The story
This Yamaha C3 arrived almost 10 years ago to the day, on a cold misty winters morning.
At the age of 8 I didn’t think much of it, other than it was ‘quite cool’, but growing up I began to realise what a beautiful instrument it is.
The problem is that it lives in a converted garage; a small concrete box with a low ceiling. This combined with Yamaha’s signature bright tone creates something that sounds a bit ‘meh’ at the best of times, but recording always seems to bring out the very worst.
Throughout 2020 I’ve been experimenting with various microphones and positions, varying degrees of acoustic treatment, but nothing seemed to work. Microphones inside the piano picked up too much bite, and mics in the room that of a small concrete box.
I was about to give up hope when a friend asked if I had tried using a pair of small-diaphragm condensers in the piano holes. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better. I packed the piano with towels and foam to try and deaden it more, and bring out it’s mellower qualities. Pairing this technique with a microphone under the piano for added warmth (and phase-y nightmares); finally I had a sound that I was happy with.
This sample library is all about the warmth that this piano has and just can’t give you in this room. That said, if you’re after the signature bright Yamaha sound, hit the keyboard really hard, and that’s what you’ll get! It’s got bags of character, and paired with my non-pianistic playing and it’s dodgy Eb4 string I hope that you enjoy it too.
I believe that these samples should be available to everyone, for free, and that’s why this is my first adventure into the Decent Sampler platform.
Reviews for Yamaha C3
- Sound
- Character
- Playability
- Inspiration
- GUI
Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!
Very quiet, but high quality!
This has to be one of the most lovely pianos I've head on Pianobook. The quality is excellent, yet is so quiet, to the point that it's very hard to reach the top velocities. I love it though! Sometimes, playing lots of full chords might give it some hickups, but it's not something that will ruin the experience. I enoucrage you to try it out, just pump up the volume a little bit!
Bright and soft with a beautiful low end
Thought my sound was muted for a second, but the volume just needed to be cranked up and the Notes knob turned all the way up too. This piano has a very nice sound, very pleasant and bright. I think the recording is good, but the velocity may be a bit on the soft end. I don't mind the soft velocity since all the keys are equally soft, but you have to planning to use that quiet sound. Personally, I don't usually like really bright sounding pianos, but as a result, the mid and low end have a really nice tone.
Pretty beautiful sound with some velocity issues
As mentioned by others the velocity programming could be better. You have to hit the keys really hard to access the highest dynamic layer. I usually play more soft passages so i don't know if this will be as much an issue for me. I also tend not to go for these bright pianos but i still think this is gonna be a handy one to have around. The tone is pretty nice and balanced and the high end is clear and shimmery. It also opens up very quiet but this isn't an issue for playability. With some minor tweaks this could be really fantastic.
Makings of a great piano...
All of the samples sound well recorded and processed, but the velocity track for the instrument is a little off, presumably because the samples weren't gain corrected before exporting. It takes a good strong hit on the keys to reach that top velocity layer; much more than what it should. Fix that one issue and you'd have a great library true to the instrument from which it was sampled. Great work!
On the cusp of greatness
This library is so close to being great. The sound is excellent. It was recorded really softly, but that's not the end of the world. There's not much noise, and it's a beautiful sounding instrument. My gripe is in the dynamic response. It's quite muted sounding, and then when you dig in, it suddenly gets really really loud. I know nothing about editing sounds in Decent Sampler. If this was a Kontakt library, it would be easy enough to go in there and select the zone for the highest dynamic layer and then turn down the volume 10dB or so, but that's not something I know how to do in Decent Sampler. I will also add that this library lacks that deep bass sound you might be looking for in a piano. There's also something off about E1. All of that aside, I think this is a great first attempt at sampling a piano, and I really hope that this samplist takes another crack at this instrument at some point in the future, because it feels like it really has potential to be an amazing sample library!
