I threw this together real quickly for HALion Sonic.
It is based off the same samples mentioned earlier.
At this point I’ve done nothing fancy. I didn’t even set up a filter, nor dynamics envelope with ADSR controls.
It is simply drum machine style one-shot triggers of the samples. I did leave out the C1 sample and instead stretched the C#1 down a half step, as to my ears the C1 had a noisy attack compared to all of the rest that sounded a bit out of place to me.
Screen Shot Showing Ghent Belfry Carillon running in Sonic 7
Just grab the vstsound archive below. Double click it, and your Steinberg Library Manager should open and give options on where you want it installed.
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Nice, @Brian_Roland. Thanks. As you’ll see if you look in my SFZ file, I tuned some of the bells a bit (of course part of the fun of bells is the tuning and weird harmonics).
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I haven’t done any tuning or tweaking at all. Raw samples as they were recorded. Out of the shoot you can get some velocity based dynamics but that’s it. I might revisit it someday and do more with it. With full HALion it’s easy to deep tweak things ‘as needed’, so I’m prone to throw a rough vstsound library like this together and forget it unless I actually need it in a piece, I’ll sort it out then depending on what the mix needs (every piece and mix seems to need something different anyway).
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Wow! I can’t wait to hear them.
I did mange to get the Kontakt Carillon installed and functioning in both Dorico and GarageBand (with the help of community volunteers here, on SonofKontackt, and Arturia). What an education!
I’ve downloaded both of your carillon libraries, and want to run them. The question is, in what app do I open them? Or better put, how and where do I open them so I can hear them? (The adventure continues!)
Mine is for ARIA Player, which lots of people have if they used Finale. Brian’s is for HALion, which you will have as part of Dorico. You just need to double-click on the .vstsound file and it will get installed. You can then use it in the HALion standalone application, or the HALion VST plug-in within Dorico.
Yup. The Ghent Carillon file is installing now (I think). I will start a new Dorico doc and assign the VST to a track. I should be able to hear it there.
I do have ARIA as well. How do I open your library?
Instructions are in the zip bundle.
Amazingly, I navigated my way to opening the Ghent Carillon VST, and it worked. Brian, they sound great! This will be helpful to anyone who needs a carillon library, but can’t pay for the Kontakt version (too late for me, but it was a good learning experience).
I’ll dig into the ARIA rabbit hole later.
Thanks for all the help!
Don’t forget to spend a little time tinkering with HALion Sonic (in general) when you’re not under pressure and deadlines. It has all sorts of tools built in (reverbs, pan, delays, and more) to get your bell tower into the mix exactly where you need it to be. I.E. Off in the distance up high in the air.
I think each bell was recorded in close proximity, so in raw form it’s very loud and proud. To make it sound like it’s rolling through city streets you’ll probably want a series of delays with some outdoor convolution reverb. HALion Sonic allows you many effect slots internally, on the layer channel, the main channel, and also several effect slots for each of 4 Aux Sends.
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Time for me to chime in, since I am a carilloneur and a Dorico user…
As carilloneur I have a (digital) practice keyboard, which is in fact a Midi keyboard with different formed keys (batons). In order to have a somewhat realistic sound I have installed this with the use of samples from the towerbells in the city where I live (Amersfoort, The Netherlands) which were made by a collegue of mine, and processed by a sample-engineer (or how do you call that) and as player I use the free player Sforzando (from Plogue), this is closely linked to Aria I believe. The configuration is via a text file in the .sfz specification (this is the link to Aria). The bells are, contrary to Ghent, modern and tuned in equal-temperament and on the base C so no transposition. One of the nice things with Sforzando is that you can insert also .scala files in order to change the tuning as you like, so with the same set of samples you can tune for instance in mean-tone. These samples are not from historic bells like Gent, but imho much better sounding and suited to use in something like Dorico.
As Dorico user I am not interested in making sounds via Dorico, but to set music nice and handy, for harpsichord/clavichord etc I do not need any sound, but when making arrangements for carillon it is handy to have the same sound as on the practice keyboard. Sforzando is also available as VST plugin. I have entered this in Dorico with exact the same configuration file as on the practice keyboard, as an endpoint. I have in Dorico now 1 sound available (the carillon), for me that is enough, so I cannot help with the embedding in other sound libraries.
I have put the samples for public download on my Google drive, plus the configuration file. Sforzando can be downloaded on from the website of Plogue. The config file is for a 4-octave carillon with low G0-Bb0-C-C-chromatic up to-d6. Samples are named with the name of the Midi-key and the sounding note (so for instance 36-C1.wav) in order to have a transposition clear, some samples are not available or not sounding well, have used adjacent samples a bit transposed which is also possible the Sforzando.
If anyone is interested, you can download it here (100Mb):
If there are any questions, ask, but embedding in Dorico is better answered by others 
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Many thanks!
Essentially, they are the same thing, so you can use ARIA or Sforzando for the same instruments.
You can use Sforzando’s VST plug-in within Dorico (and ARIA’s plug-in too); so they will play in Dorico.
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I could set up tuning scales for a Sonic instrument (not scala, but user tunable plus the ability to make presets of various tunings), I just didn’t do that yet. Maybe I can revisit it all next week and make some adjustments, and do one with your samples as well.
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Sorry forgot to include some Scala files which can be used if desired.
Scalafiles.zip (4.3 KB)
They are user editable, and very simple to do, like .sfz simple text files.
What an education!
Here’s what I have, so far:
The Kontakt Carillon (which started this whole thing) sounds great but only goes down to F below middle C, so I can’t use it in this composition.
The Ghent carillon sounds good, but is too out of tune to use with other instruments.
The Sforzando carillon that JeroenH posted up today is beautiful (if I can soften it and add some reverb) but it’s missing the low Db (below bass clef). Is here any way some one could add that note, or teach me how to do it? Then I can use it in my piece.
BTW, this discussion has been super interesting and a huge help in moving me forward. My thanks to you all.
You can open the sfz file with your favorite text editor and stretch the range of the lowest sample a bit. Bell sounds can get strange if stretched too far, but it’s worth a try.
Here is a list of sfz opcodes.
Opcodes - SFZ Format
Sorry to be dense, but how does this help me create a low Db? Opcode stands for operation code, ok, but if I stretch the lowest sample (assuming I can figure out how) will I lose my Bb?
look for the region that has the lowest sample, and find the “lowkey” opcode for that sample. Extend the lowkey value (lower number or note name).
SFZ can use midi note numbers, or note names. Here’s a chart of note numbers if your need it.
Computer Music: MIDI Key Number Chart
So the good news is that JeroenH included a C# .wav f that I hadn’t downloaded. I have now. The question is, how do I install that into Sforzando?
Sorry, I can’t answer for a few hours, but if someone else doesn’t cover it I’ll be glad to attempt to walk you through it when I get back home. Meanwhile you might try some web searches on how to make an instrument for ARIA, or SFZ, or sforzando, etc.
I’m pretty lost here. Perhaps the easiest way to include the Db would be for JeroenH to create an .sfz that has the C# wav f in it?
