The story
The English Felt – by Tim Didgiunaitis
Following on from last years English Classic. I have great pleasure in introducing the English Felt. Same piano, different recording technique. After watching Christians felt piano experiments I thought it only fair to have a go myself. I cut three pieces of felt to the sizes that I needed due to the design of the piano and stuck the felt to the inner workings of the piano with blu tak. (high tech)
I recorded the piano with two Rode M5 small diaphragm Condenser microphones going in to the Tascam Model 24 hybrid analog mixer/audio interface with just a touch of the analog compression. This in turn fed in to logic and Christians recording template.
There is just a slight bit of room on the instrument and a low cut filter. Nothing more.
I really enjoyed recording the piano again and hope you find it useful. Needs the full version of Kontakt 5.8.1.
Reviews for The English Felt
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Very inspirational
Listening to the demos opened several doors immediately! Rich, rich sounds... .Textures and depths abound in this one.
Perfect for current and upcoming projects.Beautiful tone but really noisy
i really like the gentle cinematic tone of this. Its very soft but i really dont mind this, you just cant use it for every situation but its still very useful to me. There are no round robins which i dont necessarily mind but its always nice to have some for more realism. The main problem here is that its really noisy. This can sometimes me ok but the problem is it takes up unnecessary frequencies and when it comes time to mix and master the noise is just gonna get brighter and louder. I would love to see an updated version of this because i really do love the tone.
Not for me
I kind of understand the idea, I guess. A few tweakable parameters could'nt hurt. Not bad! I was just looking for something else to complete my already existing piano libraries.
If you wonder how the English felt...
This is a nice idea, but the execution isn't quite there. This instrument was recorded really really softly. As a result, I noise floor is pretty high here. The notes are in tune and lovely, but the samples are all on the short side, so they're not going to sustain for a long time. There are also no round robins. The release triggers are really loud, and while you can turn them down in Kontakt, it's easier if there's a knob in the GUI. I'm not completely sure why everyone seem to preset their release triggers really really loud. Yes, it's nice to have a little for realism, but it seems to be front and center like the star of the show in so many libraries. So, this is a good attempt, but there is some room for improvement. I feel like I learn something from each library I create, and that's been part of my growth as a samplist, though.
So quiet I can barely hear it
This piano is very bass heavy so my guess is that you will either hate it or love it. It has quite a few issues that might be hard to deal with though. The lower range - before the middle C - is louder, and after the middle C begins to be VERY quiet instead. The two dynamic layers are always nice but they don't solve the issue. There are also some clicks to be heard every now and then if you try to play with the sustain pedal, and if you do, then noise gets built up relatively quickly.
It definitely need some work to be but it's a good start nonetheless.
