Hi all, It's a novice question: I want to convert a sound sample into musical notes. I need to use xylophone-like sound for my game so I recorded a glass ding. Then I made soundfont out of this sample using Polyphontics (Vienna alternative for Mac OS X). Now I have a Garageband software instrument by turning the original glass ding to a octave of musical notes. The problem is that each note sounds unnatural:for example, no natural decay. Is there any way I can convert this soundfont back to wav or aif files, and recover the "natural" quality of the original sample, but being in tune? Thanks. Sy

Sounds like to me you need to create a better sample to work with. Try re-recording the glass "ding" and allow for a longer tail (or decay in the sound). Try pulling this into your sampler and see if that gives you better results. Also, you may need to apply some processing (like reverb and such) after putting the sample in and playing it in context to your music.

Finally, make sure your actual recording is of the highest quality you an muster (given any software-hardware or video game size restraints). All of this should help.

If none of that works out, perhaps you need to pick something else other than a glass ding?

Thanks,

Nate

Nate, I thank you for your advice. I will try to get the better quality sample (recorded with Sony PCM-D50
in an acoustically live room).

The tricky thing is to keep the final aif file under 150kb, about 1.5sec long, and sounds still decent.
(Some commercial sound bank samples I used before seem to manage that.) Other than reducing
sampling rate, any other tricks to reduce file sizes? (w/o compression).

Thanks.

sy

If you want to record a shorter strike against the same material, don't hit the surface as hard. That way the sound won't linger as long and leave a huge reverb trail. Just make sure your microphone is close enough.

It might work...?

Thanks for the tips Brian. Do you have recommendation for microphone for close pick ups and MIDI keyboard
for realistic touch?

I don't have any specific equipment in mind, no. I do all my music work with VST's so microphone work hasn't entered into my equation yet.