The story

10 years ago, I used my children’s budding interest in learning piano as an excuse to buy a new Yamaha C2 Grand that I had secretly wanted for a long time. We’ve all made a lot of great music on that piano. However, now my kids are grown up, moved out and we’re thinking of downsizing and I wanted to sample this piano in case we decide it can’t move with us. These sample instruments are my first try at capturing the Yamaha’s sound.

This was the first time I’ve ever setup microphones or tried to record on anything other than my phone. I used a pair of AKG C414 XL microphones in cardoid configuration about 6 inches above the strings. This went into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and directly into Logic Pro. I did 4 takes with the MVP template and tried to use my ears to pick the best samples for the final instruments. No further processing was done (other than noise reduction in RX8). Using all the great videos provided by the community, I was able to create pretty basic Sampler, Kontakt and Decent Sampler instruments.

However, the seed is now planted and using everything I learned, I’m already planning a deeper sampled version with perhaps more microphone positions and several patches with effects. Thank you for all the community support in exploring this wonderful experiment.

Reviews for Yamaha C2 MVP

  • Sound
  • Character
  • Playability
  • Inspiration
  • GUI

Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!

  • Hermosísimo piano!!!

    Increíblemente inspirador piano, muy superior a los pianos nativos de Logic Pro X, muchas muchas gracias!!!

    lecafard17 October 2021
  • Amazing Piano

    This one perfectly suited what I needed for an "authentic" piano sound on a digital keyboard, only complaint is that there should be more velocity layers in Logic sampler.

    qwertyu14 December 2023
  • A more jazzy piano maybe?

    Being used to mostly modern or just classical influences, this piano sounds more like something a Jazz player would like. It doesn't have this sweet magical tone to it - it's more rough, but also quite versatile too. Not that I don't like it! Actually, the sampling job is stunning, as this is one of the very few pianos I've seen that have absolutely no signs of white noise. On top of that, it's one of the most dynamic ones as well! It plays really well, and I'm pretty sure you will like it.

    In terms of customization, there's only one knob that lets you turn down the Release Triggers, but they are kind of soft anyway, so they don't really get in your way at all. I noticed though that the sustain pedal holds all the release samples and unleash them all at once, resulting in a big clunky noise - so if you want to play with the sustain pedal, I recommend turning off the triggers!

    Alex Raptakis01 December 2021
  • Sounds Great!

    I really liked the sound of this, sounds really authentic and is great to play!

    James Statham14 October 2021
  • Crisp sound

    Needed a piano that would cut through and this one fitted the bill superbly. Minimal artefacts allows this piano to sit snuggly in a mix and a wash of reverb brings out some subtle character.

    Ricky14 February 2022
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