The instrument is based on a C. Bechstein piano which I sampled at the dBs Pro studio in Bristol, which has been reprocessed by recording it onto a cassette tape that got exposed to too much moisture and sun over the years. You can mix the clean signal with the one from the cassette to dial in your preferred tone, from a thin, wonky and noisy tape warble of a tone, to a sound which has a bit more body. The combination of the two also leads to a subtle phaser like effect, due to the inconsistencies within the cassette recording creating intermodulation with the dry signal. A shimmer reverb has been added as well for a more dreamlike sound.

This was one of the instruments that I built while doing my masters. When using soft-synths or other virtual instruments I try to incorporate physical, hands-on aspects the sound design, capturing a momentary fleeting thing, rather than something which could be easily replicated. The thing that was especially interesting to me about making this instrument is the fact that each sample and in effect each note captures a different impurity at a different time, unlike for instance when using a reel-to-reel to record an entire arrangement or putting a tape emulation on your instruments bus.

Demo Track using the cassette piano: https://youtu.be/q3p_cE5b8fU

Contributors

lyva