Free harpsichord VST

dore_m

The OT harpsichords sound closer mics, with a bit more body - possibly recorded over the soundboard, whereas the Blanchet sounds mic'd just outside the piano.

The recordings remind me that the playing experience on a real harpsichord is probably extremely different than a piano midi controller. When i recorded the Clementi Fortepiano, the keys were smaller than a modern grand, and the action felt much different because the hammer mech was different. A harpsichord would be even more different.

It was like going from a decent midi synth action to a miniaturized kid's keyboard.

CyberGene

dore_m The recordings remind me that the playing experience on a real harpsichord is probably extremely different than a piano midi controller. When i recorded the Clementi Fortepiano, the keys were smaller than a modern grand, and the action felt much different because the hammer mech was different. A harpsichord would be even more different.

I've never played a harpsichord in my life 😕 However I've pressed a few keys once in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and from what I remember, the keys were extremely lightweight and the sound was produced almost immediately after you start pressing the key, so I imagine it requires very careful hand posture because one can easily trigger notes inadvertently. I think a synth action keyboard controller might be a better approximation than a heavy hammer-action controller.

jdg78

CyberGene I think a synth action keyboard controller might be a better approximation than a heavy hammer-action controller.

I've only played on a real harpsichord a handful of times, but I do think a non-weighted synth action is closer in feel than a weighted piano action. Not exactly the same, but closer.

It also requires quite a different technique to make it sound fluid without the use of a sustain pedal or dynamics.

But playing via a digital allows you to "cheat" by adding a bit of sustain if you want.

CyberGene

jdg78 But playing via a digital allows you to "cheat" by adding a bit of sustain if you want.

I tried that but it sounds artificial to my ears, I mean it becomes pretty quickly clear that something is not authentic. From listening to a lot of harpsichord music I think they all have quite a long release, or in other words it's not like a piano where the dampers would stop the string quickly, which is why on the harpsichord there's something like a natural sustain which gives some slight freedom, unlike an organ (although in a huge cathedral there's a lot of reverb that serves a similar function).

dore_m

CyberGene I think they all have quite a long release, or in other words it's not like a piano where the dampers would stop the string quickly,

That's interesting. I haven't played a real harpsichord either, but I did notice that the fortepiano that I recorded had unusually long sustain AFTER the dampers came down. Maybe the dampers were old, but I felt the entire instrument continued to resonate after the strings were damped. I also noticed that because there was no metal plate for structure, the soundboard was totally encompassed by a wood box - the bottom side of the soundboard was not exposed. I assumed this might be why it resonated differently than a modern grand.

jdg78

CyberGene I tried that but it sounds artificial to my ears, I mean it becomes clear pretty quickly that something is not authentic.

It's definitely not authentic sounding, but it can be fun for noodling around.

Harpsichords also make quite a bit of mechanical noise, which I think should be preserved in the samples as much as possible to make it feel authentic. In a piano, I don't mind turning off the sounds of the dampers and pedals, or having them at very low volume, but with harpsichord if the sound is too "clean" it feels and sounds very artificial to me.

chmaha

Here's a revision that combines all the registers into a single keyswitched instrument (upper 8, lower 8, 8+8, lute):

blanchet-chmaha.sfz

26kB

Notes: I renamed my subfolders to simpler directories: Jeu1, Jeu2 & Luth. And given I use Linux my folder slashes switched direction 😉 I don't think it matters for parsing the sfz file but I can't be 100% sure. There are a few other tweaks too including fixing (removed spaces) and tightening up the velocity constrains to give a small amount of variance based on touch.

CyberGene

chmaha welcome to the forum and thanks for your contribution. I’m on the go but I just made you a “trusted” user, so you can upload files 👍🏻

P.S. I edited your post and uploaded your file on the forum storage (turns out I can do that on my phone too, Flarum is a great forum software).

chmaha

Excellent, thanks very much. I've just been testing my Blanchet sfz with some ValhallaRoom and I think it sounds very nice. I suspect it will enter the regular rotation of harpsichord VSTi that I play and record.

