The story
Hello! This one is special.
We got this piano from a church down the road one day a few years back at the time of writing. It was in the grass next to the lot, and I played it a few times before deciding it should come home with us. Learning from their staff that it was just being given away or tossed, we left and returned shortly with a truck.
This piano still resides in my old bedroom at the parents house, while I am away for college. To be honest, I didn’t play it much while I lived there. But I dearly missed it after I moved (naturally), therefore one time upon my return I brought with me a phone and a pair of AKG P170. In fact I’ve tried to sample this piano at least 3 or 4 different times, all with wildly different goals and capture intent.
So I present to you The Loud Piano.
It’s an amalgamation of many different sampling takes of one instrument, and sounds just as goofy and charming as the real thing. There are note presses and releases, key presses and releases, sustain pedal presses and releases, plucks, and sustain pedal excited or impulse and chord excited sympathetic resonance layers. There are as many as up to 17 and as little as 1 velocity layer(s) depending on the group and note. Just about the only thing it doesn’t have is any round robins, but with AET layers and large velocity variance I didn’t really feel like this needed it, especially regarding memory performance.
I could try to explain exactly what the “Oxygen” and “Reso.” knobs do, but they’re best understood via twiddling with them. They are generally my attempt at simulating different unusual forms of sympathetic resonance. The noise floor can get quite high upon very large stacks of voices, especially if using copious amounts of Phone mic layers, but never unusable — and I often turn to this as a sort of desired “characteristic” of the sound.
Anyway, I’ve been working on this library for a really long time. It’s been giving me all sorts of scripting issues that still haven’t been entirely even resolved truthfully, but it has finally come to a stable point where every feature I wanted is now functioning, and many of the poorly executed experimental layers have been pruned away, and samples tidied.
Do enjoy, these samples will of course work in any sampler but I HIGHLY recommend using it with the included Kontakt instrument, for all the functioning release and sustain scripting, as well as group knobs and interface.
Kontakt Version 5.8.1 (R43) or Higher required to use included .nki
Reviews for The Loud Piano
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
A piano for your home
The control of noises and reflections makes this sample work very realistic, as you have a true upright, something honk-tonk piano into your room. Inspiring and intimating sampling I recomend if you want an alternative and peculiar piano sound for your production.
Warm toned piano library
I did not find this especially loud, but very inspiring and beautiful! It has a certain level of noise but I wonder it is a part of the character or intended?
Lots of possibilities...
This reminds me slightly of Spitfires Cinematic Soft Piano with the built-in pads and distortion which others don't seem to like as much for some reason, but I enjoyed. My only issue is that there is a delay for some of the notes, so playing chords all at once is heard as a type of flam or grace note, which is difficult to get around. Cool little instrument with a unique story.
Don't be impressed by its size
This is one of the biggest piano instruments I've downloaded from Pianobook. The actual folder size is something more than 3GB. Despite the hefty size, both of the mic settings offered are very noisy, and at some point you might even hear some distortion.
The actual sound of it is interesting, like a western-cabaret style, almost out of tune in some pitches. By default it is also very wet, which you luckily you are able to control. The GUI could have things more spread out. Right now they are very cramped for no reason, but that doesn't create any problems. It's alright overall, and there is some character to it, but you have to try it yourself to check if it's for you or not.
A bright and loud piano
This library presents an interesting concept, and the Oxygen knob is intriguing and unique. There are some problems with the editing. A phone and mics were used to capture it, but it quickly becomes apparent that while recorded together, the phone and mic samples weren't edited together, so the samples have different start times, and will cause of flam if both mic levels are up simultaneously. The mic and phone both have a fair amount of noise in them, which limits their usefulness in a commercial production environment. Depending on what you're using this for, it might be a great fit for you, though.
