acoustic samples OldBlackGrand Library User Guide

acoustic samples OldBlackGrand Library User

Welcome to Acousticsamples

Thank you for using the OldBlackGrand library. We hope you enjoy playing the instrument and wish it supports your musical ideas or even better: inspire new ones. In this User Guide we will provide you with an overview of how to use the OldBlackGrand library

If you have any questions, feel free to email us at: samples@acousticsamples.com or use the contact form on our website  www.acousticsamples.net

The OldBlackGrand library, produced by Acousticsamples

Requirements and Installation

Step 1 – Authorize your library

The first thing to do is make sure you have an iLok ID and that it is the correct one. If you never used iLok, just go to the ilok.com website and create a free account

You will be asked to enter a user ID, this is what you will need to enter later on the authorization page. This will also be the ID you will need to get connected to the iLok license manager.

On the download/serials page, you can find the serial number associated with your library, it should look like this: PROASXX-XXXXXXX

You can click on the authorize button or copy it and go to this
page: http://acousticsamples.net/index.php?route=account/authorizeIlok you can find the link in the top menu under account as well as on the “my account” page. Of course you need to be logged in to view this page.

Now enter the serial number in the serial number box (it will be filled already if you used the authorize button) as well as your iLok id. The iLok id is the username you use to log into your iLok account, don’t confuse it with the number written on the key. Then simply hit the authorize button and wait a little. At the end of this process, you will see a message telling you if the authorization was successful. You will also get a confirmation email. Sometimes the iLok servers will not respond and you will get a blank page, in this case, please contact us and we will proceed to the authorization for you manually.

Step 2 – Download and extract your libraries

Registering your serial number will generate your download links, they will be create and available on the downloads/serials page. The files are delivered in RAR format and sometimes these files are split (for the large libraries). You need to use winrar on windows or UnrarX on mac (www.unrarx.com or directly here) to extract them, other softwares will probably not extract the files properly, we use the recovery functions of Rar (to avoid download corruption) and these two softwares are are the only ones to handle it properly. If there are multiple parts (part01.rar, part02.rar), you need to put them all in the same folder before extracting. If the extraction gives you errors, then your download did not complete or got corrupted, you need to download it again.

Step 3 – Download and install UVI Workstation

Download and install the UVI workstation (our free sample player) from here: http://www.acousticsamples.net/uviworkstation

Make sure you download the right version for your system, if you are on windows 64, but use a daw that only allows for 32bits plugins, you need to install the 32bits version of UVI Workstation. Follow the step 4 to learn how to load a library into UVI Workstation

Step 4 – Transfer the license to your iLok key/computer

The license manager is installed with UVI Workstation, so you just need to launch it from you applications. Now make sure that your iLok key is plugged into your computer if you want to use it or just ignore this if you want to use the computer based authorization. Click on Sign in and enter your iLok information, you will see the list of available licenses and your computer and iLok keys on the left panel. Now all you need to do is just drag and drop the license to your iLok key or your computer to authorize one or the other

Step 5 – Load your library and start playing

Now just open UVI Workstation in Standalone or one of the plugin formats in your sequencer. There are two ways of loading the library

You can open the browser and navigate to the ufs file manually. You can place the UFS in the default UVI folder: [Startup disk]:Library:Application Support:UVISoundBanks (on Mac) and C:\Program Files\UVISoundBanks (on Windows). You can also drop a shortcut to this file in this location, provided it has the same name. The best practice is to have all of your UFS in a folder and let UVI workstation index it. Simply go into the preferences/soundbanks and then add your UFS folder. If the authorization has been done, it will mount the UFS automatically (if automount is selected) or index it in the search (if index is selected). The recursuve is for subfolders, but too many subfolders can lead to a long indexation/mounting time.

After this, when you start UVI Workstation, you will see the UFS under soundbanks, select it and just double click on the m5p file, it will load the library and you will be able to start playing

Interface and Parameters

Everybody keeps on sampling the best and cleanest piano ever! here is a completely different approach. We sampled an old Pleyel Grand Piano (F-71240 model from 1928) with vintage gear like a studer console and tube microphones, it has the rich and warm sound of the old jazz/blues or even classical music recordings. The demo songs are performed by Jean-Michel Bernard (former composer for Ray Charles, film music composer) and Romain Collin, a very talented jazz French piano player based in NYC

Preferences

The OldBlackGrand is now in V3 and inludes many new features to make it one of the most complete pianos on the market. Each feature is detailed below and of course it still contains the features of the previous versions like the release volume, pedal noise and key noise

• The release Volume: the sound produced when you release a key if a note was going on.
• The Key Noises: the sound produced when you release a key and no corresponding sustain was played.
• The Pedal Noise: the sound produced when you press or release the pedal, it adds a lot to the realism.
• The Tone: a simple way to make the piano sound brighter or darker.
• The sostenuto CC, also called the middle pedal. You can sustain selected notes, while other notes remain unaffected.
• The polyphony. If you lower the buffer or simply want to be light on CPU, then increase or lower this value.
• The Reverb. We use a convolution reverb and you can adjust the dry and wet parts separately as well as choose from a large selection of high quality Impulse Responses.
• Round Robin. We added a software round robin feature for the users that need to play repetitive pieces.

