Weber Upright with Wooden Mallets
A 1960s Weber upright played with a wooden mallet, recorded with a stereo pair of the Slate VMS2 modeling mics and a large diaphragm VMS1.
ByJason Binnick
The story
This is my early 1960s Weber upright played with a wooden mallet. I’ve done all kinds of film score recording with the mallets on the strings but it’s so hard to keep track of the notes and easy to hit strays that parts always had to be pretty minimal and subject to lots of DAW editing. I sampled the piano to make it more conventionally playable. I sampled it before tuning it to keep the spooky harpsichord quality.
It’s recorded with a stereo pair of the Slate VMS2 modeling mics and a large diaphragm VMS1 overhead. The stereo pair are modeling Royer ribbons and the large diaphragm a Neuman U67 through a gentle compressor.
Reviews
And now for something completely different
If you can't decide between piano, piano with mandolin rail, hammered dulcimer, and harpsichord, this is your jam. This unique and well-recorded instrument has very little noise, and to me, this is a really great example of the power of sampling. Trying to actually perform a part in real time with a wooden mallet on an open piano would be quite difficult, I think, but through the power of sampling, this instrument, this performance idea becomes consistently playable. I think that's so cool. With all of the pianos on PB these days, it's also really difficult to stand out and do something unique, but this library manages it with no problems. Really well done!
Bright, bold, one-trick pony
I love pianos that don't quite sound like pianos. I think we're all here for that reason. This almost-piano is a one-trick pony: bright, bold, loud sounds in the top half of the piano's key range sound great. The character of the sound will cut through a dense texture. You may want to use/automate a low-pass filter to knock off some of the harshness.
The piano loses its charm exactly at the G below middle C. I'm not complaining - this instrument's got its uses on the high side of the keyboard! :)
Too bright for me
Being more into darker more thuddy felts, this one is just too bright and honky for me personally but i know alot of people like brighter pianos so i think alot of people will like this one. It kind of has a harpsichord like tone but comes out sounding a bit sweeter since its a piano. The dynamics seem a bit inconsistent too with different samples seeming to behave differently with similar velocities. Although this isn't really my style im sure many others will like this more than me.