Even in 2023 there are very few virtual harpsichords suitable for solo recording including ones that are commercial. The best I've found are the Mietke and Ruckers from Sonus Paradisi for the authentic resonance when you lift fingers from keys (I have custom grandorgue versions of both if anyone wants the .organ files to place with their samples). Then there's the Spitfire instrument which the producers made an absolute mess of in terms of crossfading various parts of the round robin (listen to the demos to see what I mean) but I've salvaged with some custom audio editing and turning it into an SFZ. It's probably my favorite instrument for both tone and authentic resonance but, alas, because of the audio editing it is impossible to share. I find the Berlin harpsichords too hollywood-y for my tastes which is a shame because they also capture the instrument resonance really well.

I think the free Zell instrument (https://www.atmos.cat/perl?num=1404987512) is also quite nice but has a limited compass for Bach beyond the WTC.

P.S. Let me know if there are any of the other free harpsichords that you'd like turning into SFZ…

chmaha

Adding to my previous post, the issue with some potentially great harpsichord VSTi is the inability to play all the individual manuals of the instrument (VSL and CineHarpsichord , for example don't allow for playing the upper 8 by itself given they were designed for scoring and not solo recording).

The RealSamples stuff should be good but the post-production noise reduction completely takes them away from the sound of the original instruments and makes them sound quite unnatural. Xperimenta sounds nice but only has one real manual capture. Soniccouture's Conservatoire Collection is OK but has no natural resonance capture so is not much better than many of the free options. And…that's about it for the ones I consider semi-decent 🙂

chmaha

blanchet-chmaha-v2.sfz

26kB

Attached is v2 of the keyswitched blanchet. I found that the ampeg_release was too much with any sort of reverb plugin addition so reduced to a value of 0.75. It sounds very natural with a 2-second reverb. Here are my settings for ValhallaRoom (100% wet as a reverb send on its own bus):

<ValhallaRoom pluginVersion="1.6.2" presetName="MediumHall" mix="1.0" predelay="0.04800000041723251" decay="0.01901901885867119" HighCut="0.2885906100273132" earlyLateMix="1.0" lateSize="0.6499999761581421" lateCross="0.3300000131130219" lateModRate="0.09090909361839294" lateModDepth="0.300000011920929" RTBassMultiply="0.4666666686534882" RTXover="0.06565656512975693" RTHighMultiply="0.0" RTHighXover="0.2604026794433594" earlySize="0.2920920848846436" earlyCross="0.0" earlyModRate="0.09090909361839294" earlyModDepth="0.0" earlySend="0.5" diffusion="1.0" type="0.3333333432674408"/>

Pianissimo

Gene, I am trying to use your correction to the Blanchet. I converted the sfArk to sf2. Then I load it on sforzando and all is well. But what should I do with your file? I tried to insert it insode the same folder, but it didn't work.

CyberGene

Pianissimo see the following post:

CyberGene

Pianissimo

CyberGene I tried again, it says file not found. I copied and pasted it to the same folder, but it didn't work.

CyberGene

Pianissimo it’s possible they updated the library or something. I will have to see in details, haven’t used it since I posted that few years ago.

Pianissimo

CyberGene Ok, no problem, it sounds amazing anyway already like this.

CyberGene

Pianissimo Gene, I am trying to use your correction to the Blanchet. I converted the sfArk to sf2.

Actually I just re-read that. You should not download the SF version. Instead, download the Kontakt version, it's the one that contains the separate WAV files that are referred to from the SFZ files I created. The SF2 is a very different sample format/engine that I am not familiar with and I'm not even sure it supports release samples.

CyberGene

The confusion might be coming from the similarly looking extensions SF2 and SFZ. SF2 means SoundFont version 2. SFZ is an abbreviation of Sforzando.

SF2 is a self-contained file that contains both the samples and the programming but I don't know anything about it. The Kontakt version has the samples (in WAV format) in sub-folders. And my SFZ (sforzando files) were created by converting the Kontakt metadata file (the programming) into Sforzando metadata file. That SFZ file expects the sample WAV files to be in the corresponding sub-folders like Blanchet-Jeu 1 Samples, etc.

Pianissimo

I have both version, one for kontakt, it cannot open sfz files, and one for sforzando which can't open nkt files. Your sfz file can't be opened whether I use kontakt or sforzando.

CyberGene

Pianissimo you download the Kontakt version, put my SFZ files inside and then open them with Sforzando.

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