We are a new Dutch developer of virtual instruments for the Native Instruments platform.

And we are very proud of our first release "The Oeser", which is a 150 year old Viennese baby grand piano with a very rich and intimate tone.

This piano was recorded @ the Key studios in the most pure way, with world class microphones and preamps. It is not an overproduced, polished piano, but just a very good piano with more character than Elton John. A true singer/songwriter piano, which will spark creativity by the unique sound and recording styles.


What you get


We have recorded the piano in 4 ways: Pure, Felted, Muted and Picked. Where the first 2 are fairly obvious, the Muted was accomplished by hand muting the strings which gave it a plucky sound and the Picked was done by playing the strings with a guitar pick which made the piano sound like a harpsichord.

This resulted in a gigantic NKS library of 30GB and is also compatible with the free Kontakt Player. The 8 knobs of our simplified interface corresponds with the 8 knob layout of Native Instruments' Komplete Kontrol midi keyboards.


Key features

• Full length samples (up to 1:45)
  
• Real time sustain cross-over
  
• Create your own balans with 3 microphone positions
  
• Adjustable playability
  
• Add pedal and mechanical noises to taste
  
• True sympathetic resonance
  
• Not normalized or compressed, to match the real experience
  
• CPU friendly while using ridiculous amounts of voices
  

Learn more


Check our website for more information and previews, or watch the introduction and walkthrough on our YouTube page.

Also, Simeon Amburgey of PraiseTracks created an awesome review on YouTube.

 

If it is a 150-year-old piano, to which frequency is note A tuned?
I've had a hundred-year-old piano in my childhood that had successfully destroyed my perfect hearing with its lower pitch. The piano was not possible to tune to 440 Hz as it was made for the lower standard. Every note sounded quarter note lower than music in tv/radio. Only a tape recorder with incorrect rolling speed made it possible for me to play over any music.

 

During the restoration process we have had our piano technician tune our piano in baby steps up to 440hz, so it would be suitable for commercial use. This did meant that we had the piano tuned every day we started recording. These old pianos originally are tuned lower, so we have rolled the tuning back to 436hz, where it was in before we decided on making this our first virtual instrument.

 

I just can't stand Kontakt. Any chance you'll release it in other formats? (Falcon, HALion, EXS/Logic Sampler, etc)

 

We can understand that different platforms will work for different people. At this moment we have not looked into other formats, since developing an instrument for NI Kontakt has took as well over a year of development. If we get more of such requests, or suggestions regarding other platforms, we sure will take it into consideration.
Side-note: our piano has its own interface, which consists of only 8 knobs to control the sound. Any sound-design or production steps could be done by using your own plugins within your own DAW, far better than any platform may offer, if you'd ask me.

 

Nice Warm Timbre/tone,
the demos are a bit Veiled maybe, but there's a Lid control, and the overhead mics have some sparkle..

With a proper adjustment, I wonder how well it will compare to my favorite "Piano in Blue"..

The Felted tone is Excellent tho,
it may be the best most realist and tasty I've heard so far.. or at least I like it more than the "Noire" felt.

How many Dynamic Layers,
or Round Robins does it have?

 

Cosmic, thank you for your comment and compliments. Our piano does sound warm, and some people may describe it as muffled. But, that's the way these pianos from Austria were known for. They will blend exceptionally well with string instruments and were meant to be used for chamber music. If you want it to "sparkle" more, you will need to eq it to taste, as we wanted to resemble The Oeser in the most natural/pure way. The lid control does reveil some more high end, and since we recorded with the best equipment that one may find in recording studios, we think all the "information" is within our samples.

Since this old piano has the old Viennese mechanics, we couldn't get our robot to differentiate more than 8 velocity layers. But with modulation of cross-overs and just the characteristics of this piano, we believe that this is sufficient enough to represent the full dynamics of this particular instrument. As for RR, we have those on the pedal noises, since we understand how annoying repetitive pedal noises can be. The key mechanics have 2 layers which are modulated on cross-over as well. So, the mechanics are velocity controlled as well. We are also exceptionally proud of the way we have implemented our sustain control. Since we have full sample lengths on both non-sustain as well as sustain, they are both triggered on key and switched in real time by the sustain pedal. Even though this costs a lot of voices, our piano has been proven to be very light on CPU.

