I recently upgraded most of the sounds in my sound Library. I was surprised to find an impressive array of instruments available at reasonable prices. I don’t usually mention gear or specific companies in this blog but I decided I will provide some comments about gear on occasion. The purpose of this blog is still to provide information about composing and arranging.

The quality of sample Libraries has gotten quite good in recent years. We are well past the time of Akai and Roland samples. The Gigasample format was the first to break through the gigabyte (GB) size for a sample library. Now you routinely find instrument sample libraries that are two or more gigabytes in size. There are even many free sample libraries available that large. The piano library called Piano in 162 by Ivy Audio is free (actually donation ware) and it is 5.88 GB!

Perhaps the best way to go about discussing sample libraries is to take a practical standpoint instead of taking a shotgun approach. I was recently working on a percussion piece that called for different instruments that were not in my sound library. The instrumentation of my piece is glockenspiel, vibraphone, bongos, snare drum, Toy Piano, and melodica – a very esoteric group of instruments indeed! I needed some instruments. Where would I find them?

Glockenspiel is available from many different sample companies. You can even get some decent free samples on the net. After examining my options, I decided to go with the Mallets library from Sonokinetic. This library features glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone, and tubular bells for 49 Euro (about $54). The instruments sound great and the library is 2.57 GB in size. Deeply sampled tuned percussion libraries are typically not as large as other sample libraries. This was a great addition to my studio.

Finding a vibraphone library was more difficult. Soniccouture and Orange Tree Samples have fantastic vibraphone libraries. I decided to go with an inexpensive but nice sounding vibraphone called MalletPak Two from Puremagnetik. This one is 687 MB in size and cost around $15. I may upgrade to one of the other vibraphone libraries I mentioned but I don’t like to spend a lot for a single instrument. The $15 price puts MalletPak Two in the same ballpark as Sonokinetic Mallets if you paid for each of those instruments separately.

Next, I needed bongos and a snare drum. I had snare samples from some other libraries I own already. The problem was that they were for snare ensemble instead of solo. I had a few bongo samples that weren’t very good. This is the thing, auxiliary percussion is common in many libraries but it isn’t always that good. After reviewing my options, I decided to go with Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion from Impact Soundworks. This is a great library. It has 16-bit and 24-bit versions. I elected to install the 16-bit version since I’m not doing serious recording. The 16-bit version is 3.73 GB and cost around $149. This library is fantastic. It includes eight different Kontakt instrument patches – auxiliary percussion, cymbals and gongs, drums and ensembles, hand drums, marimba, timpani, tubular bells and crotales, and xylophone and glockenspiel. I suppose after you read this you might wonder why I bought Sonokinetic Mallets and this library. The mallet instruments in Rhapsody aren’t bad but they aren’t as good as Sonokinetic. The strength is in the interface and in all the auxiliary percussion, cymbals, drums, and hand percussion.

This brings me to the toy piano. I found a few good ones and have since even found more. It seems that sampling toy pianos is in vogue these days. I bought two libraries – Kinderklavier Toy Piano from Soundiron and Vintage Toy Piano from Simple Sam Samples. Soundiron is one half of the company that used to be Tonehammer. The other half of Tonehammer became the boutique sample company 8dio. The Soundiron toy piano is 2.20 GB (yes, for a toy piano!) and cost $29. The one from Simple Sam Samples is 2.25 GB (even bigger!) and cost and a bank breaking $1. I like both libraries but have found myself relying mostly on Vintage Toy Piano. Let that be a lesson for you – more expensive isn’t always better!

All that was left was to find a melodica sample. This was the hardest sample library to find. I again went with two libraries – one from Spitfire Audio and the other from Wavesfactory. The one from Spitfire Audio is 98 MB and cost 2 British pounds (a little less than $3). The one from Wavesfactory is 114 MB and is free! (telling you it is called Freelodica would have given that away). I had some trouble getting the volume adjusted with the Spitfire instrument. I emailed their tech support but they did not have much to say about it. So, I am using Freelodica which sounds great!

Like I said, I might review some sample libraries in the future if I have the need to get some new sounds but the primary mission of this blog is to provide information about composing. You do need sounds to produce digital music. Sounds are an essential part of the entire process. I have written music for so long that I notate everything. I don’t like to record anything that I haven’t written down. So, I usually notate my music in Finale and then use the software sampler Kontakt to trigger individual sounds instead of using the soundset from Garritan that comes with Finale.

You can get great results from sample libraries now. You just need to consider your budget for buying sample libraries, whether you need instruments for playback or if you are trying to produce professional demos, and how much space you have on your computer hard drive. Next time I’ll write about some things that came up while I was working on a couple scores recently.