Upright Pianos: Halion

Description

A small but character-packed collection of Upright Pianos.

We visited upright pianos and captured their homey sound. There’s a lot of character, a lot of depth, a bit of intonation, but heaps of playability in this unique sample library. Captured on a 20-bit Layla recording system using vintage Cole Ribbon microphone and clip-on Sony mics, the unique approach to recording these pianos capture the years of history residing within the black and whites.

We’ve created presets that compliment these samples in unique ways. The natural presets are presented as the notes are on the piano – they entire keymap is shifted up or down – Middle C is the only note tuned to a tuner.

We then painstakingly created a second map for each preset – one in which no sample is pitched “up” during playback – only playing on its root note or lower in pitch. This ensures that the interpolation algorithm of Halion’s playback engine does not “drop” any samples during playback, only creates them. This minimizes distortion during sample playback and just sounds better.

We also then created tunings of each keyboard mapping that were tuned against a chromatic strobotuner. Electronic musicians might think that one should tune a piano by using a chromatic tuner to tune each note. Unfortunately, this leads to something called “inharmonicity” and makes an acoustic piano sound a bit strange. Ideally, low notes on an acoustic piano are tuned a little flat, and high notes are tuned a little sharp. The tunings SoundEngine created in this manner are really for layering with other electronic sounds when a desired precision and elimination of any “frequency beating” is occuring.

Listen to the demos – if want a unique, expressive piano tone in your composition, this bargain-priced collection is well worth the small investment.

Halion Instruments: Hanson Piano Forte, Hansons 717a (stereo), Hansons 717b (mono), Ladbrooke 717, Charlie’s Piano