The felted version of this piano is something most people in our studio much appreciate. The only thing that can make this piano more romantic is to have a lady laying on top of it.

 

Gotta say, the only thing that's stopping me from getting this is Kontakt. Been listening to all the demos and it might be my new favorite "intimate" piano, it would be great for warmer-feeling tracks and as a warmer alternative to my usual S700/C7. Would I lose anything by using this with the free Kontakt player instead of the full version? Man, I wish I could send you my Motif XF and get you guys to somehow stuff this piano in a 1gb flash board. Any other instruments planned? I would kill for a warm music box done in the same style.

 

Thank you for the compliment. We have made this piano available for the free Kontakt player as well, since it is an NKS library, encoded by Native Instruments. So, no, you won't lose anything by using our library in the free Kontakt player!
We wish we could "stuff" other instruments as well with our library, but unfortunately they are not open source and their memory is often insufficient (since our library is already 29,64GB).
We do have an other instrument planned, being the Yamaha C7 from the 70's which sits in studio A at the Key studios. This piano sounds nothing like an ordinary C7 and artists recording at Key are often coming back to record with that piano.
A warm music box? We will absolutely take it into consideration. Any recommendations on which to use?

 

The Motif XS/XF/MOXF are quite "open" but they do require extra (paid) software (John Melas' Motif Tools in this case) and I absolutely see why this wouldn't be worth it for just a few users. Oh man, I wish we lived in the 2010s back when these instruments were still relevant for library makers. But yeah, wishful thinking on my part.

The current C7 (probably my favorite piano period) I use is the one from K-Sounds (their "Signature Piano") on my Motif XF. They do offer a Kontakt version for 85$ and it's admittedly even more advanced than the XF version I use (11 velocity layers vs 8, fully uncompressed at 2.6gb vs not even 500mb on the Motif, etc) but I've been happy enough with the Motif that I don't feel the need to try that one. I'll eagerly await yours, especially if it's a "special" C7.

No idea which music box to use yet, I've been researching antique music boxes for a while and it's a bit of a rabbit hole.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, by the way.

 

Last edited: May 2, 2022

Always happy to see more developers try their hands at new piano libraries, thank you. I'm personally more interested in the upcoming Yamaha, especially since you teased that it will not sound like 'yet another Yamaha', because I personally don't like the bright tone of that piano too much, so I'm curious about how it'll turn out. Also great to hear you use robots, that's pretty serious. Seems to have true pedal resonance samples as well (and not emulated or modelled, right?). Good luck with your endeavours, will keep you bookmarked.

 

You're welcome. That's the fun part about this forum. People who are interested and passionated about the same things. The motif was very relevant back then but still is for certain projects. I think it serves its purpose best on stage, though.

Our C7 will be quite large. The Oeser is 29,64GB and The 7th will certainly be larger. But we think that disk space is not an issue nowadays, so we'll choose quality over size, whilst keeping CPU usage low with lean scripting.
If any music box will stand out of the crowd, let us know!

Thank you for the support. And indeed we have true pedal resonance samples. We have sampled the sustained samples as well as non sustained. They will both run simultaneously when you press a key and will switch upon pressing the pedal. That way you'll get real-time cross over and true resonance of the piano. We even sampled the sympathetic resonances of each string and have the script work out on which harmonics it should resonate.
Our Yamaha indeed sounds nothing like an ordinary C7, and that has been said by many artists and even piano technicians who worked on our piano. Stay tuned for the demos when the piano is ready to be released.

 

We got a new review:

Sorry, but super proud here!

 

Think I have an idea for the music box thing: an old Polyphon - the cabinet/wall-mounted variant, not the tabletop one. They sound really beefy and the higher notes surprisingly don't turn into a shrill mess.

Or maybe one of those massive regina cabinets that take 27 inch discs

 

Last edited: May 10, 2022

Thank you! I have checked it out. It is indeed quite a unit. And I have found out that we have one in the Netherlands, in a museum. We will add it to the list of possible instruments in the future. Since we've just started, we have many ideas for instruments lined up, so this won't be something in the near future. First the Yamaha C7.
Thank you for your input!