I feel that I owe some information on the progress of the work on the Freiberg Silbermann Organ Model. As I mentioned earlier, I had to dedicate my time in the last 2 weeks to work other than Hauptwerk. Neverthless, I did not stop working on the Freiberg entirely. First of all, I had to wait for a new agreement with the Freiberg authorities. Now, the new document has been signed and so I can start distributing the sample set. The owner of the organ, adviced by the organbuilder, required that the sample set is encrypted to prevent misuse by third hand. For this reason, I will distribute the sample set encrypted. Therefore, it will be usable only in conjunction with full version HAUPTWERK (with dongle), no other sampler will be able to read the files. Also, the demo version of Hauptwerk will not be able to load the sample set. This is an exception among the Sonus Paradisi sample sets which are normally distributed in plain wave format to allow for user editing. However, the wish of the organ owner is always the primary concern of us.
On the occasion of singing the document, we visited the Freiberg again. And being there, I could not resist the temptation to arrange a new recording session and record the short staccato release samples again to be sure that the organ model will have the right behavior with short releases. And I finally discovered, what was the problem with the releases. The tracker action of this particular instrument is quite a tricky one and it in fact does not allow to record very short key strokes (there are some "lazy" opening pallets, some late speaking pipes - especially the Fagot is very late, the tracker is quite sensitive and loud when quick tones are played, giving a series of tiny noise "ticks" when released). Of course, this is no obstacle when normal musical performance or normal recording is done on the instrument, but it is a big problem in our case. Therefore, on our first occasion, we opted for recording a bit "longer" staccato tones. These were good as the "portamento" releases, but not as good as the "staccato" releases. So, this was the problem. With great difficulty, we tried to record the shortest staccato possible on the instrument. Then, I spent endless hours denoising these samples removing the tracker action noise and other noise which the tracker produces when playing staccato. But it is done now. I hope to publish some short demo pieces with these new releases. At the end, the new visit of Freiberg was very beneficial, since now the sample set will have THREE levels of releases, adding a FOURTH level for the manual reed stops (for a good measure:-). I decided not to discard the originally recorded longer staccato, as these perform very well as the middle-length release, between the short staccato and long one. After this addition, Freiberg organ model will have now short staccato, longer staccato (portamento) and long steady tone release for each sample. The fourth level of the releases for the manual reeds will be a second short staccato release, and Hauptwerk will select one release at random when the key is released. In this way, the variability of the releases is even increased for reeds where this issue is heard the most.
I hope that I will be able to finish the preparation of the sample set during the weekend (the remaining work is that I have to prepare the encrypted installation media and to test them), and I hope to release the sample set during the next week (finally!). I have to prepare also a demo version of the sample set, so that interested users can have a demo before they decide to purchase the full version. I will not discard the demo pieces from my web pages for now, but these were recorded using the previous version of the Freiberg virtual organ model. I hope to add new demos later during the month to come.
On the occasion of singing the document, we visited the Freiberg again. And being there, I could not resist the temptation to arrange a new recording session and record the short staccato release samples again to be sure that the organ model will have the right behavior with short releases. And I finally discovered, what was the problem with the releases. The tracker action of this particular instrument is quite a tricky one and it in fact does not allow to record very short key strokes (there are some "lazy" opening pallets, some late speaking pipes - especially the Fagot is very late, the tracker is quite sensitive and loud when quick tones are played, giving a series of tiny noise "ticks" when released). Of course, this is no obstacle when normal musical performance or normal recording is done on the instrument, but it is a big problem in our case. Therefore, on our first occasion, we opted for recording a bit "longer" staccato tones. These were good as the "portamento" releases, but not as good as the "staccato" releases. So, this was the problem. With great difficulty, we tried to record the shortest staccato possible on the instrument. Then, I spent endless hours denoising these samples removing the tracker action noise and other noise which the tracker produces when playing staccato. But it is done now. I hope to publish some short demo pieces with these new releases. At the end, the new visit of Freiberg was very beneficial, since now the sample set will have THREE levels of releases, adding a FOURTH level for the manual reed stops (for a good measure:-). I decided not to discard the originally recorded longer staccato, as these perform very well as the middle-length release, between the short staccato and long one. After this addition, Freiberg organ model will have now short staccato, longer staccato (portamento) and long steady tone release for each sample. The fourth level of the releases for the manual reeds will be a second short staccato release, and Hauptwerk will select one release at random when the key is released. In this way, the variability of the releases is even increased for reeds where this issue is heard the most.
I hope that I will be able to finish the preparation of the sample set during the weekend (the remaining work is that I have to prepare the encrypted installation media and to test them), and I hope to release the sample set during the next week (finally!). I have to prepare also a demo version of the sample set, so that interested users can have a demo before they decide to purchase the full version. I will not discard the demo pieces from my web pages for now, but these were recorded using the previous version of the Freiberg virtual organ model. I hope to add new demos later during the month to come.