Cheltenham Chapel U3 – James Kedwards

Cheltenham College Chapel upright, a warm and intimate sounding piano I sampled (very noisily) aged about 13 with a pair of Coles while on a course there.
It was probably my first venture into sampling (my teacher showed me the basics as I was fascinated by it already) and was quickly and badly done, but I think it has character so kept it and decided to share it on here.

I forgot I ever did this, but recently going back through archive drives I found a cubase project with these in. Cleaned them up a little but the noise can be a little overwhelming still.

It sounds a little out of tune and the samples aren’t very long, but it’s a surprisingly good sounding sample project given my total inexperience at the time!
No idea where the Coles came from either, but I remember finding them and the original Apollo I used as the interface.

I put this through a milder version of the velocity sample // distance DSP server that I created for Live Sound, you’ll hear a better application of it in ‘Surround Steinway’.
The noise is frustrating but I do like the character of the piano and the tone – It sounds oddly like the hiss of a U47!
It’s surprising how little of the chapel you can hear with the reverb off, I think I had the lid and fallboard closed.

Let me know what you think of it or if there are any other NR options without a room sample (I’ve already done RX basic denoise when I recorded it so don’t want to wreck the samples).

Apologies for the lack of labelling on the samples. My DSP server had a moment, but they’re still assigned as they should be in Kontakt, I didn’t want to mess anything up renaming post processed samples now.

Enjoy.

James Kedwards – @_jkedwards_