Better sounds for iReal

You can put your song into GarageBand as a midifile and than you have more options to chances the sound of the instruments
There is information on YouTube for example Dan Baker, or Pete Jones

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Originally Posted by massimobio

The midi synth in the app uses sf2 soundfonts and the one currently in the app is one I have build sample by sample myself.
I've been looking at professional studio-quality commercial soundfonts but it seems really hard.
...
Every googling session for soundfonts just returns scammy results or amateurish
Does anyone have suggestion for where I can purchase professional sounding jazz drum sf2 soundfonts?

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Hopefully, this won't be considered raising-a-dead-thread, but this thread at vi-control mentions a few options. DSmolken at Karoryfer samples appears professional, and if nothing else his descriptions of the swirls of his drum and how he samples things are very informative (he has swirly, unruly, and rusty drums on his site). Virtuosity drums is free, and Muletone is cheap.

Would really like to hear brushed strokes from iReal Pro.

hi,
just bought ireal pro recently. really love it. but i quickly tired of the generic midi sounds.

i've found i can make it sound infinitely better by using an app that lets you route audio thru plugins, to add some color and dynamics to the sound.
i'm using soundsource, but any 'au plugin host' app should work.

i wanted to post an audio example but i spent an hour messing with screen recorders and i'm over it

IReal, pro has a huge amount of sounds some better than others. But what I would really like to see is better acoustic guitar rhythms, and perhaps a separate drum machine app.? I often just use the two and four click with sounds turned off as a metronome on, but it would be nice to have a few basic Latin rhythm sounds available

I stumbled across a simple way to improve sound of backing tracks. Export the song to midi, and open in the (free) program MidiClef (on my Android phone). From there you can choose instruments beyond those available in iRealPro. Then export audio from there to an acc file (the default). To my ears, the results are nicer to play to. This is especially true if experimenting with latin songs that use modern beats, but you want more folk instruments. e.g. Change piano in salsa beat to santur (a dulcimer).

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Originally Posted by dtopham

I stumbled across a simple way to improve sound of backing tracks. Export the song to midi, and open in the (free) program MidiClef (on my Android phone). From there you can choose instruments beyond those available in iRealPro. Then export audio from there to an acc file (the default). To my ears, the results are nicer to play to. This is especially true if experimenting with latin songs that use modern beats, but you want more folk instruments. e.g. Change piano in salsa beat to santur (a dulcimer).

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Thank you for your post. Nice to hear MidiClef works for you :)
Related to this, a URL to one of our old blog posts:
https://www.irealpro.com/news/export...i-and-musicxml

I'm pretty new here, but I'm using the app a lot and learning more every day. So far It's been helpful, if occasionally kind of klunky.
One of the klunkies that have been throwing me off a little are the guitar chords played by the software.

At first I just thought they just sounded thin, like their bottom end had been rolled way off.

And that the timbre just barely sounded like a guitar.

But I kept thinking something else was off, and I finally think I may know what it is.

I'm not a guitar player, so I don't think about this much, but could it be that the "guitar" chords in iRP are not "played" in any inversion that a guitar player would normally play, but rather like typical piano inversions--root position, 2nd and 3rd inversions, all in close positions? Like they're being played in on a keyboard?

The list of alternative instruments offers "choir" which maps to the mushy "Choir Ah" MIDI instrument. In my years of arranging vocal harmony, I've never found anything better than the plain and crisp "Choir Ooh" sound, ideally the classic default of ancient MIDI synths that has been around since Windows 95 and probably long before, which is more like a "dooh" with clear rhythmic "d" and rich and bright overtones. Adding that sound should be a trivial addition making vocal harmonists happy.

For better instrument sounds you might try the Timbres of Heaven sound font. I used it for a while to obtain a more realistic plucky banjo sound than I was getting from my Mac's built-in midi instruments. I learned where to install it so my tablature writing/playing software, TablEdit, could find it. I ended up removing it and reverting to the Mac's built-in sound font because plucky wasn't the right sound for some of the pieces I was working on.

But many of the instruments do sound better than the stock built-in midi instruments.

Here's the main page on ToH: https://www.midkar.com/SoundFonts/index.html

There's a lot to read. A lot of it technical.

There's a fairly active midi group on Groups.io called MIDKAR (midi and Karaoke). Here's its home page: https://groups.io/g/MIDKAR


It was through this group that I eventually learned exactly where to find the Timbres of Heaven soundfont and how to use it on a Mac. Of course, it works in Windows, too.

Be aware: depending on how you install it, its instruments can replace the midi instruments you're used to seeing in a menu.

Also: Remember it replaces only the sounds of the instrument. Notes and rhythms come from iReal.

Beyond that, I'm no able to offer any help. For those with a technical bent who know how to undo things, this can be worth trying.