What's your favorite piano library?

not sure · Jan 12, 2016

I haven't found one that I like yet -.-
so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction!

Ads Master

GammaStar · Jan 12, 2016

"4Front" does just what i need & without the use of samples.

Enoch007 · Jan 12, 2016

Synthogy Ivory for Classical. UVI Ravenscroft for Pop...

Tacio · Jan 12, 2016

Galaxy Vintage D, Piano In Blue.

xcore · Jan 12, 2016

Piano in Blue does it for me

farao · Jan 12, 2016

Hammersmith.

mono · Jan 12, 2016

i find Alicia Keys so nice is the only one i play now

not sure · Jan 12, 2016

Thanks for the replies Much to consider. <3
Anyone using organs out there? Haven't found any I like either!
I've got vintage organs but it sounds butt.

NYCGRIFF · Jan 12, 2016

If you're a reasonably talented player of the "ivories", and have played a finely-tuned "Concert Grand" or even an expensive "Baby Grand" (let's not forget mother's Steinway upright) you're already spoiled, and sadly, somewhat jaded. So, no VST (no matter how well sampled or engineered) is ever going to satisfy a certain segment's 'aural' palate. That being said, since I live in a relatively small apartment in NYC, and am basically forced to create piano sounds through the use of a DAW (mainly Jazz and modern hybrid stuff) I tend to gravitate towards KONTAKT-based instruments such as, "The Giant", "The Grandeur", "The Maverick", and "The Maverick". Depending on what mood or sound I'm trying to create with those other VST instruments, I tend to go with the flow of my mood and (mercurial) temperament. I've been pounding away on various pianos and keyboards for a fairly long time. But of course, I've tried so many other piano/VST-based instruments. I can write a damn book on my experiences! <lol> But, I'll leave that one up to the real "experts" on audio-engineering as it relates to the creativity of digital sound...

Last edited: Jan 12, 2016

foster911 · Jan 12, 2016

For having superior and also exactly pitched sounding, try layering esp using Synths. Recorded samples usually sound bad on some notes.

NYCGRIFF · Jan 12, 2016

As for "organs", I've tried quite a few, but I agree with member, "not sure", most of 'em sound rather 'pedestrian' and (I hate to say it) "artificial" (at best). Here's a demonstrated challenge on Youtube (of sorts); pitting a real Hammond vs a virtual instrument. The proof is in the pudding (so to speak). However, when the average music listener (perhaps) makes the comparison (sight unseen) one never knows:

. You be the judge.

Mundano · Jan 12, 2016

for an alternative piano sound: Una Corda

Mundano said: ↑

Amazing sound, now i am including it in a new album! i want to share some videos related to it and an interview:

"Now Frahm has decided to reinvent the piano itself. In collaboration with David Klavins, a master craftsman based in Balingen, southern Germany, Frahm has developed the Una Corda, an instrument that seeks to overcome the limitations of conventional design. "

http://www.electronicbeats.net/on-redesigning-the-piano-an-interview-with-nils-frahm/
ON REDESIGNING THE PIANO: AN INTERVIEW WITH NILS FRAHM

Not content with reinventing piano music, Berliner Nils Frahm is now reinventing the piano himself—with the help of craftsman David Klavins. Wyndham Wallace w ...

BY EB STAFF

Not content with reinventing piano music, composer Nils Frahm is now reinventing the piano himself—with the help of craftsman David Klavins. Wyndham Wallace went to meet him to find out more ahead of the instrument’s debut at Berlin’s Michelberger Hotel on June 10th.

