The story
A hand muted upright piano recorded with a stereo pair of AKG C214 into a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8.
*Updated 08/03/22 – The original hand muted piano of pianobook returns with cleaned samples, crackles removed, a brand new user interface and a patch re-scripted from the ground up.
Almost 3 years have passed since I uploaded the BL Palm Muted Upright to pianobook, and about a month ago I decided it was time to buckle down and go over all the user reviews, fix all of the issues, and make a definitive version of this library to let it shine like I think it deserves. I want to give a special thanks to Conner and Sam Ecoff for beta testing and giving great feedback in the process.
Compatible with:
Full Kontakt 6.5.3 upwards
Ableton Suite 10.1 upward
Interface
Reviews for Palm Muted Upright
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
What Inspiration
As my tastes in expression go - I think this is one Amazing sample patch. I love the tones of the instrument as you have them set out of the box, and I prefer the second patch (not the noise reduced one). It's soft, expressive, evocative ... I honestly can't think of anything that I'd recommend changing.
It's a simple and straightforward interface, and that to me is part of the beauty of this. The tones are muted wonderfully, and at times I can hear the harmonics of a nylon string guitar and a harp in combination with the piano sound. I imagine that a composition with these is going to be fantastic.
Please keep up the great work. I love this patch, among my favorite of all the downloads
Lovely sound
Great playability. Love to play on it when I'm bored. So good for writing crazy little Ditties. The high notes are really hitting the sweet spot for me
A nice felted plucked texture
I am quite the fan of piano libraries and have downloaded a majority of the ones available here on pianobook. This particular library has a very nice texture and tone that evokes a certain emotion that many other recordings don't quite capture. To my ears it's a mix between a felted piano and muted harp. I think it's a winner to add to your canvas of sounds and recommend the download!
Thanks for taking the time to record this.
Kudos
B.A really unusual Piano sound!
Review is for the Decent Sampler version. (After 08/03/22 update, but DS version may not have been updated. Having said that, I didn't notice any noise, but my earphones aren't very good!)
This has an intriguing, almost guitar-like sound to my ear, as if the muting emphasises the percussive qualities of the piano. It's quite beguiling!
It seems to have been sampled fairly thoroughly, with velocity layers for piano, mezzo-forte, mezzo-forte pedal (sort of mezzo-piano maybe? I'm not sure! It might be set up differently in the other sampler formats?) and forte. And of course there are releases triggers.
In Decent Sampler there isn't much GUI to speak of, just a reverb knob front and centre. I'd have liked to see a few more options, as appear to be available in the Kontact/Ableton versions, but I understand that implementing some things is as yet difficult if not impossible in DS.
All in all a very cool instrument, that does one thing really well!
Very inspiring sound
I like this sound a lot, it reminds me of a very sherlocky-piano. The muted sound is very well done and balanced and its a joy playing around with this.
I would have perhaps added some more knobs and tools to play around with it more.
