Weeds General MIDI SoundFont v3.0

Hiya Folks,

Long time, no type.

I finally got off of my butt and uploaded a custom soundfont of mine that I've worked on and off for several years now. The soundfont can be used with an EMU-8000 (AWE32/AWE64), EMU-10K (Audigy/Live), or an EMU-20K (X-Fi) sound card, as well as Ian Luck's freeware media player "XMPlay" (with XMPlay's MIDI Plugin installed).

Oh and of course, almost forgot <grin>, the soundfont can also be used with Timidity; or any DOOM source port that supports Timidity+SoundFonts for music playback :)

Directly from the included readme:

This excellent sounding complete General MIDI compatable SoundFont was created
from various commercial, custom, and freeware SoundFonts and samples and
requires 54,694,776 bytes of onboard EMU-8000 (AWE32/AWE64), EMU-10K
(Audigy/Live), or EMU-20K (X-Fi) RAM. The SoundFont also works and sounds great
with Ian Luck's freeware media player "XMPlay" (with XMPlay's MIDI Plugin
installed)... no EMU MIDI hardware required!

The SoundFont weighs in at almost 55 megabytes, and includes a complete General
MIDI compliment of 128 instruments and 9 drum kits (Standard, Studio, Room,
Power, Electronic, TR-808, Jazz, Brush, and Orchestra)... and is the last
General MIDI compatable SoundFont that you will ever need or wish to download
for all of your MIDI music compositions or playback!

SoundFont Statistics:

SoundFont Filename: WeedsGM3.sf2
Self-extracting sfArk Archive Filename: WeedsGM3.sfArk.exe
Zip Archive Filename: WeedsGM3.zip
Release Version: 3.0
File Dates and Times: March 1, 2010 3:00a
Readme Documentation: WeedsGM3.txt
License Agreement Documentation: WeedsGM3.License.txt
Sample MIDI Files: 5 (additional download)
Number of User Samples: 762
Size of User Samples: 54,694,776 bytes
Number of ROM Samples: 0
Number of Instruments: 147
Number of Melodic Presets: 128
Number of Percussive Presets: 9
Total SoundFont Filesize: 54,894,076 bytes

Downloads:

Download ¥Weeds¥ General MIDI SoundFont v3.0 from this page -> http://www.un4seen.com/download.php?extra/WeedsGM3

Direct links to the file here -> http://us2.un4seen.com/files/extra/WeedsGM3.zip and here -> http://uk.un4seen.com/files/extra/WeedsGM3.zip

View the version history and readme file (also included in the download) for the SoundFont here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/WeedsGM3.txt

Download a few sample MIDI files to test out the SoundFont here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/WeedsGM3_MIDIs.zip

The sample MIDI ZIP includes:

"Grabbag - Duke Nukem 3D - Lee Jackson.mid" (transposed and re-arranged a bit)
"March To War - Rich Weeds Nagel.mid" (threw this together the other night)
"Mustang Sally - Arranged by Rich Weeds Nagel.mid" (no melody, go ahead and sing along!)
"Ramblings of a Non-Pianist (Op. 2) - Rich Weeds Nagel.mid" (nope, I'm not a pianist <grin>!)
"Toccata in D Minor - Bach.mid" (added bass pedals)

Heh, guess I should have included a DOOM tune as well LOL!

Anyways, download and extract the ZIP, and then run the EXE to finish extracting the soundfont (the ZIP contains a self-extracting "sfArk" format soundfont archive; much better compression than ZIP/RAR/TAR/ACE/etc...). You'll need a sound card that supports soundfonts (or simply "XMPlay", with the "MIDI Plugin" installed), and one that can handle loading a 54.8 meg soundfont.

Hope y'all like it :)

P.S. You can find more of my original SoundFont creations (with sample MIDI files) here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/ .

Works flawlessly with EDGE and HT, and sounds great too!

Nice job!

Glad you liked it :)

Hey Rich, awesome soundfont, like I said on the ZD forums. :)

If you wanna hear what your soundfont sounds like with my MIDIs, check out these:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9165961
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9086694
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=9062253

Ahoy, Rich!

Love your Eternal Doom music!

I'll give this sound-font a go with GZDoom :) Looking forward to it!

rfnagel said:

The soundfont can be used with an EMU-8000 (AWE32/AWE64)...

rfnagel said:

The SoundFont weighs in at almost 55 megabytes...

WTF?

You don't have 64MBs of EDO RAM on your AWE?

aleksej said:

WTF?

DaMan said:

You don't have 64MBs of EDO RAM on your AWE?

Hehe, sorry folks, my bad... that was a misprint (sort of).

In my old PC, before I bought my SBLive, I had multiple AWE32 cards installed in it (all with 32MB of onboard RAM). Ahhh... the days of ISA slots, wish they were still around :)

On that PC I had split up the (older version of the) soundfont into two seperate soundfonts. Then I loaded one half into one AWE32, and the second half in another AWE32. Like this you couldn't really use it as an all purpose General MIDI soundfont (for games, etc...), but you could assign certain MIDI channels to one AWE32, and the rest to the other.