Nils Frahm has spent the last five years or so reinventing piano music, refusing to be constrained by its familiar restrictions and often modifying the instrument to suit his needs. 2011’s Felt saw the thirty-three-year-old Berliner tamping his piano’s strings with the aforementioned textile, while the following year’s Screws was composed for nine fingers after he broke his thumb falling out of bed. He’s also collaborated with a cast of similarly minded musicians, making downbeat electronica with composer Olafur Arnalds, recording with cellist Anne Müller, engineering Dustin O’Halloran (also known for classical-meets-ambient project A Winged Victory For The Sullen) or producing friend Peter Broderick. Indeed, Frahm is unafraid of employing technology to enhance his art, with his live shows renowned for sheer spectacle as he spins between his different keyboards. The joy of the latter is a fact made clear on last year’s extraordinary live album, Spaces, in which the virtuoso performer combines his traditional instrument with synthesisers and electronic processing to remarkable, dramatic effect. Now Frahm has decided to reinvent the piano itself. In collaboration with David Klavins, a master craftsman based in Balingen, southern Germany, Frahm has developed the Una Corda, an instrument that seeks to overcome the limitations of conventional design. In advance of the Una Corda’s grand unveiling on June 10th at a free event at Berlin’s Michelberger Hotel, Frahm took a short break from his extensive touring schedule to speak to Wyndham Wallace about fulfilling his dream of having an instrument built according to his specifications, and why innovation in the field of pianos is so challenging.

You’re heading home to Berlin soon, but you’ve been on the road quite a while now.

I haven’t seen my place in a very long time! I just played a show in Dublin yesterday, and we’re on the way to Paris. I was also in Denmark working on a theater piece for a couple of weeks, and in Australia. I played the Sydney Opera House, and the response was quite overwhelming.

Not bad for a man who started out playing the piano on his own.

Yeah, I know what you mean. But sometimes I think it’s not only about playing the piano. It’s also about telling stories, and having a narrative in some sort of way, without having lyrics. I love having projects you can talk about, like the whole piano building idea. I also have two old gentlemen building me an organ that I can take on tour. It sounds small, but it’s quite a big thing. It will be a midi-controlled organ made out of two organs which are reassembled.

Like an organ transplant?

Yeah, an organ recycling project where they maybe take down a church, then we rescue the pipes and build them onto a new body. I really like having the opportunity and budget to fulfil my instrument-builder dreams. I always see a possibility to extend the expressions and possibilities of an instrument, and when you start building an instrument, then you can implement so many things which might be new, or odd, or special. So combining composing and playing my music with building the instrument is something quite fun. It made me think ofHarry Partch: he built all his instruments himself, and he even had completely new scales. He built, for example, an instrument with forty-two notes within one octave, which is many notes for one octave. People like him inspire me.

Having your own piano and organ built are not cheap projects. Are these things you’re funding yourself?

I’m playing many shows at the moment, and I could probably buy myself a new car with that money, or go shopping, but I don’t need much. I’ve always spent all the money I had on instruments anyway. So rather than buying a nice Steinway, I thought I’d much rather have something built from scratch, because I love buying instruments but buying pianos is my leastfun thing. It never feels like a piano is done for me. There’s something wrong about a piano, I think. The piano industry has one big problem: you have to do a cast iron frame, and for that you have to build the form, and that’s very expensive. So once you’ve designed the frame, you want to make at least fifty to five hundred pieces of that very frame. So only Yamaha, Steinway—bigger companies—can afford to design their own piano. The next problem is that Steinway rules the world. There’s nothing bad about Steinway, but they follow a very traditional path. When you see a piano built with wood all around it, it’s very stupid, because all that wood blocks off the sound. Every time I come to a concert venue, I have to disassemble the whole piano to make the sound flow. So I thought, “Why would I want to pay for all that extra wood if I never use it?” I think that a piano was more like furniture one hundred or two hundred years ago, so what it looked like was the biggest concern. My biggest concern is how the piano sounds! Steinway said a hundred years ago, “OK, this is the ideal piano. It can’t be better than this.” That’s their whole problem. Or that’s my problem at least. Yamaha basically builds a Steinway cover, and other big companies, they basically build cheaper Steinways. So there’s only one type of piano out there, and that challenges me because I don’t like uniformity. I like diversity, and I like something unique, to play with something that kind of fits your personality. Then I found David Klavins. He’s an ingenious engineer, and he’s also radical enough to try new things. He doesn’t agree with Steinway’s dogma that the piano can’t be improved. He says it should be like an ongoing evolution.

David Klavins at work

How did you meet?

