Results for Les Productions Zvon

Les Productions Zvon has announced the release of MC3A, a downloadable sample pack.

The MC-3A electronic keyboard is a digital square wave instrument. I don’t know exactly how old it is but my guess is that it’s roughly 20 years old. It has 12 chromatic sounds.

There’s a vibrato button that has no settings, it’s either on or off. I’ve sampled the sounds with and without vibrato. Additionally, it has rhythm styles, a bass and 5 percussion sounds: kick, conga, snare, cymbal and hi-hat.

The bass and percussions are included in the set but not the rhythm styles (at least for now). All these do not sound like the acoustic instruments they’re named after but more like the Sid chip, 80′s and early 90′s video games. Very good retro sounds for chip music (or chiptune).

MC3A features

• Samples were recorded through the keyboard’s line out at 24 bit/44.1 khz and then converted to 16 bits.
• All the notes are sampled for the sounds without sustain (piano, guitar, harpsichord, cowbell, bass), the others have 4 notes per octave.
• Available in wave, sfz and Native Instruments Kontakt 3.5 (or higher) formats.

The MC3A sample set is available to purchase as a download for $5.55 USD (includes all formats).

More information: Les Productions Zvon / MC3A

Les Productions Zvon has released My Music Maker, a free sample pack featuring the sounds of a toy keyboard.

Zvon writes:

Here’s a sample set of the My Music Maker toy electronic keyboard. The formats included are wav files, soundfont, sfz and Kontakt 3.5 or better.

I’ve extended the mapping from C1 to C7 but the range of the original samples is from C4 to A#5. Please note that all the original notes are all flat by an average of 30 cents and I have not retuned the samples to keep the original character of the toy keyboard.

The My Music Maker sample set is available as a free download.

More information: Les Productions Zvon / My Music Maker

Les Productions Zvon has released Memory Collection sample pack 01, the follow up of the previously released Halloween and Holidays packs 2009.

The samples in this collection are taken from Public Domain movies, TV shows and TV ads. I chose the name Memory Collection because by definition works in the Public Domain are from the past, a past often not very distant but sadly also often forgotten or ignored. This collection brings back some of the sounds from the past.

These movies are usually old and the sound quality is often not great and they’re noisy too. The samples include voice/spoken word/dialogs, sfx, music and other stuff. Many of them can be further divided so you can have some fun yourself ;-).

The Memory Collection sample pack includes 375 samples and consists of two parts:

• Free Pack (88 samples, 27.3 MB) and Mini MC1, available to download at no cost.
• MC Pack 01 (287 samples, 157 MB), available to purchase for a donation (minimum $3.33 USD).

More information: Les Productions Zvon / Memory Collection

There aren’t many companies that would take the time and effort to sample a busted up toy piano like the one Les Productions Zvon used for the Baby Piano sample library.

This poor toy piano has clearly seen better days…

Daniel writes:

I found it at a flea market and it obviously has seen better days. There are 2 keys missing, its casing is worn out and there are loose parts in it. The sound is not even from one key to another partly because the mechanism of some keys is damaged and it’s also not in tune.

It’s nonetheless lovely and its sound begged to be sampled. I did not stop there and I also created 15 unique resynthesized sounds from the original samples. These can be used as electric pianos, keys and/ or bells.

Baby Piano includes a total of 18 programs and 12 sounds (349 samples). A free Baby Piano set is available to download from the Les Productions Zvon website. This freebie includes 6 programs and 5 sounds from the complete set.

Here are some audio demos.

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So what do I think?

Baby Piano sounds exactly like you would expect: a broken, fragile sounding toy piano. It’s a perfect example of how something one might consider to be trash can still be used to create some lovely instruments.

The synthesized instruments are nice — perhaps even more useful — but I enjoyed the acoustic sounds the most. The typical toy piano sound may not have that many applications, but I find it inspiring.

Baby Piano can be had for as cheap as $2 USD, which I think is a steal. With donations of $10 USD or more you get an additional set called Baby Bells, good for another 4 resynthesized sounds in 9 programs (101 samples).

