The story
This upright piano belongs to my mother who wanted to learn the piano when she was a kid but gave up really quickly.
It has been at my parent’s house for almost 30 years and has never been tuned since.
2 years ago, I started to develop sample libraries and always wanted to record this unstable beauty one day.
3 weeks ago, I gave it a shot and here is result.
I used a pair of Neumann KM184 and put a blanket between the strings and the hammers for a very gentle sound. 3 dynamics layers have been recorded as well as release triggers and pedal noises.
Play C#-2 and you’ll see there’s also a silent room recording for an extra realism when mixing.
To add interest to the sound, I also decided to create 2 more layers for blending with the piano one.
The first one is the piano recording processed in Logic and played back thru a Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII and driven thru a Boss KM60 mixer.
The second one holds a special place in my heart because it is the first instrument I bought when I decided to create my company. It is a cheap Chord Organ from Lorenzo. It is very noisy when powered on but is so beautiful when used as a pad with lots of reverb.
If you want to support my work, you can also download this library on my website and donate while ordering : https://namiaudio.com
*This pack was updated 09/05/22
Last year, I shared my first piano library here on Pianobook and since then, I learnt a lot about sampling and scripting.
This is why I wanted to update Midnight Upright with the new knowledge I acquired.
To sum up, Midnight Upright is an upright piano I recorded using a pair of Neumann KM184 at ear level for a nice stereo imaging. It has a blanket between the strings and the hammers resulting in a very fragile and felted vibe.
The library also includes a texture layer I created using the piano recordings and mangled them thru some of my gear like the Tascam Portastudio 414 MKII or the Boss KM60 mixer.
On the contrary to the previous version, the Texture now has like the piano 3 dynamics layers. While soft velocities are quite stable, mid velocities have more movement and with a little bit of panning modulation. Finally, high velocities consist of just one sample with a fast decay and even more modulation on the tail part.
An other major update is in the interface as it now share the same one as my previous submission Simple-8. This allows you to get more patches than before but most of all get more experimental!
For those who don’t own Kontakt, I also made a Decent Sampler version as I want to share this with as many of you as possible.
I hope you’ll like it
Alex
Interface
Reviews for Midnight Upright
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Unique library. Not just another felt piano.
The textures included in this library are very inspiring and help draw out fresh ideas. Impressive GUI.
Midnight feels!
This wonderful bundle of an instrument features a very nice combination of two piano sounds in different octaves. Together with some fx and an amazing GUI, the create a fantastical kind of sound that you might fall in love with. The only thing that I would like slightly changed is the attack of the upper piano layer that seems to have a kind of noisy attack formy taste. Other than that, I think that it simply wonderful.
Very unique piano that brings out ideas you wouldn't previously have
This might be my favorite piano library on Pianobook. I hadn't thought of blending samples in this way before, so it really opened me up to that. I find that I can load up this library and feel pretty confident that I'll find ideas that I like. I will say that it may not be for everyone, since it's not exactly just your dry piano sound, but it fits perfectly for me
Masterful Midnight
This is fantastic. It oozes character and the pad is brilliant too. At about 1/4 it sits behind the Piano and adds a nice warmth. The RT and Pedal noises are a bit much for me but are easily adjusted although even with them at 0 there is still something in the background I can't identify but it isn't a big problem. I really like the texture control on the GUI too.
Nice soft piano with a little extra
I really really like the addition of the low octave on this. And it pairs well with the natural character of the piano. My only two issues: 1: I'm not a fan of the scratchy, wirey attack sound. It's on a lot of sample sets – especially soft pianos – so I think some like it, but I find it distracting. Plus in this instrument the attack panned, right for high notes, left for low ones. 2: The GUI is lovely looking but it's not super intuitive, so it takes some time to experiment and figure it out.
