Hi All,

I saw this today on the MakeMicroMusic mailing list:

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/MakeMicroMusic/message/18099

(Not sure if you can reach that page without being a member).

Aaron Krister Johnson made a soundfont based on the Yamaha P200 and
placed it here:

http://www.akjmusic.com/packages/yamaha_p200.sfArk

I've included the email he wrote to that list below.  (Hope Aaron
doesn't mind, but I thought it was pretty nice of him to release
this!)

steven

[quote email]


I'd like to announce that I've completed a piano soundfont. I'm quite
pleased, and I am happy to share it, and to hear your experiences.

http://www.akjmusic.com/packages/yamaha_p200.sfArk

I made it out of frustration with the many moderatly high to low quality
free soundfonts which are found on Hammersound, the most praised of which
somehow always left me feeling like I needed better...I feel this one is,
but YMMV. I also love playing my P200, but alas, no microtuning, hence
another justification for doing this. Since I can send tuning tables to my
soundfont engine, FluidSynth, I'm in business.

It is a soundfont based on samples from my Yamaha-P200 digital piano,
which has I think, the most realistic sound and playability on the market,
and at least 2 other pro classical pianists I know share this opinion,
having shopped around for their digital pianos long and hard as well. Many
'net reviewers I've read also share this opinion, and I would say the main
competitor in this market, Kurzweil, has a fine digital piano, which is
microtunable to an extent, but doesn't match Yamaha's models general
warmth, IMO.

Of course, there are some really fine .gig pianos for sale, but I'm giving
this away for free, so if you use soundfonts, and don't want to shell out
one to several hundred $$$ for top-quality commercial GigaSamples, you
might want to try this and see if it fits your needs.

I didn't use any loops, so the font is rather large (~43MB, download is
~11MB, you must unpack it with sfArk), but the benefit is a nice realism
to the original keyboard, which itself is made from samples from a real
Yamaha 9' grand. It has 16 velocity layers, and I've been working off and
on on this project for months. Enjoy!

-AKJ