A friend of mine lent me a fantastic african instrument: a Balafon.
I took the opportunity to sample it and make a soundfont to be used in GNU/Linux with qsynth.
Balafon
To record it I used my trusty yamaha pockettrack 2G (best buy of 2011), I then cropped the single notes with mhwaveedit and put toghether the soundfont with swami.
I don’t have the latest version of swami and there are some oddities in it, but at least I’ve been able to make it into a usable soundfont (I hope).
Please feel free to use it under the term of the CC BY-SA 3.0 license ( with the following exception:
The “share alike” condition is imperative if you modify the samples themselve or create new sample libraries with this licensed product. However, produced music and other non-sample-library works can be licensed at will).
The instrument itself is gorgeous, too bad I have to gave him back soon… I only sampled one layer for each note, basically there are three octaves of a C scale from G2 to F5 (I don’t know for shure those are the actual pitches, maybe I missed an octave in positioning notes).
The whole process took me about 2 hours to complete.
Hope you enjoy it!!
Click here for the soundfont balafon.sf2
Here’s some fiddling with the soundfont, recorded again into mhwaveedit:
linuxaudiostudio 
Thanks very much for this. Excellent sound
[…] in positioning notes).The SoundFont is a free download from linuxaudiostudio.More information: Balafon SoundFont No CommentsShare/Bookmark wpa2a.script_load(); googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1339048641543-3'); […]
Really unique! Priceless and many thanks!
Hello,
can you specify the license a bit more?
“Please feel free to use it in whatever way you like, and send me back your comments and impressions.” practically allows everything, which would be public domain. Including changing the samples itself, re-release it, sell it etc.
I would like to use this instrument myself and mirror a download and integrate it into a “Open Source Sample Instruments” list on my linux audio blog nilsgey . de
May I suggest to (double-)license it under CC-by-sa ? This protects your work to be “slaughtered’ by evil businessmen and anyone else the freedom to do what you already said. For example the Salamander Drumkrit is licensed as CC-by-sa as well.
Greetings, Nils
Hello Nils,
Sure, I will add the creative commons license, After reading it I found it quite acceptable. Sorry but I always had problems with understanding fully the the implications of licensing on these kind of “software”, so I ended up providing them “as is”.
In the past I made some other soundfonts (a rhodes piano, and acoustic bass, and some others that you can find at http://freepats.zenvoid.org/sf2/ ) and some hydrogen drumkits. There I used the GPL v2, but never felt quite right for the job.
Moreover, I’m a SIAE associate, the Italian-almost-medieval society for collection of music royalties, and (last time I checked) they stated explicitly that I CANNOT release my music under CC licenses, my “rights” as author being exclusively managed by them. Fortunately sf2’s are not music _yet_ 🙂
So, would adding a note with the link to the CC license on the post be acceptable?
Greetings
Yes, perfect. Thank you very much.
I understand your license problems. I struggle myself. CC-by and CC-by-sa are quit good for sample libs but if you want more restrictions the CC is not good enough any more.
And I find the GPL for samples strange as well. I think the intention becomes clear, but there is no source after all. The source is the recording process which is by principle unique and cannot be copied.
Since then I go for GPL for anything that resembles source code (including synthesizer patches/instructions) and CC-by-sa for binary data like recordings.
Its me again. After more license research I have to make an addition. The “share alike” condition actually is imperative for the music created with your samples as well. If you want your samples protected but allow the composer to do with the resulting music whatever he/she wants please add something like the following:
CC-BY-SA with the following exception:
The “share alike” condition is imperative if you modify the samples themselve or create new sample libraries with this licensed product. However, produced music and other non-sample-library works can be licensed at will.
Ok I updated the licensing terms. Indeed it’s very important to me that the soundfont could be used to make music without any restrictions.
Thank you
[…] and more.Limiter #6 is a free mastering modular limiter for Mac & PC.LinuxAudioStudio has a free Balafon soundfont.Need more? Check out the free music software section!If you try out one of the freebies, leave […]
[…] It’s Friday, so we thought you might want to start of the weekend right with some music-making freebies: Xfer Records has released Delta Modulator, a free bitcrusher VST/AU plugin, based on a signal modulation technique found in Nintendo NES video game console’s delta modulation channel.X-Tube is a free Windows VST plugin that simulates tube amplifier saturation effect.Lizard Morph is a free detune and morph Windows VST effect designed to deliver the sounds ‘favored by trance musicians’.Contralogic has released a new version of Pterosaur synth for Windows, adding polyphonic support.Justin Robert has set the Z3000 and the Mothman software synths for Windows free.Boxed Ear has a released a free sampled CR-78 drum machine.Syncersoft had released Amusing sounds of the body is a VSTi format plug-in for Windows.Sampleism has a June freebie, 600MB of samples, loops, Kontakt instruments and more.Limiter #6 is a free mastering modular limiter for Mac & PC.LinuxAudioStudio has a free Balafon soundfont. […]
[…] LinuxAudioStudio has a free Balafon soundfont. […]