Sorry for the confusion, folks.

gemini09 said:

Love your Eternal Doom music!

Thankee kindly :)

gemini09 said:

I'll give this sound-font a go with GZDoom :) Looking forward to it!

Older versions of this soundfont has been what I've used to compose with for eons. Basically (re: ED soundtrack), what you hear is what *I* hear... especually on a soundfont compatable sound card :)

I am getting a 403 error on trying to use the direct link but the other link works fine.

I wish I had any idea at all on how the hell to use Timidity or soundfonts etcetc.

Never_Again said:
The download page link is broken in Firefox. It leads to a news page where the latest entry is from April. The link works in IE. This could be a cookie issue. It would make sense to have the download work regardless of whether cookies are enabled or blocked on the downloader's end.

Unfortunately, Ian has been having problems with his servers recently. Sometimes the direct links work, other times not.

Never_Again said:D_E2M7 was the worst, sounds like the bass section was removed entirely, leaving just a shadow of the original.

All of the DOOM/DOOM2 tunes sound fine to me. I'm not what sure what you're refering to in D_E2M7 though. There is no real bass or low instruments in that one to begin with (?). About the lowest intrument would be the Timpani (which does leave a bit to be desired), but it's not really that low to qualify as a 'bass line' either.

Never_Again said:D_DEAD sounds so bad, such an out-of-tune cacophony, as to be unlistenable.

I listened to D_DEAD using the soundfont loaded into my SBLive, as well as on the command line using the special ZDOOM build of Timidity... (as a musician) I heard absolutely nothing out of tune.

Never_Again said:If providing support for DOOM ports was indeed one of this project's goals, clearly not enough testing has been done in that direction.

Timidity support was simply a side thing, but like I said, the DOOM songs sounded fine to me (in the SBLive, as well as ZDOOM's Timidity). BTW, did you try the sample MIDI ZIP? I'm just curious how they sound on your end using the version of Timidity that you use. I'm wondering if there's something different about that one, verses the custom ZDOOM build of Timidity.

I do remember ages ago; the standalone Timidity (as well as the much older version of the custom build of ZDOOM Timidity) had issues with a lot of the parameters of the version 2.0 soundfont format. I remember at the time, using the old E-MU soundfont "8MBGM.SF2" sounded great... but using any soundfonts created in Vienna Studio v2.3 sound absolutely HORRID. I mean, *REAL* bad... painfully out of tune samples being played back, missing samples and instruments, etc.


Anyhow, I'm rather surprised at your feedback about the soundfont. I recieved literally dozens upon dozens of other comments from folks raving about the soundfont... all extremely positive feedback. Albeit, mostly for general-type stuff, not necessarily targeted at DOOM.

Thanks for the info :) Yeah, I was having a hunch that was what the problem was. As I said before, I remember MAJOR problems with a lot of soundfonts with the older version of the special ZDOOM build of Timidity. Ages ago I posted a message over in the ZDOOM forums, and they recompiled it to work properly.

BTW, if you use XMPlay, make sure to jack up the reverb sliders a bit... it makes MIDI playback with the MIDI plugin sound considerably nicer.

Oh, and of course, if you have an EMU hardware based card (SBLive, etc...), it will really sound the best like this... softsynths a lot of the time leave a lot to be desired. One thing that I've seen with Timidity (the newer ZDOOM build, as well as the older and standalaone versions) is that it's extremely 'dry'... not much realistic sounding reverb. Timidity also ignores drum kit patch changes (e.g. everything uses the "Standard" drum kit).

Never_Again said:Sorry for the confusion, Rich. [/B]

No problemo :) Anyhow, I hope you'll give it another listen to, I think you'll like it then :)

This. Rules. Works on XMPLAY too! :D

I'm going to be difficult and tell you I have to extract these into GUS patches with unsf so I can listen to them in Linux Timidity... and they sound awful.

Maybe it's just the Doom songs but I suspect something's being lost or messing up in the conversion process. E1M1 is just all reverb.

Don't spose you'd fancy testing with a few Doom songs and posting an ogg/mp3 of what the songs sound like at your end? At least I'd know what I'm missing out on :P

Here's a couple of midis I had laying around: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ztuntn

Super Jamie said:

I'm going to be difficult and tell you I have to extract these into GUS patches with unsf so I can listen to them in Linux Timidity... and they sound awful. Maybe it's just the Doom songs but I suspect something's being lost or messing up in the conversion process. E1M1 is just all reverb.

I'm almost sure that the problem is with the conversion process. I've tried SF2 to PAT conversion before, and it runs into the same problem as I mentioned previously to Never_Again... older SF2s seem to convert properly, but anything created in Vienna Studio v2.3 or higher results in a real mess.

I remember a while back converting "8MBGM.SF2" to Gravis patches, and it worked great (check here -> http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=12527 ). Trying to convert an older version of my soundfont unfortunately resulted in Gravis patches that were basically unusable though.

Super Jamie said:

Don't spose you'd fancy testing with a few Doom songs and posting an ogg/mp3 of what the songs sound like at your end? At least I'd know what I'm missing out on :P

Here's a couple of midis I had laying around: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ztuntn

I'm on an extremely miserable dialup connection out here in the woods. Maybe you could select one of your favorites from the MIDI ZIP that you uploaded, and I could record an MP3 from that one (I'd suggest maybe "D_E1M1.MID" or "D_E3M1.MID")?