He got in touch because he wanted me to try The Giant, which he built and is the world’s largest piano. So I drove to Tubingen in south Germany and did a couple of days of recording on that instrument. We talked about my love of very small instruments and he said that he’d always wanted to build a piano that only has one string per note. I’m not sure if you noticed, but a piano normally has three strings per hammer, and that puts almost three times as much tension on the frame. Therefore the frame needs to be heavy, and the whole instrument gets heavy. With one string per note it’s easier to tune, it’s much lighter, it’s much cheaper, and it’s much quieter. I said “That’s my dream instrument!” So he started immediately.

What other qualities does it have that are unique? Using material from old pianos?

That’s something I insisted on, because so many pianos get thrown away after a certain time. Mechanical instruments can’t be repaired, so after a hundred years basically a piano’s dead. I think the wood gets better with time but mechanics don’t. So I said, “Please take the wood from an old instrument so it has some soul already, because if you take brand new wood it might take ten to fifteen years until the wood really eases in.” It’s very inspiring to listen to him talk, because he says, “Let’s not make a piano like they did a hundred years ago. We can do much better with modern technologies today.”

So this is much more than a novelty piano?

It basically shows that pianos can be improved. They don’t need to have eighty-eight keys, they don’t need to be black and shiny, and they don’t need to look like a coffin. I haven’t really played it yet, but from what I know, and from what I’ve seen and heard with sound tests, it’ll be great! I also thought how nice it must be to build an instrument yourself and then play it for the first time and discover what you’ve created. You work for months and months and months, and then the first time sitting down in front of it and playing a couple of notes and going, “That’s it” That must be very thrilling.

So what can we expect from your performance at the Michelberger Hotel? Is it just going to be you and the piano?

I might play one or two tunes. But I want people to touch it. I want people to see it. I want people to ask questions. I want people just to think about the idea of instruments and see how important instruments are to musicians, and how much they change their music. I think instrument builders play one of the biggest roles in the music industry. I’m really aware that people who create instruments for musicians are as important as the musicians. Why should I be the star? The person who builds the instrument should be a star as well.

Finally, are you planning to record a new album any time soon?

I’ve just got to sit down and mix and mix and mix and see what feels good. I have material for five or six albums. It’s not just recording music which makes an album for me. Every album so far has a nice story you can talk about. So I wonder what will be the story of the next one. The music will follow the story. ~

Click to expand...

fiction · Jan 12, 2016

S.C. Hammersmith, Galaxy Vintage D, 8dio 1969 Steinway, I.S. Braunschweig Upright

Herr Durr · Jan 12, 2016

Enoch007 said: ↑

Synthogy Ivory for Classical
Click to expand...

+1 for that .. indeed the best I have heard... but huge....

Piano One (free) sounds great for everyday, low resource usage...
also Pianoteq very old version 2.2 sounds quite good and runs without much hassle

Mostwest · Jan 12, 2016

EzKeys Grand Piano & N.I. Alicia Keys are usually my go-to pianos

solo83 · Jan 12, 2016

Emotional piano by soundiron. Nough said

Cordelay · Jan 12, 2016

NYCGRIFF said: ↑

"The Maverick", and "The Maverick"
Click to expand...

I couldn't know which one to choose either, jj

Mostwest said: ↑

EzKeys Grand Piano & N.I. Alicia Keys are usually my go-to pianos
Click to expand...

In all the pop productions I've been working the last few years the producers used either one of those two. I find Alicia's Keys to be the most forgiving to my untalented, unskillful piano chord smashing

NYCGRIFF · Jan 12, 2016

solo83 said: ↑

Emotional piano by soundiron
Click to expand...

Forgot to include that one in my "go-to" list. Sweet sounding...

NYCGRIFF · Jan 12, 2016

Cordelay said: ↑

I couldn't know which one to choose either, jj
Click to expand...

Ha, ha. My typing fingers somehow disconnected from my brain on that one!

WaAcSy · Jan 12, 2016

My top 10 :
1 - VSL Vienna Imperial
2 - VI Labs Ravenscroft 275
3 - Synthogy American Concert D
4 - VI Labs True Keys American Grand
5 - VI Labs True Keys Italian Grand
6 - VI Labs True Keys German Grand
7 - Garritan CFX Concert Grand
8 - Synthogy Italian Grand
9 - Native Instruments The Grandeur
10 - Galaxy Vintage D

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What's your favorite piano library?

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What's your favorite piano library?

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