[Freepats] Breaking silence and the road to free musical instruments

[Roberto Gordo Saez]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 03:49:34AM +1000, Mark Constable wrote:
> Wow, this is exciting news. Well, any news is good, as it's been
> very quiet on this list, but this is particularly good news.

Indeed, it's been very quiet on this list. There are only few
contributions and based on the responses I usually get, I know that main
offenders are all those "semi-free" soundfonts out there. They are the
real evil. People do not feel urged to contribute. They are discouraged
to produce real free soundfonts. Why bother?

Creating instruments takes a lot of time, and is difficult to do. It is
a lot easier to download one of those General MIDI soundfonts available
everywhere. But it turns out that those soundfonts are also loaded with
unlicensed samples. It is very common to recognize samples from Emu,
Roland and others inside them.

There are many people who cares about free software, being very picky
about licenses and imposed restrictions when using software; but
surprisingly enough, this same people usually chooses to ignore the
nasty restrictions, ugly agreements and the whole copyright law for
sounds or other works beside software, turning a blind eye, just like
if the problem had never existed. I've had some strong words with some
people at Debian for this reason.

Months ago, Mark told me about an interesting orchestral sample
collection:
http://www.soundsonline.com/EWQLSO-Platinum-Bundle-pr-EW-155PROB1.html

For those corrupted souls like myself who have cowardly installed the
proprietary flash plugin, please hit the play button to listen the
example. This is how a high end, good digital sample collection is
supposed to sound nowadays. The first time I've listened to it, I felt a
need to cry.

Could be possible that we ever manage to build something similar with
free samples? And even if we get the opportunity, how many years could
we need to carefully record, process, balance and fine tune such an
enormous amount of samples? Maybe 10 years, 20 years... never? I'm
unable to answer those questions, but I can say what I will do.

I was tempted to purchase those instruments, and still I am. I've
already purchased other proprietary samples in the past. While a price
about $3000 may seem a bit high, it is not uncommon for me to spend very
high quantities of money on hobbies, toys or other recreational
activities that are much less useful than a good sample collection. It
may be not a problem for me, just I need to buy those instruments,
possibly together with other sets like the GM kit from the same site,
and I will be happy. No need for spending lots of time making free
instruments, no need to care about fine tuning, and no need to wait
forever.

But they are NOT FREE. And I'm not referring to the PRICE, I'm referring
to the FREEDOM. And yes, this is an annoyance for me, much more than the
price. They come with a license agreement:

"you are NOT obtaining OWNERSHIP of the sound samples - you are in fact
purchasing a LICENSE to use the sound samples within your musical
composition" [...]

I can only use them on the operating system imposed by the manufacturer.
I can't share modifications. My own compositions are a derived product,
so they are also infected, there is also a list of conditions which are
passed to my own compositions, I'm required to use loops "in a musical
context with at least two other instruments that contribute
significantly to the composition", just to mention one particular
condition. I can't publish my compositions under certain free licenses
of my choice, because they may be incompatible with the requirements.

The requirements themselves are common to proprietary sample collections
and digital instruments (including hardware instruments). Some of them
may have additional clauses, and may even require to pay royalties when
distributing your music commercially. They are developed to produce
proprietary music according to current commercial practices, and they
work well in this context.

It means that composers and music enthusiasts with less resources will
be condemned to produce music that sounds poor, or to violate licenses.
Many people choose between both options, but this way things would never
change. I choose neither.

I may purchase those samples in the future, depending on my mood; time
is a finite resource for humans. But I will always continue searching
for free instruments anyway, or I will never be completely happy. No
matter how much time will take. No matter how much of an idiot I will
look to the eyes of those people who do not see any problem, or who are
completely happy with their semi-free soundfonts or proprietary
products. I will continue to support free instruments. I'm grateful with
people who has contributed (currently only a few, it seems). Even the
simpler things like testing a soundfont or giving an opinion does
matter. Thanks to all who are interested.


PS: Sorry for such a political kind of email. I just had a depressing
day today...