Make sure to download the free Baby Piano set and see how you like it.

More information: Les Productions Zvon / Baby Piano

Les Productions Zvon has released the Baby Piano, a sample library featuring a Chinese Toy Piano.

I found it at a flea market and it obviously has seen better days. There are 2 keys missing, its casing is worn out and there are loose parts in it. The sound is not even from one key to another partly because the mechanism of some keys is damaged and it’s also not in tune.

It’s nonetheless lovely and its sound begged to be sampled. I did not stop there and I also created 15 unique resynthesized sounds from the original samples.

The Baby Piano free set contains all the acoustic samples (2 programs) and 4 of the resynthesized sounds for a total of 6 programs and 5 sounds (38 MB). It is available to download as donationware in Soundfont and Kontakt 3 formats.

A Baby Piano standard version with 3 more programs for the acoustic samples and 7 more resynthesized sounds for a total of 17 programs and 12 sounds (86.3 MB) is available when donating $2 USD or more, and those who donate at least $10 USD will receive also receive Baby Bells, an extra set with 4 more sounds resynthesized from the Baby Piano and 9 programs (123 MB). These “bell” sounds are characterized by long decays of up to 15 seconds.

More information: Les Productions Zvon / Baby Piano

Les Productions Zvon is back with another 3U instrument (unique, unusual and usable), the Prepared Rhodes.

This is actually not a new sample library but Zvon has recently released Kontakt and Battery formats, adding some new sounds to Prepared Rhodes.

So what is a Prepared Rhodes anyway? Zvon explains:

It’s a real Rhodes that is prepared as John Cage and others prepared a acoustic piano, that means you insert springs, plastic tubes, pins,etc., all kinds of objects inside the piano. These objects when touching the strings or the tines change the sound of each key played. All the notes can be radically different from each other and often you don’t even recognize the original sound. You get an instrument that is much more percussive in nature. This has been done quite often with acoustic piano but rarely with a Rhodes.

The Rhodes used in this sample library was prepared by Maxime de La Rochefoucauld, a composer and builder of mechanical musical automatons. Zvon recorded every note with multiple velocity layers (2 to 6) for a total of some 360 samples in 16 bits, 44.1 kHz. The samples are in mono format, just like the real Rhodes instrument.

The Kontakt/Battery version of Prepared Rhodes includes over 115 kits/patches with 67 semi-tuned instruments and about 50 extra patches that make use of the granular synthesis engine.

Prepared Rhodes for Kontakt & Battery is available for purchase for $19.99 USD. Other formats are also available.

So what do I think?

There are some interesting things about this library. First, the sample quality. If you are expecting pristine quality recordings you are going to be disappointed. When you check the samples with your audio editor you will notice there seems to be some clipping and audible background noise in quite a large number of samples. Since the sounds were recorded directly into a Tascam DA-88 I guess the background noise may be part of the preparation of the Rhodes.

Now although I would like the sounds to be a bit cleaner and brighter this does not mean I dislike Prepared Rhodes. On the contrary, I think it’s a lovely sample library. It is unique and unusual as I would expect from a Zvon product. You are not going to find these sounds anywhere else. I auditioned the samples one by one and I got incredibly itchy to start messing with them right away — they are so inspirational and musical (did I mention I like quirky sounds?)

The third “U” in “3U” is usability, and Zvon takes some extra care of this aspect with the chromatic semi-tuned and stretched (granular) instruments. Organs, music boxes, bells, all kinds of plucked sounds — lots of lovely instruments with great playability.

While playing with the sounds I made a little loop that I will share here to demonstrate the kind of thing you can do with this library.

All sounds in the clip above are from Prepared Rhodes. I was done with a Kontakt multi of 6 instruments, and about halfway I put some standard Kontakt delay and filter effects on one of the sounds.

Make sure to check the audio demos on Zvon’s mp3 page for examples of some more “traditional” pieces.

More information: Les Productions Zvon / Prepared Rhodes