The Sneaky Piano
Prepared piano with many useful and surprising techniques.
ByBilly Palmer
The story
I sampled this piano super later one night at my university to help me underscore a cartoon. Each note is sneaky-staccato with a unique preparation.
Preparations ranged from simple stuff like blu tack under the hammers, to muting strings with my hand. The idea is each note is different and a little surprising!
Mix tip: Try degrading the sound with Izotope Vinyl or Klevgränd’s FreeAmp, before sending the signal into a medium room reverb…
Special thanks to Simon Dalzell from ivyaudio.com, who was kind enough to advice me throughout the process of writing the KSP script!
Reviews
Very fun and really different
This is such a nice pokey bright prepared piano library that can be realy useful in a melodic context, especially when layering with other things. It's unpredictable and that's exactly why you should want it
Simple but really well executed
An obviously wonderfully recorded piano with the added pleasure of being a strikingly unique sampled instrument. This is treated piano with real personality plus close and far mic positions. Love it!
Sneaky
Are you prepared for this prepared piano to sneak up on you? This brilliantly simple and surprising library has a rich sound, a simple GUI and a bucket load of character. Of course, where the piano has been prepared some of the notes stick out more than others and the overall velocity control could be a bit smoother. But in reality that may actually take away from the quirkiness and sneakiness of this piano. Great stuff!