Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra

Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra (SSO) is a free library of sampled orchestral instruments. The original version was created by Mattias Westlund in 2011, and quickly earned a following for its excellent quality and wide selection of instruments. This repository hosts the ongoing development of the library. Mattias is no longer directly involved (although he has given his permission for continuing to develop it) and has not personally reviewed all of the changes. In other words, don't email him with questions about it!

Download SSO

The instruments are packaged in SFZ format. They can be used with any compatible player. They are tested on Sforzando and sfizz. Other players often have less complete support for the format, so some features may not work correctly on them.

Here are some examples created entirely with Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra, so you can hear what it sounds like.

Instruments

SSO includes the following instruments and articulations:

Strings

Brass

Woodwinds

Pitched Percussion

Percussion

Miscellaneous

Instruments with multiple articulations are packaged in two ways. Use whichever one is more convenient for your workflow.

• As a separate SFZ instrument for each articulation.
• As a keyswitched instrument with all articulations in a single file. You can switch between articulations by pressing keys outside the range of the instrument.

Most solo instruments have three versions:

• A non-looped version that simply plays each sample once. This gives the most natural sound, but sets a strict limit on how long any note can be held.
• A looped version that can be held indefinitely, but sounds less natural than the non-looped version.
• A looped version that adds a gradual decay and gentle modulation. This tries to give a more natural sound than the simple looped version, but still not place a strict limit on how long notes can be held. If you are in doubt about which version to use, this is usually the best choice.

There are two different solo violin instruments, and likewise two different solo flutes. In each case, one of the two instruments has more articulations, but does not offer a looped version.

Many instruments are provided in separate "notation" and "performance" versions. They differ in how they are controlled.

• Notation instruments use a control system convenient for use in notation programs.
  • All instruments use velocity to set the volume.
  • Marcato articulations use the mod wheel (MIDI CC 1) to adjust the strength of the initial attack. This lets you smoothly blend between a gentle sustain and a strong marcato.
• Performance instruments are better for use in live performance.
  • Long articulations use the mod wheel (MIDI CC 1) to set the volume. This allows you to continuously shape each note. Many long articulations also use velocity to control the attack rate.
  • Marcato articulations use the mod wheel to set the overall volume and velocity to control the strength of the initial attack.
  • Short articulations use velocity to set the volume.

In both control systems, most string instruments use MIDI CC 21 to control the amount of vibrato. The only exceptions are the solo violins and solo cello, which have vibrato baked into the samples. Solo violin 2 has separate samples with and without vibrato. When using the non-vibrato samples, you can use CC 21 to add vibrato. This lets you precisely control the amount of vibrato, but the sound is slightly less realistic than the vibrato samples.

Here are definitions of the most common articulations.

Sustain: This produces long notes, often with a gentle attack. The sound continues as long as you hold the note down (or for non-looped versions, until the end of the sample is reached). In many cases, the attack rate can be controlled with key velocity.

Marcato: This is similar to sustain, but with an accented attack at the beginning. The strength of the attack can be controlled with key velocity (for performance instruments) or the mod wheel (for notation instruments).

Staccato: Short, strongly accented notes.

Legato: This is a monophonic articulation: the instrument can only play one note at a time. If you press a new note before releasing the previous one, it smoothly transitions between them with no break in the sound. On some instruments this is typically described as "slurred" rather than "legato", but for consistency all instruments use the same name for corresponding articulations.

Pizzicato: The player plucks the string with their finger instead of using the bow.

Col Legno: More precisely, col legno battuto. The player strikes the string with the wooden part of the bow. When played by an ensemble, this produces a tight cluster of very short, percussive notes.

Tremolo: More precisely, this is an unmeasured tremolo. All the musicians in the section move their bows back and forth over the string as quickly as possible, not trying to synchronize with each other. The result is a pulsing, shimmering sound.

Harmonics: More precisely, this is the playing technique known as "artificial harmonics". The player lightly touches their finger to a point one quarter of the way along the free part of the string. This suppresses many of the vibrational frequencies, leading to a note two octaves higher than written with a thin, ghostly sound.

Technical Details

All samples are stereo, 16 bit, 44 kHz. Most instruments are sampled in minor 3rds. Most short articulations use at least 2x round robin.

Most samples have only a small amount of reverb baked into them, so adding a realistic reverb is important for producing a good overall sound. Given that the samples came from a variety of different sources, this is also important for making them sound like a unified orchestra.

License

SSO may be used and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 license.

Mattias Westlund included the following statement with SSO 1.0 regarding the sources and licensing of the samples:

SSO was created from the following free/CC-licensed/public domain instrument samples: The University of Iowa MIS, MSLP, Philharmonia samples, OLPC project, The Complete K2000, ldk1609 violin, stamperadam Kelon Xylophone, Corsica_S Cello Pizzicato, davidjwoll cymbal rolls, Satoration Castanets, Thores Triangle, Mystified timpani, Eddie's English Horn and a variety of classic soundfonts by Campbell Barton, Nando Florestan, and Ethan Winer.

In the case of a few very old soundfonts I have no idea who the original authors were or what licensing might apply. But as these files have been modified by different people and included in countless GM banks and other soundfont compilations over the last decade, I'm assuming that they are to be considered public domain or at least free to use for sampling projects.

I have done my very best to avoid samples of questionable legality, but as it is impossible for me to know the exact origin of everything (i.e. I have no way of knowing if a soundfont labeled as "public domain" isn't actually sampled from a proprietary source), I would appreciate if you let me know if you find anything fishy.

Related Projects

SSO was the first high quality, free orchestral library. More recently, a few others have become available. Each one has its own sound, so try them all out.

• Virtual Playing Orchestra
• Versilian Studios Chamber Orchestra Community Edition
• BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover Edition