Yeah, the old 8MBGM and similar patches work great.

I'll play around with Windows in VirtualBox and see if I can get these to play properly. I hate missing out on a good soundfont!

Super Jamie said:

Yeah, the old 8MBGM and similar patches work great. I'll play around with Windows in VirtualBox and see if I can get these to play properly. I hate missing out on a good soundfont!

If you can get XMPlay working with Windows in VirtualBox, try it that way. If so, jack up the reverb sliders of XMPlay a bit when testing the MIDIs, and that will give you a good idea of how the soundfont sounds :)

BTW, I almost forgot, I had previously uploaded this MP3 file -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Weeds_Music/March_To_War.mp3 ... that one was recorded from "March To War - Rich Weeds Nagel.mid" that is included with the sample MIDI ZIP that I mentioned in my first post ( http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/WeedsGM3_MIDIs.zip ).

Super Jamie said:

I'm going to be difficult and tell you I have to extract these into GUS patches with unsf so I can listen to them in Linux Timidity

Linux Timidity can handle .sf2 soundfonts just fine. It's the ancient version integrated in sdl_mixer that's the problem.

No worries, Rich, that's where the community steps in ;).
Here are a few DOOM tracks played on an SB Live!, with some reverb added per your recommendation (Concert Hall preset, %70 via EAX Control Panel):

D_E1M1

D_E1M3


D_E1M4


D_E1M8


D_E2M1



The least I could do for your being so nice and patient.

edit: post restored

That Doom2 sound fx soundfont is hilarious.

Never_Again said:

No worries, Rich, that's where the community steps in ;).
Here are a few DOOM tracks played on an SB Live!, with some reverb added per your recommendation (Concert Hall preset, %70 via EAX Control Panel):

The least I could do for your being so nice and patient.

Many thanks, N_A!! :)

Mr. Chris said:

That Doom2 sound fx soundfont is hilarious.

Hehe, I figured all DOOMers would get a kick out of that. Guess you didn't know those monsters could sing LOL?


P.S. @All,

If you don't know what Mr. Chris is talking about, surf here -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/ , and look for DOOM2Sfx.* <grin> :)

Haven't heard an Overdriven Guitar patch sound that nice for a GM soundfont this size. Overall, this is a good SF. Drums are a little weak for my taste, but I like it.

Never_Again said:

Videos

That sounds way better than what I hear. Wow!

This soundfont shits all over eawpats, I'd even be inclined to say it's nicer than the actual hardware Sound Canvas in most places. In fact, the only thing I could think to fault is the instrument at 0:10 in E1M3.

Well done, Rich! Making a good patch set is hard, I must have tried a billion soundfonts and never thought I'd hear one this complete and awesome. It's a really good blend of retro and realism, perfect for the Doom music.

I gotta sort out some way to play these in Linux :P

PRIMEVAL said:

Haven't heard an Overdriven Guitar patch sound that nice for a GM soundfont this size. Overall, this is a good SF. Drums are a little weak for my taste, but I like it.

Glad you like it, and the OD/Dist. guitars :) Yeah, the drums always seem to be lacking for me. If you have a MIDI sequencer, try changing the drums in a MIDI to the "Studio Kit" drums (drum kit #5). They're a little 'rattier' sounding, better for rockier type stuff I think.

@All, Hehe BTW, a question that I've asked most of my 'fans' in various message forums where I've announced this beastie: Anyone know where I got the otiginal samples for the kick and snare drums in the "Power Kit" (drum kit #16) <grin>?

Super Jamie said:

That sounds way better than what I hear. Wow!

This soundfont shits all over eawpats, I'd even be inclined to say it's nicer than the actual hardware Sound Canvas in most places. In fact, the only thing I could think to fault is the instrument at 0:10 in E1M3.

Well done, Rich! Making a good patch set is hard, I must have tried a billion soundfonts and never thought I'd hear one this complete and awesome. It's a really good blend of retro and realism, perfect for the Doom music.

I gotta sort out some way to play these in Linux :P

Glad ya liked it. I have literally doezens of CDs with commercial soundfonts that I've bought throughout the years... seems that all of the 'monster' GM compatable soundfonts on those CDs leave a lot to be desired. One in particular, Sonido Media's "24MB Monster GM"... UTTER CRAP <IMHO>!

Anyhow, my theory on why mine sounds so good (sorry for tooting my own horn there)? A soundfont that was actually created by a musician <grin> :)

P.S. BTW, another I almost forgot, eons ago I had also previously uploaded this MP3 file -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/Stuff/Rich_Weeds_Nagel_-_Ramblings_of_a_Non-Pianist_2.mp3 ... that one was recorded from "Ramblings of a Non-Pianist (Op. 2)" that is included with the sample MIDI ZIP that I mentioned in my first post ( http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/WeedsGM3_MIDIs.zip ).

Will this work on bog standard AC97 audio, or do I need a decent add in card?