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[Cartman1337]

For the specific samples you asked about, they are sampled from the famous Piano 16' patch from the Korg M1 which is heard on thousands of records and modules of the 90s. They can easily be recreated with Korg's M1 VST plugin in higher quality if you want a version that is guaranteed to not "belong" to anyone - although again, sampling synth presets is a bit of a grey area but noone ever got sued for sampling a single patch, it gets more problematic if you e.g. sample all the presets of a synth and then sell your own sample pack based on them.

I have attached some high-quality recreations of those piano samples to this post. They are directly sampled from the Korg M1 VST. As far as I'm concerned you can use them for anything you want, but again - they are based on commercial synth presets, which means that they are free to use, but not in the public domain.

Hey Saga Musix; I just purchased the Korg M1 VST; should make that particular gray area less gray. But I was wondering, since I'm useless with a note-based approach towards music (it's mostly by ear), if you could help me with a description or pictures of the actual presets, notes/keys and octaves you used when you recreated those samples, to help me also create them myself?

Also, I understand you are involved (or sole author?) with the OpenMPT project? Is there any chance of getting the new $99 VST working with it? I understand the old, discontinued $49 VST worked with it. As of now I simply record the sounds I want from it through the system sounds with Audacity, which is a bit tedious, but it works. I'm not about to cash out several hundred dollars more for a full DAW, I already have the tools I require (and OpenMPT is a big part of it, so thanks for that!) for making my type of music through other softwares, but as of now none that can hook into the new VST directly.

[Saga Musix]

Hey Saga Musix; I just purchased the Korg M1 VST; should make that particular gray area less gray. But I was wondering, since I'm useless with a note-based approach towards music (it's mostly by ear), if you could help me with a description or pictures of the actual presets, notes/keys and octaves you used when you recreated those samples, to help me also create them myself?

In the ZIP file provided in my first reply, check out the MPTM file which I used to create the samples. In the end, this recreation is also just "by ear", dissecting the sample and figuring out which notes are used (it greatly helps being able to identify intervals by ear but I imagine that can take a while to learn if you are not used to it). Only the third sample is a bit complicated and I cannot tell for sure if my appraoch - having the tail of an A#4 overlapping with the D#5) really accurantely represents the original source, but I think it's close enough.
The preset in question is "Piano 16'" which just about every dance act of the 90s used for their piano lines, hence it's easily recognizable once you are familiar with the M1 presets. No further editing to the preset was done.

Also, I understand you are involved (or sole author?) with the OpenMPT project? Is there any chance of getting the new $99 VST working with it? I understand the old, discontinued $49 VST worked with it. As of now I simply record the sounds I want from it through the system sounds with Audacity, which is a bit tedious, but it works. I'm not about to cash out several hundred dollars more for a full DAW, I already have the tools I require (and OpenMPT is a big part of it, so thanks for that!) for making my type of music through other softwares, but as of now none that can hook into the new VST directly.

The Korg Shop isn't explicit about this, does the latest version of the plugin not support VST2 anymore, or what exactly is the issue? Many VST3 plugins can still be loaded into a VST2 host but not all of them, so it's worth giving that a try if the plugin only comes with a .vst3 file and not a .dll file.
VST3 support is currently not planned; it would be a huge undertaking and the VST3 SDK's license (GPL) is not compatible with OpenMPT (so we'd have to go with the "proprietary license", and I'm not sure what that would imply for OpenMPT).
And I'm not the only person working on OpenMPT, but we are a small team indeed.

[Cartman1337]

In the ZIP file provided in my first reply, check out the MPTM file which I used to create the samples. In the end, this recreation is also just "by ear", dissecting the sample and figuring out which notes are used (it greatly helps being able to identify intervals by ear but I imagine that can take a while to learn if you are not used to it). Only the third sample is a bit complicated and I cannot tell for sure if my appraoch - having the tail of an A#4 overlapping with the D#5) really accurantely represents the original source, but I think it's close enough.
The preset in question is "Piano 16'" which just about every dance act of the 90s used for their piano lines, hence it's easily recognizable once you are familiar with the M1 presets. No further editing to the preset was done.

Thanks. I'll take a closer look at the MPTM file and see if I figure it out.

The Korg Shop isn't explicit about this, does the latest version of the plugin not support VST2 anymore, or what exactly is the issue? Many VST3 plugins can still be loaded into a VST2 host but not all of them, so it's worth giving that a try if the plugin only comes with a .vst3 file and not a .dll file.
VST3 support is currently not planned; it would be a huge undertaking and the VST3 SDK's license (GPL) is not compatible with OpenMPT (so we'd have to go with the "proprietary license", and I'm not sure what that would imply for OpenMPT).
And I'm not the only person working on OpenMPT, but we are a small team indeed.

There is a .dll file in the c:\program files\KORG folder called cpprest141_2_10.dll, but when trying to load that into OpenMPT through the Plugin Manager I get the error message "The following error occured while trying to load C:\Program Files\KORG\cpprest141_2_10.dll  File is not a valid plugin. Do you want to try to load the plugin natively?"   When trying to load it natively the next message says "Could not find any valid VST plugins."

Apart from the DLL there are only two exes in the folder. One for the software/license pass, and one for the M1 VST.

[Saga Musix]

There should be an additional M1.DLL which may end up in a different folder though. Normally the installer should ask you where to put it, and will probably default to something like C:\Program Files\VST Plugins\ or similar. Just search your hard drive for it.

[Cartman1337]

Ah, bingo! It was indeed in the C:\Program Files\VstPlugins\KORG folder, and loaded nicely. 

Something new to investigate, then.

[Cartman1337]

Thanks again for all your help! But may I ask one more thing about your MPTM file? Now that I got the M1 VST plugin to work, the patterns within make sounds when I play them, which sound similar to the exported samples you provided. But when I try to export them myself (want to extend the sound from 2 to 4 triggers) the resulting files sound nothing like them. Is there a special "render to sample" function I'm not aware about?

[Saga Musix]

It should sound exactly the same, that's how I exported it after all (each pattern to its own file). What kind of difference do you hear?