The story
I’ve bought this ebow a long time ago to add a little avant-garde extended technique to one of my piano pieces. It worked well but I encountered a few limitations using the instrument in an acoustic way.
First of all I realized that the ebow doesn’t work on all the piano strings (it’s made for guitar after all) so you’re stuck on using only the central part of the piano; the other limitation was that, having only one ebow, I could only produce one “ebowed” note at a time, to get polyphony I should have bought other ebows, but they’re quite expensive so I didn’t at the time. Only recently, by discovering the Pianobook site I realized that making a sample instrument would solve both of these problems.
This is my first virtual instrument (I hope I didn’t make any mistakes with the patch!) so having to sample just a few notes was a good thing for me. I’ve recorded the C3 string, pedal up, with the ebow in harmonic mode, so you actually hear the first harmonic of that string (C4). I’ve also recorded some release triggers since the note is actually activated by a key press and not by the pedal. This is the sound you can find in the first patch I’ve made, the “Pure” one. I’ve noticed that it sounded very synth-like so I did a second sampling session and this time I’ve started messing with my hands on the strings creating some “evo” samples like in Spitfire’s Scary Strings and that’s what you hear in the other Kontakt patch, and also my favorite.
It’s a very noisy and lofi sample instrument but I’m very happy with the results, it’s always fascinating to me how piano strings sound without being activated by hammers, so I think I’ll use it when I need some sort of thick/flautando piano pad. I hope you enjoy it too!
Reviews for Ebow Piano
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
New secret weapon for layering
Tried and immediately found a use for it in a piece I'm finishing.
Works great for beefing up certain parts without being too intrusive. I like to process it through some resonant filter banks or band pass filter to get a bit of character and smash it through some delays and reverbs to dig it nicely in the mix.
Should also work great for emotional underscores as well.
Its An Ebowed Piano!
Really inspiring and original sound that evolves and moves. I've used it on loads of tracks to add atmosphere and movement without sticking out. Can get noisy when holding down notes but I kind of like that effect. I tend to map a low pass filter to the mod wheel
Noisy and Warm
Although the range is limited this provides a really nice organic tone with a subtle and nice attack sound. Theres alot of weird artifacts and stuff going on when you hold down notes which is really interesting. I wish the range was larger but for what it is this is pretty useful and sounds very good. The noise and mechanics add alot to this instrument. Never mind about the range, i miss spoke, it actually has a nice range. For some reason it wasn't triggering when i first opened the instrument. Maybe an issue on my end
ebow with perfectly imperfect artifacts
I love all of the tiny little artifacts which start to creep into the main patch in this library. They breathe life and vitality into this library which is otherwise very much like a sine wave pad. If you're looking for a patch without the artifacts, that's here too, but it really is essentially a sine wave pad! I think it's hard to make your mark on PB sampling a piano as so many others have tried their hand at it, but this library is really special, and it's an amazing first attempt at sampling. Everything is really well done here. Kudos!
Great ambience
This is a great ambient tool that focuses on a minimal dreamy sounscape. The original version is a little too harsh for my ears, but the "less fundamentals" one is very fun to play with. The patch is pretty barebones so don't expect the ability to sound shift it. It is still very enjoyable by default and I can see a lot people digging the sound.
