PavlovsCat

Heavyocity Foundations are some of my favorite freebies. Excellent. As usual, I get their emails, but I'm more likely to notice your threads, Larry. Thanks once again.

W.A. Production Puncher 2 multi-effect plugin for Win & Mac is available as a free download (reg. $69) until January 20th. https://www.waproduction.com/plugins/view/puncher

OMG! Dana. It's been ages. I went by eDrummist, real name Peter. I was helping Kirk out maybe a decade ago. I came up with the idea for the Pop/Rock library and worked on a group buy or two. It's nice to see you around! One of the nicest of many nice people I met (virtually) back then.

The link appears to no longer work or works only for accounts that don't own certain products. Sorry. IK Multimedia AmpliTube TONEX Survey - In exchange for completing the survey, you’ll get a MESA Boogie Mark IIC+ and matching cab with a EV Darkness speaker for use in any version of AmpliTube 5 including AmpliTube 5 CS. (After completing the survey launch AmpliTube 5 and select "restore purchases" on the account page.) End date unknown. The link appears to no longer work or works only for accounts that don't own certain products. Sorry. https://www.ikmultimedia.com/userarea/tonex_survey.php

All kidding aside, I'm so grateful my daughter never got into the American Girl stuff. I'm with you. But Music Radar carried the story and I found it mildly amusing.

Your request is fulfilled!

I'm just a hobbyist these days (I was a semi professional drummer a lifetime ago), but I have actually recorded keyboard parts where when there wasn't a left hand part, I've picked up a cup of coffee and started drinking it. Dead serious. Is anyone else with me?

Not a bad setup and apparently all of the MIDI must be wireless. $115 USD. https://www.americangirl.com/products/kavis-songwriting-accessories-for-18-inch-dolls-hmc11

Yep, .the article mentioned that. To make clear, I did make the thread to get a laugh, but I'm 100 percent serious about that Miles Davis Funko Pop. I would love to get music legends as Funko Pop characters (my teenage daughter gets them and that's how I came across the Miles Davis one). Come on my fellow forum members, how about it? a Jeff Beck one, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, John Coltrane... If they had all of those, I'd want them all! Okay, as someone who used to go by the username eDrummist in the old Cakewalk forum, I'd also want Buddy Rich, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Max Roach, Mike Clark, Omar Hakim, RIngo Starr, Louie Belson, Neil Peart, Gene Krupa...

I keep hoping they'll do an ultra deep discount sale on their upright piano. Candidly, I bought at least one, maybe two SoundPaint piano libraries and they just don't measure up to the quality of my better KONTAKT pianos, IMO. But I'm a sucker for uprights and 8Dios upright sounds pretty good.

Dead serious, this is the doll I want for my next birthday, a Funko Pop Miles Davis.

Hey, it was from Music Radar. I saw this and thought to myself: I'll never scoop Larry on sales, its impossible. But I can establish my own niche.... Okay, I'm just kidding. The product amused me, that's all. Reach for your dreams, everyone, Peter

Hater!

For those of us with young kids (or grand kids)..."Reach for their dreams" is my personal favorite part of the copy: "The doll's character, named Kavi Sharma, has been introduced as American Girl's "Girl of the Year" for 2023. Kavi's character is a said to be a natural performer, singer and dancer, with an interest in music production and songwriting. Kavi is intended to help kids "learn the importance of finding a healthy rhythm in life and feel inspired to pursue their own unique talents and reach for their dreams...." "Accessories for the new character include a drum pad, laptop, microphone and a keyboard that plays six different tones," https://www.musicradar.com/news/american-girl-music-producer-doll?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_content=future-music

I love that Micah's library. I actually put the KONTAKT version on the bottom of the list because I think it's so good. I think that samplist is really talented and follow him on Pianobook. I'm going to add my favorite Labs libraries to the sorted by instrument list and if anyone thinks it's gotten out of hand and wants to suggest a way to make it easier to sort through, just post about it. I created this list to be useful to others, I won't mind the criticism. I care more about it being helpful to people.

If it's not a Gameboy library that was the most confusing teaser ever! I actually did think about that too. I have ISW's freebie Gameboy library and it's a lot of fun (it requires the full version of KONTAKT); anyone who owns the full version of KONTAKT who likes these kinds of sounds should pick it up.

I agree with you, that's a worthy addition to this thread and a library I could recommend. I presently have Labs as one entry. Do you think it would be more useful to people if I went through each Labs library in the OP and gave them a little summary and rating? I did sort individual libraries that way for everything else but LABS and recommended that everyone download all the LABS libraries, but do you think my list would be more helpful if I call out the various LABS libraries so people can see what instruments are covered (piano, electric piano, guitars, strings, etc)?

Ah, never mind.

Wait? An ultra-deep sampled Gameboy??? Okay, that library actually sounds pretty fun and I think SoundPaint would be perfect for a library like that. While I don't find SoundPaint is at the level of KONTAKT when it comes to hyper realistic acoustic sampled instruments like guitar (I'm not saying it can't get there, but my opinion is that it's not there yet), what I really do love about SoundPaint is that it's super easy to program. While I've made my own patches/snapshots for KONTAKT, I've never gotten into the kind of detail of altering sounds and using creative effects anywhere near what I've done with SoundPaint because it's so easy. I've actually bought a few SoundPaint libraries that duplicate KONTAKT libraries I own because I thought they'd be cool to layer and create new programs and I've found SoundPaint succeeds at that. But I find my KONTAKT equivalents of those sample libraries from other devs are more realistic sounding to my ears.

