[Steinway Grand Piano Soundfont D
Gildo Santiago
I've recently put the finishing touches on some detailed (6 velocity-layered) pianos including a nice version of the Salamander Grand (Yamaha C5 plus a Large Concert Grand version with extra resonance), a new rich sounding piano called Chateau Grand (based on a Kawai) and an Upright Piano.
Demo of Large Concert Grand:
Demo of the bright version of the Chateau Grand: -nebauer/chataeu-grand-demo
Mellow versions are also available.
Best of all all these pianos are downloadable for free:
Enjoy,
John
Since posting this I have also finished a Steinway Grand which might be a good fit for some looking for a piano with some soul.
Demo of sound here: -nebauer/steinway-grand-classical-demo
The Soundfont called Nice-Steinway-v3.2 is downloadable for free from my site
(Edit: Version 3.3 released today - velocity layeres increased from 6 to 12)
Since many other folks use Soundblaster or SF2 format compatible sound cards for MIDI playback, I thought I would share the piano soundfont file I created with those of you using cards which allow for sample uploads.
Mr. Anthony Ponaras, another member of the Northern Virginia Ragtime Society, graciously allowed me to spend a great many hours recording his 1897 Steinway model-C (7foot,5inch) grand piano. I collected several gigabytes of piano samples, recording each of the 88 notes at several strike velocities.
This latest Grand Piano Soundfont is a 25MB full stereo, 44kHz sample version. I think you will find this to be one of the best sounding piano files for your soundcard available for free on the internet.
NOTICE FOR "SOUNDBLASTER LIVE!" SOUNDCARD USERS: The SB-Live card is limited to a maximum useful soundfont size of 32MB. While you can load larger soundfonts into the card, only the first 32MB of samples will play. The rest will be muted. This means my larger (40MB, 80MB, etc.) piano soundfonts will not work properly on the SB-Live card. They will, however, work with the newer Audigy cards.
Also, be sure to download the latest driver software update from Creative Labs ( ) to correct several problems with the soundblaster "Live" card. Otherwise, these (and many other) soundfonts may not sound correct when used with the "Soundblaster Live".
SoundFont is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc. The SoundFont logo is a trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc. Sound Blaster is a registered trademark of Creative Technology, Ltd. Advanced WavEffects, AWE32, AWE64, and the Soundblaster logo are trademarks of Creative Technology, Ltd. All other brand and product names listed are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners.
I managed to install and setup VirtualMIDISynth 1.15.0 on Windows 10 RTM and notation player 3.0.3 played most of the soundfont well except Keppy's Steinway Piano. I registered the sfz as I did with sf2 soundfont but with this, it does not make any sound no matter how I try different settings.
SFZ soundfonts work the same way as SF2, but please note that most of the SFZ soundfonts contains a single instrument.
Or better, a single .SFZ file describes a single instrument; so if you configured a "GrandPiano.sfz" file and your MIDI has a "Flute" track, well this track will be silent.
I knew that the soundfont only have piano sound and tested only piano midi tracks based on the description in notation player. But finally I fixed the problem myself. Somehow only when I moved all the sample files into same folder as sfz and changed sfz default_path=. , it started to play. Anyway, thank you for your prompt reply.
Hi, I have a question about SFZ and Keppy's Steinway Piano.
I only use soundfonts y VMS to listen to music, mostly classical.
Until now my usual soundfonts configuration is a big general sf2 like Timbres of Heaven loaded in first place and Keppy's Stenway Piano 2.4 in second place (I couldn't download version 2.9, kaleidonkep99 removed the link).
Anyway, I downloaded today Keppy's Steinway Piano SFZ v 3.07 and instead of a file there are 206 (and 25 of them are SFZ). So, what I do with them?
Do I need to load KSP Deep Piano.sfz, KSP Normal Piano.sfz, KSP Grand Piano.sfz and KSP Bright Piano.sfz? In which order? Or do I need to load just one of them? Which one? Can I mix sf2 and sfz in the soundfonts configuration?
I just wish listen to the piano in midis with the best possible quality (I have actually read all the documentations that is included with the Keppy's soundfont but it explains nothing about it).
Yesterday I was two hours trying to make sfz works without success. But today I was able to get sound. I tried so many things that I don't know what was the problem and what was the solucion.
Still, sfz doesn't work for me with XMPlay. I get an error message saying "The following fonts cannot be found/loaded" and the list of all the ogg files of the soundfont with its correct path. Mysteries of computers.
Anyway, thanks to CoolSoft and Keppy for their answers.
Btw, sfz with OGG samples work in VirtualMIDISynth 1.15.1. Listening to Rhapsody in Blue for piano (I only loaded the Keppy's soundfont in the VMS soundfont configurator) But to make it work I had to copy the normal Grand Piano.sfz file in the Samples/Grand folder. It seems that VMS is not able to load the samples if they are in a different folder than the sfz file. Maybe it is a bug.
Yesterday I installed too a OGG codec for Windows Media Player. I don't know if it is necessary to make work sfz with OGG samples on VMS. I'll uninstall the OGG codec to see if it is necessary.
EDIT: I just uninstalled the directsound OGG codec and VMS1 continues working with SFZ and OGG samples. So, the only necessary thing is to put the sfz file in the same folder where the samples are.
By trying different soundfonts you can compare how a piece sounds differently when played on the different pianos. (This is why great pianists select their instrument when concerting, from a large collection available in the big concert halls usually, these get even trimmed and specially prepared by piano tuner or piano technician to meet precisely the artists needs before each concert.)
Now you are done, ready for a first soundcheck:
Click on one of the keys, or strike over them whit pressed left mouse button.
You should hear the warm and brilliant sound of this grand Piano, which soundfont you have chosen.
Interim-info:
Probably some server side misconfiguration deleted the posting (instead of rejecting the edit simply) while it grew to large after adding the last few letters to it in a very last edit I did. No problem at all.
Smaller the size less realism you get. If you need to get it fit under 30MB, then take some of those light ones, and edit with Polyphone, removing some samples and stretching range of note or range of velocity. But sure, it will sound worse after it.
Any piano sound (instrument), regardless of how it's produced. It could be produced on a synth using oscillators, or digital waveforms stored in sf2 format, or the same stored in sfz or kontakt format, It could be physically modeled. Whatever. If it's the sound of a piano created via some electronic device, then it's a piano patch.
Right. You'd either have to use a sfz plugin like Linuxsampler or sfizz, or Szorfzando. Or if you're using a DAW that handles LV2 plugins (QTractor, Muse, Ardour, etc),, what I'd do is make you a plugin that has its player built in. Then you just load it into a track, and it's ready to go.
Yeah, that makes sense, less data less details.
However, my laptop only has 4GB or RAM, and I'm trying to keep things as light as possible.
My present setup is launching fluidsynth from the terminal and connecting my midi with aconnect. I record in OBS Studio, no DAW.