The story
This piano was recorded and multisampled while I was studying for a HND in Music Production. This is an old and slightly (most definitely) abused Kemble upright piano located in studio one (1 of 3 studios situated within the college).
Reviews for College Kemble
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Loads of potential!
For a while playing on this piano, I stayed in the higher range and kept the reverb all the way down (both rare for me). I was immediately drawn to the beautiful sound of the upper register and the awesome space it has by default. Then I added some lower notes and it took me a minute before I realized some notes were double playing. Also I hear some issues with some of the lower range. I think the piano sound is very inspiring since it caused me to approach playing in a different way, and I usually favor low end sound, but favored the high end on this one. It has just the right amount of tuning issues. Lots of potential with a couple changes!
Great First attempt!
This is a great first attempt at sampling a piano. They are notoriously difficult instruments to sample. The upper register here is really even dynamically which is great. There seem to be two distinct dynamical layers in the upper half of the piano, each with its own panning soft dynamics are more to the right while louder dynamics are to the left and each with a very different timbre. The lower velocity range sounds very muted while the upper velocity range is far brighter and has a rather clipped release. In the lower register, the note that was sampled for the E2 to B1 zone double strikes, so there's a perfect fourth worth of keys which double strike. The intonation of the lowest few zones is also rather sketchy. So, I'm sure many valuable lessons were learned in sampling this piano, and I applaud the efforts of this samplist sharing their work with our community!
Really beautiful tone with some programming issues
The sound of this piano particularly in the upper half is really beautiful and mellow. Its a shame that there are programming issues with this piano because this would probably be my go to non felt piano. I always go for felt because i like the dark, warm, cinematic vibe. I often find non felts to be kind of cheesy sounding and bright but this one sounds great. Once you start to get to the lower half of the piano there seems to be weird noises and harmonics baked into the samples. Also i think the biggest issue is that there is panning inconsistency where some notes favor the left and some the right. I really love the sound of this and i think it has alot of potential if the issues i and others here mentioned were fixed and it never hurts to add more dynamic layers and round robins.
Two sides of a piano
While this piano is sampled really well, the more you play it, the more you realise that there is a very distinct inconsistency when it comes to its characater.
If you manage to play above the middle C, you will surely like the sound of it. As you go lower you might start noticing a few issues, from different textures, noises, just if these are samples from different instruments.
Another weird thing is that most samples seem to sit more to the right channel, but the top velocity layer almost hard pans to the left.
These issues might be a pain to deal with in the context of a mix, but other than those I believe that this has a lot to offer, and who knows, maybe someone will find a way to make those things creative instead.
A valid effort but a bit busted.
The top half of the piano is recorded really well. It would play really well in a Sigur Ros motif for example. The problems really occur in the bottom half of the range where the dynamic range suffers, the tone is ugly & pretty much unusable as a standard piano. There might be some use for the contrast in sound but personally I don't think it's for me. Valid effort tho. The issues are more than likely the piano itself rather than the recording.
