Arabic and other exotic instrument soft-synths

This site has some plug-ins that might interest you. I don't enough about the instruments in question to say whether these sound good or not, but they are free...;)

http://smatni.tripod.com/safwanmatnivstplugins/

Should be safe enough. Tripod and dontcrack are okay. The ads are just the price you pay for free hosting;) It's certainly safer than surfing MySpace...

I downloaded these myself a while back, but honestly, I haven't quite found a use for them yet.

Btw, I don't know if this is anything that would interest you, but there are soundfont samples of Jamican steel drums here:
http://www.phunkynutts.com/steeldrum.php

Not soft-synth or arabian, but definitely exotic;)

ORIGINAL: Gulli05

Just wondering if there are any proper soft synths for making this arabic and other exotic sounding music?

Something not very expensive thou but still good sounding.

Arabic melodic instruments are very hard to find for the main reason that they use quarter-tones.

Thanks for the help. Sorry if this sounds stupid but what is a "quarter tone"?

ORIGINAL: x2000

A to B, for example, is a whole tone. A to A# is a half tone. A quarter tone would be from A to a note in between A and A#, which is something we don't do in western music. Not intentionally, anyway...;)

Dammit, I didn't know arabic music was so complicated. . . :(

I don't know if you're a guitarist, if not, just translate the scales to your own instrument, but here's a thread on the subject of eastern-sounding scales:

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=18454

Post #16 is particularly interesting.

DSK has some pretty good free ones and I think there is one called httsika or something as well. Otherwise search for soundfonts, there are pretty good free ones out there.

Hi Gulli05,

Here is a site that is well organized and very safe. I use their VST's fairly often. Everything is categorized nicely too.

http://www.vst4free.com/index.php?cat=ethnic

Regards John

ORIGINAL: Gulli05

Cool.

Anybody that can point out some more soft-synth, I am willing to pay 150-350$ or so for them but i want them to sound good.

Gulli05, if you're willing to go up to $350, you can get some pretty good stuff... There are some specialty single-instrument products out there (e.g., the ChineeKong stuff, which are all very good, BTW!), and there are also larger "mega library" products that cover a broader swath of the "ethnic" spectrum. For bang for buck, and a wider selection of instruments, I would recommend looking at the "mega library" products. Two particular products come to mind:

Quantum Leap RA -- http://www.soundsonline.com/Quantum-Leap-RA-PLAY-Edition-pr-EW-181.html

EthnoWorld 4 Pro -- http://www.bestservice.de/detail.asp/en/best_service/ethno_world_4_professional

The complete package of each will run you in the $350-$400 (but there are other options for EW4, see below).

A few things to consider:

1.) I haven't used QL RA, but it's supposed to have more "depth" than "breadth" across instruments as compared to EW4. At least that's the general consensus. QL may have added some RA content in a recent update, not sure.

2.) QL RA used to be a product packaged with the "Kontakt" sample engine, but is now packaged in QL's own "PLAY" engine (as is all of their other products). You should do an extensive investigation on the internet to make sure your PC hardware is up to PLAY's requirements, as there has been a lot of reported/observed/perceived issues with the PLAY rollout, much of which perhaps due to low-spec hardware. QL seems to be continuously putting out PLAY updates, however. The Kontakt engine, on the other hand is currently in it's 3rd generation. Do your homework here.

3.) EW4 is packaged with the Kontakt engine, and as an owner of a Kontakt Player VI you can get a discount on the full version of Kontakt somewhere down the road.

4.) EW4 on the bestservice site is 327EUR, which is currently about $418USD (if you're in the US, ignore the "including VAT" price). However, a division of bestservice called "sounds on demand" has specially packaged, downloadable versions of many of the bestservice mega libs split into smaller chunks:

http://www.soundsondemand.com/sort1.asp/marcel_barsotti/en/1

What you do is you buy one "full" module, which includes the Kontakt Player engine, then additional modules can be added on for cheaper. So, for example, let's say you want to start with "EW 4 Woodwinds", then that would be 75EUR ~ $96USD for the full "virtual instrument" package containing just the ethno woodwinds, then later you could add "EW 4 Strings" for the reduced "module price" of 58EUR ~ $74USD. That may be a good option if you're on a bit of a tight budget (and who isn't?!), cuz you can pick up an excellent product in pieces, or just the pieces you want. Plus the SoD products are downloadable, which is very convenient (of course, you'll need a reasonable internet connection, cuz the packages are very large). Plus SoD has a 10% discount program if you buy two products more than 20EUR each... so the above two would be $153USD. Only downside is that all sales are in EUR, so as long as your credit card company isn't charging some exorbitant exchange rate fee, SoD is a pretty good deal...

Current exchange rate is about 1.28EUR = 1USD... but of course that can always shoot up any day now...

Hope this helps!


EDIT: one more thing I forgot... the QL PLAY engine requires an iLok dongle, if that's something you care about...

EDIT: also forgot... you can try out EW4 over the internet via try-sound.com: http://www.try-sound.com/index2.asp?plg=bs_ew4&slng=en It's pretty cool, but the latency is up in the many 10's of ms... still very cool way to try out the product first, though...

Garritan recently announced a "World Instruments" library, due out in Q1. That would be using their new "Aria" engine. Could be interesting, if you're willing/able to wait an unknown number of weeks... Given the price of their other products, I'd expect it to be in the $150-$200 range when released.

http://www.kvraudio.com/news/10820.html