Prepared Staccato Cartoon Piano
A quirky prepared piano for cartoon soundtracking!
ByBilly Palmer
The story
I sampled this piano super later one night at my university to help me underscore a cartoon; every note has its own preparation.
I’ve submitted an ‘MVP version’ with just close mics. If this community believes the extra data would add to this instrument, I’m willing to also upload a version with stereo mics included!
Preparations range from simple stuff like bluetack to even muting strings with my hand, which would of course be impossible in real time. The idea is each note is different and a little surprising!
Reviews
Pure wonk
I love this piano. I just wish it had some more velocity layers. Which is an insane ask, seeing as every key has been sampled.
Innovative and slightly broken
So it's tough to stand out amongst all the other pianos on the site, but this idea is really innovative. It's really fun and usable too. I noticed two issues: the Key press Noise knob only seems to affect notes from D6 on up, and second, the instrument seems to go silent when the velocity exceeds 110. It's as though there was supposed to be another set of samples there that are missing. The staccatos are fun and playable, though, and I have much love for Oktava MK-012 mics. I think this is going to be a very useful library, and just just for pointilisitic endeavors. It's quirky, bouncy, spirited, happy, and springy all at once. there are a few notes whose attacks aren't consistently edited, which decreases playability. G2 and D#3 are examples of notes with much longer attack times. These issues aside, this is really fun and I'll use this!
Perfection in the imperfections...
Perfection in the imperfections. This Prepared paint has a lot os character and is very very fun to play. Which is what all this should be about. Nice job Billy!