The story
Around eight months I purchased a piano for my home studio, the first piano I ever bought for myself. Although slightly out of tune after we moved apartments in Montreal in the winter (never a great idea), this piano has a very special character. It is very moody, to say the least. Since the moved I have actually not been able to re-tune it, something that has proven tougher during the current situation, but there is something strangely appealing about this sound. Not for everyone, I’m sure though.
As the name suggests, this is the second attempt of me sampling my piano. It is also very simple, with no dynamic layers but with two round robins per note. Also, the modwheel includes a little surprise!
Reviews for Willis & Co 2
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Mellow and soft kind of pad
I really like the sound of this library! Mellow and soft textured synth pad, control and reverb controllable. Nice to have library!
How to make a generic piano interesting!
While the piano itself is not really that dynamic, the little surprise hidden in the modwheel is all that matters! Not only it lets the piano's character shine, but it also gives a nice twist with the perfect way to control it. Since it's indicated as a surprise, I won't spoil it. But it should be indicated as a text somewhere in the lonely wallpaper of the GUI that hosts nothing else. Also I don't like the wallpaper. It needs some color - the creator knows why!
Really nice surprise
This piano itself is pretty bright and definitely has that old bar room sound. It has alot of character because of how old it sounds. I really love how the super duper high notes sound on these kinds of pianos. Personally i like more warm and dark pianos so i probably wouldn't use this much. Also its not very dynamic and theres some pretty loud noise at the start of some samples. What really does it is the mod wheel surprise. Im in love with swarm patches of almost every kind so this wonderful edition i think will be far more useful to me than just the regular solo piano.
An upright with a big surprise
This is a lovely and well sampled upright. There are some wolf tones around D2 which is a common internal resonant frequency for the cabinets of upright pianos. It might have been better to sample it with the front off for that reason, but it can be remedied by turning that sample down and/or implying Soothe 2. It would be fun to know what method or equipment was used to create the swarm delay which appears when using the mod wheel. It almost sounds a little like a Microcosm. regardless, it's a nice surprise and elevates this library above the competition. I like that the timing of the samples is tight, but I was left wishing that the dynamics were a bit more even from note to note. Some work is left to be done balancing them volumes of the various samples within Kontakt. I'd love to hear a 'version three' of this piano which has additional dynamic layers, and a volume control for the release triggers, which are a bit loud for my taste.
