My roots have been piano based and so I have lots of pianos. When I was growing up there were two baby grands (my mother was a pianist). They didn't have keyboards when I was in HS so I played in a rock band playing on a Farfisa Compact (still have it in the studio). When I 'returned' to music in 2000, there was a baby grand in the living room and I purchased a Yamaha P80 for studio and performance in as a keyboardist in a Jazz big band. So in the old "Gigastudio' days I began to purchase/collect piano samples. First it was a Steinway and then I discovered the site, "https://www.sampletekk.com" and purchased lots of pianos including the Yamaha C7 which became my 'go to' piano. So by the end of last year, I had lost count of the number of piano samples I had. But that did not 'stop' me :) Last week I purchased the Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate bundle (to be discussed at a later time) which came with even more pianos and I found one I think I like the sound better than my Yamaha C7 - "The Grandeur" which I will try out on my next project.
So for you piano geeks :) Tell us about your coexistence with actual or sampled pianos. Do you record live off a real piano or do you have piano samples or one in particular that you use regularly and why? Or perhaps you have a couple of options depending on the type of project you are working on?
Nice! The Grandeur sounds like a goooood piano.
I usually work with stacked virtual pianos- usually the EW Bosendorfer, and SF Labs Soft Piano. Those two put together sound really nice! A few weeks ago I went to record some live felt piano for a particular project though and it's so much better, it has such a warmth and human feel. Very jealous of people with access to a real piano all the time!
This felt piano came with all the stuff I am looking at. I have EWQL sitting here for almost 2 years and intend to look at it as well.
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/keys/noire/
Joanna Karselis Check out Piano Book: https://www.pianobook.co.uk
Started by Christian Hansen (Spitfire Audio)
Thank you for the thought Jim, but as mentioned above I'm very happy with the pianos I already have and whilst I'm very aware of Pianobook I've never found another piano on there that rivals the versatility of sound I can obtain with my stacked technique. Each to their own!
Joel, Noire is a gorgeous piano, enjoy it. I have various EW libraries and have used them for years; they're good, solid backbone kinds of libraries. Looking forward to hearing what you make with all of these lovely samples!
Joanna Karselis Interested in what you mean as your "Stacked" method for piano. Are you familiar with Ascend from Heavyocity?
https://heavyocity.com/product/ascend/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAuP-OBhDqARIsAD4XHpc...
That's a nice sounding piano Jim. By stacked technique I meant the one described above where I layer patches, which was what I assumed you sent the piano book link in response to.
Ah. yes. I see now. Thanks for clearing that for me. Interesting approach.
Hello Joel,
I also started with the Steinway on Giga Studio and I have the komplete, The Yamaha C7 of the Komplete is the piano I used on my last score, I was looking for a sample the is thin in the high frequency but fat in the bass to stay under the dialogue in the intimate moments. It worked very well even if it is not my favorite piano, my favorite one is the Ivory II from Synthogy, I use it on my world music projects, or in a project where I don't need to design the piano sound.
For my future author or drama project I will probably use an accoustic piano (piano droit) sorry I forgot how it is called in English lol, it is easier to mic and of corse the expression is so much better than any sample because you are not limited on an amount of layers.
The piano sound is really hard to trim, it easily drop to a fat sound or a thin sound if you miss the mics positioning, and it is a real specialization to get the best balance for the film, to resolve that, I heard some good thing on the HansZimmer piano samples. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm really interested to check what it can do :)
Best regards,
Reda Mourah