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Looking for a preset that sounds like Tibetan Singing Bowls

Hi Everyone:


Two questions. Is there a repository (library) established for different presets for the ORBA2? I mean, I can dig through the forum and find some but has someone set up a location where we can look for different presets?


Question 2: I'm looking for presets that sound like Tibetan Singing Bowls.  Something like this: https://youtu.be/Gqfk5sr9fpw


Thanks in advance.


I'm not familiar with any presets that sound like singing bowls. The excellent and free Orbasynth app by ARTIPHON lets you create your own presets for the Orba X internal synth, so you could have a go at it and share your results here. Someone (maybe me) in these forums might start creating presets and sharing them in these fora (forums). 


The beauty of the Orba 2 is that you can SAMPLE your own sounds. You could sample the YouTube recordings that you like to above, or sample your own singing bowls if you have some, or go visit your closest music store that is likely to have a singing bowl and sample them there during a rare moment of silence.

For free Tibetan bowl samples I'd be thinking Freesound.


https://freesound.org/search/?q=tibetan+bowl



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There are a few advantages to synthesizing a sound rather than sampling it. Using a synthesized preset gives you more control over the mapping of the gestures and and essentially zero memory. I'm working on a Tibetan bowl sound myself. I'll share it here if I can get it sounding good. Right now, I think I got the harmonics right, but it's too "buzzy." I only worked on it for about half an hour.


I'm also going to try sampling the Freesound sounds. Unfortunately, I don't have a singing bowl - Tibetan or glass.


That's another issue. The glass bowls tend to emphasize a major third overtone and the Tibetan bowls tend to emphasize a tritone overtone. So, you have to decide which you're trying to synthesize. Also, the bowls can be struck or "rubbed," and they generate different harmonics depending on whether you strike them with the cloth/leather part of the stick or the wood part. The samples that I found on Freesound seem to be Tibetan (metal) bowls being rubbed and struck with the leather part of the stick.


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@Gabriel very interested in what you end up with. I've been messing with the sampler and I know it is capable of velocity thresholds (e.g. the Marimba sound). I've looked into the .artipreset files and can see how this is setup. Ultimately if sampled, we would need 8+8 samples (2 for each pad) One for the rubbed sound and one for the struck sound. How do you imagine this would be tuned? Would it be in Major/Minor scales? Also, I'm not sure, but I also think I've heard some presets that are a mix of samples and synthesized sounds. I'm still looking into if this is true. I remember some of the new patches being samples but they never decay (Piano is an example of this)

Sampling was pretty easy. I went to freesound.com . I found a sound singing bowl sample that I liked and downloaded the wave (.WAV) file. I opened the app on my desktop (Windows) and went to the Sample section. I selected the thing that looks like a folder and found the wave file that I had downloaded. The sampling function is VERY smart. It analyzed the wave file and PITCH CORRECTED it to generate concert (tuned) pitches that are appropriate for any major or minor key that you select in the app!. In other words, you don't have to sample for a specific pitch or note or scale. You only need one sample and the sampling algorithm generates all of the appropriate autotuned pitches. VERY nice. The sampling algorithm also seems to have stripped off a bit of silence that was present at the beginning and end of the sample that I downloaded. I was afraid that I might have to clean up the sample first with something like Audacity, but the sampling algorithm seems to have cleaned up the sample as well. I will still try to synthesize a singing bowl as well for the practice and also for the reasons mentioned above, but you can get pretty good results pretty quickly this way. I've attached the sampled file. You should just be able to put the file in "This PC > Documents > Artiphon > Common > Presets > Lead" and use is from there.


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In order to share sounds that include samples, you will need to share not only the .artipreset file but also the files that it samples that it created. In your case these are: 

449951__steffcaffrey_0_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav
449951__steffcaffrey_1_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav
449951__steffcaffrey_2_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav
449951__steffcaffrey_3_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav
449951__steffcaffrey_4_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav
449951__steffcaffrey_5_16d589db21424961a2ee032042122745.wav

You'll find these in the SamplePools folder. I recommend you put all the files in a zip file and attach. Preferably with the corresponding folder structure like my Multi example:

image


I edited the various wav files so that I could have different samples on each pad.

zip
(535 KB)

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That synth app crashes my computer. Can't really use it due to that. 

Thisguy
said 2 days ago

That synth app crashes my computer. Can't really use it due to that. 


What kind of 'puter do you have?

I'm using Windows 10; tried sampling a few times but the App keeps crashing. Firmware update yesterday so hoping that might stabilise it.

At which Stage does it crash? Can you record and Preview from the App? When you "Send To Orba" do the files actually arrive in the secret folder? Do the samples get added to the User folder?

It had been crashing when I tried to browse for a .wav sample in the App, but it seems OK now. Maybe the firmware update fixed it.

Should Singing Bowls just be the same tone on every pad so that you can trace circles as the rubbed sound but also play the struck sound when you press them beyond a certain velocity?


I was always intrigued by this promotional video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoxUlNmhQWw (0:25) where they slide like a singing bowl. I think this might be much more achievable with Orba 2

I tried to do the singing bowls but it didn't come out too well. I was able to assign the same sample to every pad and trace my finger around and sound the rubbed bowl. But the loop has too much attack at the start so you don't get the smooth sound you'd expect. I may try to edit the sample to improve it.


I also figured out you can define loop points so that holding a pad will start at the beginning of the sample and then eventually loop between two defined points. This is evident in the Shakuhachi flute lead.


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Okay I created a Tibetan Singing Bowl preset.. It's not as good as I'd like it to be but I'm learning as I go. You can start with any pad and hold it down.. I like to use my other hand to circle around the other pads (pretending its a singing bowl). So far I haven't found a way to get the other notes to interact with it. Ideally pressing harder would control the volume to some degree. 


I think the way to install it is to unzip the package and Drag the "Common" folder to the Users/<user>/Documents/Artiphon folder. This should ask you to merge the content. Or just manually place the two files..


@BJG145 Here is another preset for you to try. Hopefully you can just drag in the "Common" folder as described above and the Orba 2 app will do the rest. I'm messing with the Seekers to see if I can add vibrato but no luck doing this to a Drum Preset yet.

zip

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