Three microphone positions

We recorded the OldBlackGrand with two microphone positions

• The Close position with a pair of microphones close to the strings inside the piano to provide deep bass and rich resonances.
• The Rim position with a pair of microphones at the side of the piano to give more of a soloist playing with a piano perspective

You can enable / disable, load / unload and mix each microphone position separately to get exactly the sound you want.

Each microphone has three different controls

• Gain.
• On / Off: You can easily enable or disable each microphone position.
• Load: You can load / unload the samples of each microphone position. This saves Ram usage if you only use one position. Of course the controls are greyed out when the samples are unloaded.

Resonances

The resonances on a piano give some kind of a reverb effect when all of the strings start resonating. There are two kinds of resonances that are important to model on a piano, the pedal down resonances and the sympathetic resonances between the held notes. Both these effects are present in the OldBlackGrand, you can even change the amount of each of them.

Here is in detail what every control offers

• Pedal Down Resonance controls the amount of the resonance when you press the sustain pedal.
• The True Pedal Action enables the progressive resonance on pedal down when you press a chord and press the pedal afterwards.
• Sympathetic Resonance controls the volume of the sympathetic resonance effect. If you want a piano that sings the harmonics, you can add a little more of that effect.
• Symp Poly controls how many voices you want to allow for the sympathetic resonance effect.

Repedaling / Half pedaling

• On a real piano, the pedal is not a simple on and off and in classical music, people often use the repedaling and half pedaling.
• Repedaling allows you to “restart” a chord that has been released with the pedal if the decay is not ended yet. this is especially used when you want to blend chords together.
• Helf Pedaling is as its name implies what happens when you play with the pedal half pressed. the decay is much longer and as the strings are not completely dampened, you hear some resonances
• The half Pedal can be enabled or disabled from the interface but you can also control the size of the cc zone where the half pedal effect will occur. Half pedal min and max are the minimum and maximum values of the sustain pedal cc

MIDI controls

We added a few midi controls to the older version. The sostenuto and sustain CC can be changed in case you want for example use an expression pedal instead of a regular on off pedal. You can also change the Midi curve, the dynamics and the velocity response to really adjust the library to your liking, keyboard and playing style

• The velocity Sensitivity controls the volume curve, so how easily you get to a high volume, but the lowest and highest volumes stays the same.
• The velocity amount controls the dynamics, so the minimum volume associated with the lowest velocity.
• The MIDI remapper controls the mapping, so which velocity layer corrsponds to which velocity imput.
• The Min and Max Velocity are simply the minimum and maximum velocity that you will have to play to hear the piano.
• The Sustain CC is by default at 64 but can be changed to any other controller if you need to.
• The Sostenuto CC is by default at 66 but can be changed to any other controller if you need to.

Features

• 12.89Gb uncompressed, 2Gb compressed in lossless flac format, around 3000 samples.
• 2 microphone positions that you can mix from the interface (close and rim).
• 9 Velocity layers for the sustain.
• 9 Velocities for the release.
• Pedal down resonance and true pedal action.
• Key noises samples.
• Sustain pedal noises (up and down), triggered automatically.
• Sostenuto (middle pedal).
• Advanced midi controls.
• Advanced UVI scripting giving you access to a simple yet powerfull interface and advanced features

Terms & Conditions. EULA

Acousticsamples Copyright, Terms and conditions.
Please read the terms of the following License Agreement before using any of these audio samples. By using any of these audio samples, you agree to become bound by the terms of the License Agreement. If you do not agree with the terms of the License Agreement, do not use any of these audio samples. You may use these Samples provided on this website, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original music compositions or audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own music compositions or audio projects that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual audio loops may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound effects or music beds. No orders will be refundable given the numerical nature of our products. We stay at your disposal for any help or support. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contat us ALL RIGHTS NOT EXPRESSLY GRANTED ARE RESERVED

References

• Account Login
• ilok.com
• Acousticsamples
• Account Login
• UVI Workstation
• Jean-Michel Bernard / Music composer
• Romain Collin
• TCPDF
• ilok.com/#!home
• ilok.com/#!license-manager

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