I won't say what company it was. But a company I once worked for spent around one million dollars promoting a charity event every year that got a ton of positive media coverage. Coverage that was easily worth tens of millions of dollars through paid media, but getting the coverage through unpaid media (we call it earned media in the industry) was incredibly more valuable because it's more credible than advertising. The facts, the company that event (a big marathon) was named after only donated less than $10,000 a year to the charity it co branded the event with. It was all done to exploit the charity's goodwill for the benefits it had for the brand. FTR, I tried to change that, but it fell on deaf ears. But that story isn't as rare as you might hope. Sharing some stories like that and advocating for better ethics in marketing did get me recognition when I ran a publication. Unfortunately, I doubt it changed anything. But I don't find corporate matching programs are bad at all. It's corporate co branding and sponsorships of charity events that are often pretty sleazy if you find the details, which are never going to be publicly available. I think most corporate matching programs are very good by comparison.

Updates from everyone on how their resolutions are going, please!

I feel asleep early last night, woke up early and the result is more updates to the list. I spent a bit more time on a category I absolutely love, tuned percussion as well as vocals/chorus libraries. Many of these are libraries that are absolutely worth paying for (or contributing to the samplist). I also want to express my gratitude to the very talented and generous individuals who have shared their work at zero profit. My hope is that compiling this list can bring joy to a musician who is short on cash but long on the desire to create music; it's such an incredible gift that shouldn't be relegated to for profit use, After an injury, I, once a perfectionist musician, couldn't play without pain after even a minute of playing. It was frustrating and disappointing to know the joy of playing with other musicians, to see people feel emotions when you play, to have your peers praise you or to get encores was forever gone. But it was years later, advising (pro bono) an organization that helps and advocates for people with disabilities that I started participating in their forum, a place where I found a small community of musicians with disabilities -- some with very serious disabilities, including severe bone deformities -- where I started spending time there encouraging people that the joy of playing music wasn't something elite. I would find stories of musicians with disabilities and summarize the stories and witnessed people being inspired -- it was incredibly fulfilling to do that, TBH. I found great joy in seeing how much those stories inspired people. And I made lots of posts like this thread, bringing together freebies, as most of the community was fairly poor. It's been several years since I've posted there. My good friend that inspired me to post there -- a woman much younger than me with a severe disability who died far too early a few years ago leaving behind a wonderful husband, who is also a talented pianist -- used to be active in the forum and when she passed, I stopped posting there. I need to go back and duplicate this thread there. But the truth is, while I was encouraging others to play music despite their disabilities, my pain and disappointment that I would never again be able to make music at a level I found acceptable stopped me from trying again (until the pandemic came and my sense of mortality motivated me to want to record some songs I wrote for my kids when they were young about how much they mean to me; so in spite of my terrible playing abilities and 20 years of no practice and a crap voice, I gave it another shot and now I've recorded dozens of songs for an audience of my family and a few friends). While yes, Christian Henson had a commercial motive in creating the Pianobook community, it doesn't stop it from being a wonderful community of incredibly generous people giving away their work without cost. To date, I don't see any major downside to the community. I realize that there are some people highly critical of it who have condemned it here, but the reality is, it costs a good deal of money and resources to keep that community going and I don't think having samplists sell their work is a bad idea at all and I don't find the model -- from what I know -- exploitive of samplists. Back when I worked at a major global brand that was then working with Bono (U2), Bono said some things that did change the way I looked at charitable work. I have always done a good deal of charitable work focused on the homeless, abuse survivors and those with disabilities. But my day job -- before becoming a business owner -- was managing/leading digital marketing. The reality is, businesses, when they give, commonly give very little to charity and do it mainly for the goodwill for the brand. I don't want to be sued, but I can tell many stories about brands sponsoring charities where they've spent millions promoting their affiliation with a charity and only given thousands to that charity -- it's not rare and, personally, I find it incredibly exploitive and disappointing, and I wish I could have changed that, I tried. So back to Bono's point, which was very different than my thinking and I initially found it a bad idea. Bono very cynically stated that businesses will never give out of generosity and sincerely decent motives, so society should accept when they do good and mix making a profit. Part of me has contempt for the situation, but my experience tells me that he was right. Bringing it back to Spitfire/Pianobook/Christian. Unless you're naïve, you realized from day one that Christian created that community with a profit motive in mind. That doesn't make it evil. Yes, it makes it far less noble, but a career in business has taught me that it's the wrong place for naivete. The beauty of the Pianobook community isn't harmed by Spitfire's profit motive -- at least at this point. It's still a thriving community with incredibly generous and many very talented people giving away their work without asking anything in return. And if they also create works where they seek profit, I think that takes nothing away from their generosity of their work given away without cost. Has Spitfire or Christian Henson created Pianobook as a a philanthropist? Absolutely not. That was obvious to me from the beginning. But the beauty of the community isn't dependent on Spitfire doing it as a charitable effort. It can be a promotional channel for Spitfire -- and it is -- and still serve the greater good. Sermon over. Peace.

I made some updates (additional recommended sample libraries) to the original post. If anyone else has new recommendations for free sample libraries, please share them! There are lots that are on my hard drive that I still have yet to add. I've mostly been going through my sample libraries trying to delete the ones that I don't find worthy of keeping and the ones on this list are the keepers.

See my post later in this thread for the details of what actually occurred.

They're not wrong.