This is a sampling of an August Foerster Czech Republic 190(cm) piano tuned to a Young’s #1 well temperament at 444 Hz.

For recording I’ve used two spaced omnidirectional microphones positioned over dampers and one omnidirectional microphone positioned in the center of the soundboard under the piano.

Stereo spaced omnis are defined as PLAYER (P) “perspective” while mono omni is defined as BOARD (B) “perspective”.

There are three different piano sounds recorded:
– normal (dry tones)
– pedal (tones with right pedal)
– staccato (release tones)

There are two additional sound options:
– keys sounds
– pedals sounds

You can turn on or off or just change gain on any of these sounds with controls.

A velocity curve table that remaps keyboard has a menu button with linear, Kawai and custom velocity curve presets, with two additional buttons to load or save custom velocity curve.

Little history:
This is actually my second sampled piano library.
The first one I’ve started to record at the end of 2017 on a Fazioli F278 in a friend’s piano saloon only to later realize that I’ve jumped in too quickly and quite unprepared.
It served though as a learning curve and opened my mind to how I really want to record a piano.
So what I want now is to capture piano in it’s core and for that I had to record my own piano that was always available for comparison.
I know it has no fancy name but I believe it has a wonderful soul.

My theory:
I believe we could never really record a piano that would sound (while playing on a sampled version) the same as a real piano.
But why would we want only to copy a real thing when we can use modern tools to change the experience of playing a piano?
With headphones we can get to the most intimate core of a piano that is physically not possible on a real piano for example.
And not disturb anyone around us at the same time.

So here it is – my second attempt to get closer to that new experience and “The Soul of a Piano”.
Enjoy,
S

Contributors

Samo Homsak