The story
Very excited to finally share the sequel to the Woodland Piano! This is a Pianobook-exclusive Demo featuring all of the mic controls, pedal sounds, and a reduced version of the main articulation – Felt.
Full version at bit.ly/woodland-grand-piano
Inspired by Icelandic and Scandinavian natural beauty, the Woodland Grand Piano was carefully recorded ensuring that the natural wooden tones and resonances of each moving part of the piano were captured.
The physical piano is a Yamaha C5 Grand outfitted with a Disklavier system, which I used to aid me in creating this instrument, as showcased in the video walkthrough.
It uses the exact same 7 microphones as the Woodland Piano:
– 3 Neumann KM184 over the hammers on the top of the piano in a wide AB stereo configuration featuring a center channel
– 2 MK4 above the center of the tail providing an close but overhead perspective
– 2 AKG C414 XL II at the end of the tail, capturing the remaining vibrations and some extra low end
You’ve got 3 main articulations sampled in 4 velocity layers, and in pedal up and down: Felt, Normal, and Muted
And then 2 more playable articulations recorded in 1 velocity layer: Plucked and Rain. Rain is an experimental articulation created by connecting an arpeggiator to the piano and randomly moving its speed up and down, creating a rain of notes.
Unlike the Woodland Piano (sampled in 5ths), the Woodland Grand (or Woodgrand, heh) was sampled in 3rds.
The 7-mic setup really shines in this instrument thanks to its length, allowing you to experience vastly different timbres depending on your mic configuration.
The demo includes:
– 2-velocity Felt articulation with the Pedal-Down samples
– Full Mic Controls
– Full Pedal sounds
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or issues. Links in my profile. Enjoy!
Interface
Reviews for Woodland Grand Piano (demo)
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Great sounding and versatile felt piano sounds!
Don't you ever have enough piano instruments on your computer? Do you really need another one? - Yes, pretty sure you already have many or even too many pianos, but this one is still worth playing!
Because with this demo version of the Woodland Grand we are gifted with a felt tone that sounds excellent.
This is probably the result of the elaborate way in which the piano was sampled. The effort was obviously worth it and can be heard!But who now thinks: "What only a felt sound? This is a one trick pony!", to which I reply: Yes, maybe, but what it does, it does really well! And by the way: Thanks to the possibility to control the volume of the three microphone positions independently from each other plus also the respective stereo width, a varied and nuanced sound can be created. Of course, in this demo it remains a felt piano, but even without using EQ it can be integrated well into the mix and sounds versatile.
Thanks a lot for this demo and if you want to have more sound characteristics of this great sampled instrument, the full version is highly recommended!
BOUGHT THE FULL VERSION
I bought the full version as a way to say thank you for the OG Woodland Piano :) Great work on this grand piano version! It's one of the more useable felt pianos... Some have way too much muddy resonance and this one just works! One thing I'd love to see if it's possible is to make the Normal and Felt layers play better together. Things get phasey here and there... I wonder if going through and checking phase on each note sample (all velocities) when played together and correcting the ones that are off would help? Was hoping to have Felt as the main sound and fold in 50 to 60% of Normal for some extra clarity and knock. Can't get where I want to currently without it sounding hollowed out in spots. Fix that and this will be absolute perfection!
