The story
Welcome to The King’s Upright, a soft upright piano that cuts through a mix while maintaining a gentle tone palette.
It particularly thrives in the upper mid-range, serving well to deliver lyrical melodies to your pieces, solo or cinematic. There is also a pad layer included, which works well as an infinite sustain pedal. This blend can be adjusted using the Mod Wheel.
This instrument was recorded through a stereo pair of close-miked AKG C214s and Saffire Pro 40 interface, using Christian Henson’s medium-strength sampling template. The library has two dynamic layers (layer 1 and 2) and three round robins (RR1, RR2 etc). There are also some release triggers (RT) and pedal sounds (PU – pedal up, PD – pedal down). The custom pad sound blend can be adjusted using the mod wheel or you can right-click the blend knob to learn via whichever MIDI CC you like.
To learn more about the library, watch my walkthrough here:
Reviews for The King’s Upright
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Incredible Piano Sound
With hundreds and hundreds of pianos to choose from, it's hard now to rank high in the Pianobook "piano" charts. However, "The King's Upright" deserved to be up there. Dan has sampled the intricacies of a beautiful piano. In fact, my demo for this is the basis for an EP I'm working on with 2 incredible singers. So...there's that. LOL. Enjoy!
Great scoring tool
This is surprisingly warm, soft, and great for my trailer scores. Great work, Dan!
Warm piano
I love the sound of this warm piano. I m beggining in music and i m trying lofi piano, this sound so good.
My Fave Piano On Pianobook!
...and why do I say this. Well for me it embodies the spirit of pianobook. To be able to play Dan, playing this piano, in this space at this time. It is an immersive sonic photograph. The piano will only sound like this on this day. The number of times it has been played, who has played it, who hasn't, all the way back to it coming out of the factory and what the weather was like that day. What Dan has done is allow us to experience that. The recording is impeccable, and it is about as close as you'll get to being in the room, listening to Dan play on that piano, day and time. Congrats Dan, a classic. Vintage piano but not pub! Great if you want a natural "real" piano as you would find it in someone's house not a concert hall.
A pad saves the day
This is not your everyday piano. At first it may look like one, but it's not. Because PADS! This is a fantastic idea that actually saves the day. This piano has a very strong and definite character, and the pad addition makes it even better. It surprises me that there are no other well-known instruments like this, because the combination is indeed magical.
The pad also saves the day because there is some noise in the samples, which becames very prominent when playing chords or when holding notes with a sustain pedal. The pad will mostly cover the noise though, but it still sounds a bit empty when you let the pedal go at the wrong moment.
I also got to say, I absolutely love the wallpaper.
