are new and not listed here. But here's a lot of information for you:

SFZ Specification

Randy