Air Piano
A Yamaha U3 sampled at the hall in Air studios by Spitfire Audio....
The story
Over 10 years ago, Christian sampled a felted piano for “Secret of the Moonacre” and subsequently made it available through Spitfire Labs as “Soft Piano”. In 2019, the team a Spitfire Audio tracked down the same piano, a Yamaha U3, and sampled it at the hall in Air studios as part of an upcoming Spitfire library. The piano was recorded with massive range of microphones (Neumann M49s, Soyuz 017, Coles 4038s, Schoeps MK4s, Sontronics Apollo 2, AEA 44s, Neuman M50s and Schoeps Boundary Layer Micropones “Stingrays”).
This special Pianobook version was sampled in a cycle of fifths in two dynamic layers and a range of microphones can be selected, along with special mixes by Jake Jackson.
Check out the video of the recording session at Air Studios below, and a video about the challenges I had making an alpha Kontakt version…
Reviews
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
The Linus & Stephen update is the one to get...
This really characterful piano is super warm and rich. The airiness and ambience surrounding the piano is where the humanistic nature of it comes into it. You feel as though you're sat behind the player as opposed to behind the piano. It could do with the same controls as Christian's other piano's on PB, but sound wise this is lovely.
I wanted to love this but I can't
This piano has a lovely little sound but it lacks clarity. The key noise is very prominent and you can't do anything about it. Christian has created much more intimate and well-thought instruments, so I guess this one is a pass for me. EDIT: Apparently this works wonders with the "Layers for Air Piano" AND you will also need to replace some files with the "clean" ones.
a beautiful piano in a beautiful room
the air piano is just beautiful but the close mic position's release trigger samples are way to loud but the ambient and the gally mics are heavenly i got a grate sound by layering the tail of the gally / ambient mics together with the labs soft piano's attack
DAMPER PEDAL NOISE
Nice Sounding Piano, but Damper could be heard each time it was used. There must be a way to silence the pedal, right? Otherwise, quite nice.
Mic'd out of your mind.
Splendid playable piano purposefully recorded through a microphone wonderland.
Really excellent recordings from tonnes of mics
Beautiful piano to start with, coupled with exceptional recording leaves us with these incredible sampled instruments of which there are 10 options to choose from! Hard to fault this one.
