The story
The Rose Piano is a Waldstein upright that sat in a stairwell between the main Theatre and the Cafe at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance where I used to study. I always enjoyed that the piano was positioned there as it gave the performance students somewhere a little different to practice rather than one of the many practice rooms available and it was always nice to listen to someone practise while you ate lunch.
One of the more quieter evenings before the end of my last term I decided to stay late on campus and capture its sound. I brought it into the theatre next door, and managed to scavenge a Zoom H6 and a couple of Rode NT4s from the audio cupboard.
The Rose Theatre is a circular, two storey, 350 seat theatre in the round with a domed roof which I hoped would really make the piano sing, even though I was mainly using a Close Mic Technique. It is the main theatre on Campus and a lovely setting for any performance.
Being a piano that spent its life being carted around a university campus it has definitely seen better days, there are some visually bad scrapes and after years of having students play it ( or bash it in some cases) several of the keys and hammer mechanisms are uneven or in need of replacing.
To top it all off it is also in need of a good tune but I personally think it sounds rather lovely and characterful, and playing it definitely takes me back to my Uni Days.
Please Enjoy
Adam
Reviews for The Rose Piano
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Sentimental piano
This piano is so emotional! It is sentimental, wistful, and seems to have wound the regrets of a thousand college students into one sample library. There's some warm and fuzzy distortion on the attacks which brings to mind the results of tube based distortion. On the downside, there is some pretty significant variance between the different sample zones, which in my experience reduced the playability. However, this is still a really well executed library with a lot going for it.
Soft and Sweet
This is one of those pianos i really like the tone of. Being more into felt pianos because of how mellow they are, i really appreciate pianos like this that are bright but still mellow and characterful. The attack on some of the notes is pretty sharp and different notes seem to have different velocity programming than others. Im also left wishing it was a more dynamic piano in general. There are probably alot of pianos i would choose on pianobook before this one but i think theres alot of potential with this sound because its really emotional but not too soft
The romantic
This piano sounds absolutely lovely, with a warm and kind of romantic character, while also having a defined attack. In fact, the attack is so defined that you can hear a small click right in front in some keys, and that seems to happen in the left channel only. Despite that, it plays very well and it's really responsive. The quality is good, though you might manage to hear some slight background noises if you are into sustaining notes for long. The piano also seems to be shifted one octave lower, so the middle C sounds higher than your normal piano. I guess with a slight touch-up, this will be absolutely gorgeous!
