The story
Nordiska Piano Deluxe
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Changes:
– Individual sustain and release samples per key
– Izotope RX noise reduction
– Improved velocity response
– Improved sustain pedal behavior
– Kontakt GUI
Nordiska Piano V1.4
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I have found this fantastic place in the south of Sweden called Rosenlunds Gård where me and my family spent three consecutive summers in a house – a very quiet place in the middle of a small forest. We loved every second of it.
The house had many carefully chosen decorative elements (most of which I assume were picked up as junk in the villages nearby), one of which was this upright piano (made by an old Swedish company called “Nordiska Piano”), standing right under the wooden stairs that led up to the second floor. I got quite a bit attached to the sound of this (obviously not very well maintained) piano and I wished I could take it home – so I decided to sample it.
This is a reduced set of samples organized into a Kontakt instrument (I maintain a larger version with every individual key sampled). It reacts to sustain pedal and comes with individal release samples. Samples are noise reduced using RX, originals are huge 96 kHz files with all sustains and releases in two velocity layers, so they are huge and not included, but can be provided on request.
Special feature: impulse response of the frame that – in a way – simulates the response of the frame/soundboard excited by individual notes.
Reviews for Nordiska Piano Deluxe
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Pure Nostalgia & Bittersweet Memories
The Nordiska Pianon from Vetlanda holds a special place in my heart. It's the piano you'll find at every swedish schools music room, in the living room in some older peoples home, at the home where my crush lived, or just at random places in Sweden.
I used to noodle around on the one at school for hours before mom would call and ask where I am. This piano captures the sound beautifully! I am instantly transported back to the time when I sat in front of it, playing music with friends and family... Apparently even my dad knew some people who worked at their factory in Vetlanda. It's a sad story how it all ended.
Could use some more round robins and velocity layers - otherwise it's a great moody piano with many uses!
Beautiful Jazzy sound
While i usually prefer warmer more subdued felt pianos, even though this piano is pretty loud and bright its still really warm and characterful. I like how you can really dig into those louder layers and it still sounds really nice to me, not distorted. The piano is a bit noisy but not nearly as bad as other pianos on pianobook. Its fun because i usually describe honky as a negative when talking about pianos. Although there is a bit of that quality here i really like the character. If you're someone like me who usually only likes felt piano libraries try this one out.
Bright tacky top end
I liked the sound of the piano since it's initial release, and this Deluxe version it has improved it in a wonderful way. It retains it's slight natural honkytonkness but it's subtle enough. The brightness of the high octaves make this piano stand out as something I might use in the just right circumstance.
Good upgrade, but still noisy
The non-deluxe version had some problems. Some are fixed, but some others are still here. The main one is the white noise that surrounds every sample, especially on the high velocity layer where you can really hear a very harsh attack. There are still badly cropped samples with background noises such as bird chirping in very rare cases. You won't easily notice them though, unless you like holding notes for way too long. The GUI has nothing to offer. I also need to add that while this is a 500MB instrument, the dowload is nearly 2GB because of the inclusion of the original samples. Is this really needed?
Sweet sounding and playable
This piano is sweet sounding and playable. It's pretty out of tune, but if that's your thing, you might like it. There is some noise in the samples, although it's not bad. The dynamic response is pleasant and the instrument is playable. The main thing I hear when playing this instrument is that I don't care for the position of the microphones. It sounds to me as thought they were positioned too far from the piano when the samples were recorded. A lot of attack sound was captured in the recordings, so this piano is quite punchy. You might or might not like that. The sample editing isn't very tight. Again, this can be a matter of personal preference. Having more time before the attacks of the notes doesn't work for me, but others might be just fine with it. There's a lot to like about this piano, but like all instruments, personal preference comes in at some point. While this isn't the piano for me, it's a worthy download, and you might really like it.
