I’m waiting for my Dwarf to arrive and in the meantime I’m doing some homework.
Let’s say I’m an intermediate/advanced guitar player and I ordered the Dwarf mainly for guitar and bass guitar use.I know what most typical effects do and how to use them.
BUT
I always had some apetite to learn some piano one day.
…So excuse my noob question about that area
I wonder how far I would get with just a decent keyboard (half weighed keys) and a Dwarf. Can you put virtual instruments in the dwarf, attach your keyb via usb?/midi? and start playing? if not, what is the minimum of extra I need to perform live without a pc or tablet attached?
You can surely connect a midi keyboard/controller that’s ether 5-pin midi or USB midi class compliant, and it will work right away. I do precisely that (though with a midi guitar controller.) Just plug the USB cable in and voilà!
You can use the generators that exist in the Mod store. For a list of existing instruments, please see this list:
These are all plugins that take a midi input and generate sound. (I’ve chosen the “instrument” category, but you may also select “generators”.)
One of them, the DIE Fluid Synth is a device that plays samples in SF2 format – meaning you can load your instruments to it. Think of it as a classic sampler. We were already told that Sfizz may be coming to MOD as well.
What MOD doesn’t do is to allow you to load a VST instrument. They must be in LV2 format. I am hoping (more than believing) that Apple’s move to ARM processors will then make developers create ARM versions of their plugins. Also – and more importantly, MOD’s platform offers a way for developers to actually profit from their plugins, so it’s possible that one such platform would create an incentive for developers to undertake the work of porting their plugins to MOD.
Yes. You can connect any MIDI controller either via the TRS MIDI in port or the USB port-A. Then you just need to go to the “Generator” section of plugins and voilá. You can enjoy a collection of pianos, synths, etc.
Been watching some demo video’s and I was like “WOW; control voltage can do THAT?”…but they didn’t answer the “plug in a keyboard and get a natural sounding piano.”- question
Can’t wait to get mine; shhhould be expected before Christmas.
Voila?
I’m from Belgium, French is one of the official languages here. Guess you guess guessed
We didnt reach out to them, but did some tests already with the current builds.
The performance is suboptimal, only the Duo X is able to play it a bit, but with limitations. @dreamer has tested a special build some months ago too.
Right now there is some technical problems preventing us from using their builds as-is, which also very much limits testing.
But we want to revisit this later on for sure
Does that mean I could fobtain free SF2 files ('sound font files like these: Best Free Piano VSTs/Soundfonts of 2020 - YouTube) and load them up in my Dwarf and play them with that DIE fluid synth plugin?
Since the plugin store is down, I can’ really ‘just test’ that …
@LievenDV Yes you can, SF2 and the DIE Fluid plugin work quite well together especially when the sf2-files are not too big in size! I also did some test with the sfizz plugin and sfz-files. Also worked, but I use more the SF2 files.
I don’t seem to have the Die Fluid plugin or at least I don’t find it.
Could somebody export it so I can import it manually while the plugin store is down?
If it aint free, I’ll have to wait first till it comes online again and purchase it with my open credit.
With a little help from my friends (once again @spunktsch to be precise) I recalled the way to manually put his exported DIE fluid on my Dwarf. 2 sec google brought me to a nice set of piano SF2 files, uploaded these to the Dwarf via the file browser, rebooted the Dwarf and boom, instant fancy piano sounds.
Love exploring the world of free SF2 files and playing them without pc assistance in the digital piano + Dwarf setup!
Had some good fun spending my lunchbreak trying out some sounds.
I had an occasional pop/scratchy sound that I need to check.
They grand piano’s I collected sound good and very usable and the Rhodes makes me want to learn the" still crazy after all these years" intro
Got some Salamnder C5, honkey tonk, upright stuff, all quality piano sounds.
There is some fun stuff too like the Axel Foley (Beverly Hills Cop) sound etc.
Some arem ore interesting than others, depending how layered they are as they sound differently as you apply dynamics in your playing.
Long story short, I’m getting a lot of quality sounds out of my cheap (<$300) digital piano.
I’m goign to explore some more and then update my LievenDV’s Dwarf journal topic with a new entry
I noticed that there aren’t so much “pre baked” synth sounds out there, since people do that with plugins ‘n’ patches anyway. It would be nice to have some dirty synth sound pre packed as SF2’s for now so if you have any, let me know. btw; let me know what your favourite drum SF2 is as well
Yes, it’s true. I have had a small project in the drawer for a few months which is to create a library for a little Glockenspiel that I have. I want to do it 1) because I’m curious about how to set up these libraries (never did it) and the Glockenspiel is small so it won’t require tons of work and 2) I recorded it for a project with the same melody of some synth stuff that I actually play live (just in a lower register) and I would very much like to overdub that live as well.
