The story
When my wife and I and our two toddlers arrived in the USA from England almost twenty years ago, we had little money left over to purchase luxuries, and were nearly in tears at having to leave our piano permanently in England due to the cost of shipping it. Despite having no cash left, we saw this dusty old thing with bad varnish in the corner at Harry Day pianos in Atlanta calling to us one day while trying all kinds of uprights in our meagre budget. It took just one note to fall in love with this pre-war, swing-era original Grand, and we just had to have it no matter what the cost. It’s gorgeous, lush sound has filled our house with love, sorrow, and inspiration every day since. I now travel coast to coast regularly but have only just got around to sampling it so i can take it, and the love it’s given us, with me everywhere I go (I even have it loaded into onto my iPhone DAW in case I get a spark of inspiration in the supermarket!).
Reviews for Ivers & Pond 1937 Swing Era Grand
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Great character but a few issues
The character of this piano is really great, as someone who uses felt pianos 99.9 percent of the time i really like how this one is bright and shimmery without being too bright and still maintains some warmth. It sounds like an excellent piano and its pretty well recorded (apart from the noise). As noted by others, theres pretty substantial issues with the dynamics where some notes kind of dont let you access the softer dynamic layers while others dont seem to let you play loud. so this just makes for an inconsistent playing experience. Also its extremely noisy but rather the being noisy throughout, the noise seems to be better or worse depending on the sample so this makes it even more inconsistent. Id love to see an update to this because the tone and warmth of the piano is great.
Lovely Character, but not very playable
this is a solid first attempt at sampling a piano, but there are some things missing in the experience. The instrument itself is absolutely lovely, and it's a great choice for a subject of a sampling adventure. The problems, however, start right after that point. An instrument has to be well played in order to collect the recordings from it that you need. I think anyone who creates samples ends up going back and replaying a few notes here and there just because as human beings, we're never 100% consistent in our playing. The notes from E5 to A# 5 completely disappear, for example. It's almost as this there is a missing sample, but Kontakt doesn't report a missing sample. From D1 on down, you'll hear a very significant change in the dynamic level at which the notes were played. They rather suddenly get really loud, even at the softest dynamic. Adding to these troubles is the fact that this library is in rather desperate need of noise reduction. To me, these issues really got in the way of being able to play this instrument and use it in a production. It's really too bad, because the sound of this instrument is outstanding, and it has so much potential. Hopefully this samplist will take on the challenge of sampling this instrument again at some point in the future.
Character unable to shine
You can hear the piano has quite a lovely character there, but unfortunately there are some issues that won't let it shine its goodness. The first thing I noticed is that all of the notes are almost hard-panned left, they have a very prominent white noise, but that's ok if you like Lo-Fi productions. The low notes though are not that clearly audible due to that noise. It's also no that dynamic, favouring the medium to loud kind of playing.
You won't find anything in the GUI, so you are left with just the default sound. It's an interesting and kind of intimate sound, but i'd love a revamp!
