The story
I created this library by sampling my parents upright Linden piano. It’s not a very good piano and it’s a bit out of tune but the sound is still nice.
I recorded the sound with an SM58 suspended above the semi-open case.I moved the microphone in front of each strings played to get a sound as direct as possible. There is still a lot of noise and the result is quite lo-fi, but it is still playable and fun.
Update : I made this instrument a few years ago in the early days of pianobook. With all the tutorials now out there I know I would not record it the same way today. It was my first kontakt instrument so please forgive me if it’s too noisy or lacks dynamic. 🙂
Reviews for Lo-Fi Felted Linden
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
very lofi
I remember this one standing out to me when i first got into pianobook. The tone is really sweet and mellow and the mechanical noise and release triggers i think are really characterful. There really is an absurd amount of noise here though. It could work in a lofi beat but even in lofi i like to have separate control over the noise so i can drop it out in certain sections or side chain it to the kick which is a really common and cool sounding trick. It also isn't that dynamic which wasn't really important to me back when i first got into pianobook but now really is. Id really love to see an update of this with deeper sampling and less noise because the actual sound of the piano is one of my favorites on the site.
Very unique, Very niche.
This is a really lo-fi example of a piano library. I am not sure how usable it is in the music I write, but it's sort of fun to play a chord with the sustain pedal engaged -- and listen to all the lingering noises that were recorded as part of the samples. In thinking about the uses, I could imaging ending a song with four quarter notes played on A1, A2, A3 and holding out the sustain till the end. Nice releases! It's very niche, though.
An interesting sounding piano, but quite noisy
This piano is interesting and sweet sounding, but there's a lot of noise in the recording. To me, that decreases its usefulness. There are also some pretty loud mechanical noises, and the instrument has not been crafted in such a way that it has a lot of dynamic responsiveness as you play. It's really too bad, because this is a very sweet sounding piano. I certainly hope that this samplist has a go at sampling it again in the future. I think that a lot of people would really find the results useful and inspiring.
Entry level felted piano
I do like the bright felted tone up high and the gentle warmth down low, though it would benefit from a little denoising and more velocity layers. Usable but not great.
This is VERY Lo-Fi
Lo-Fi basically means Low Fidelity, less clarity, and that's usually done with the introduction of some kind of noise. And this piano has a hella lot of it, which I personally find too much. I think a more proper way of doing a lo-fi instrument would be to have a nice clean sample with an extra option to add noise on top in order to be more consistent among the samples being played. As it is right now it is integrated inside the samples, and this make it very inconsistent when playing it, since the volume of the noise goes up and down depending on what is being played. Other than that, the piano sounds sweet and mellow but with a defined attack.
