Tag: piano

Hi!

So my mother is a pianist, and all through my childhood, my family owned this baby grand piano–it was made by Weber in 1929. It had been in our family since the 1950s. Last year, my mom had to move, and the new place she was moving to didn’t have enough room for the piano. She offered it to me, but I didn’t have space for it either. So after a lot of stress and lost sleep, she finally decided to give it away. (By the way, she now has a nice, space efficient digital piano in her new place so she’s not without an instrument.)

Anyway, before she gave the baby grand away, I decided to sample it so that she and I would have a record of what it sounded like. And that is what I’m releasing today.

Let’s take a look at the UI. As Kontakt instrument go, it’s pretty straightforward:

At the top, there’s an option to turn on stereo doubling. This causes two samples to played at the same time.

The width knob controls the panning of the two samples. If it’s turned all the way down, the two samples are both in the middle.

If it’s turned all the way up, the samples are hard panned to the left and to the right.

The REVERB knob controls the reverb, of course. The convolution reverb that comes bundled with was specifically picked to go with these piano samples.

Next, there’s a filter cutoff knob. This basically controls the how much treble the soft notes get. If you turn it up, even the soft notes get a lot of treble. If you want it to sound like a soft piano, you’ll want to keep this knob panned to the left.

And finally, we’ve got our standard ADSR amplitude envelope. You probably won’t need to adjust these too much, unless you’re looked to do something really special.

OK. That’s it. I think it’s a great instrument. It has a unique, but also very ordinary sound that makes it ideally suited for cinematic piano tracks. And all for the price of a coffee…and another coffee…and possible a third coffee. Hope you like it!

Buy it here: Weber 1929 Baby Grand Piano (Kontakt)

– David Hilowitz