The Songwriter's Piano

What happens when you sample the piano in your living room with the same care and deliberation as a Steinway in a concert hall?

Purists beware.

Some unknown time has elapsed since this piano was last tuned and one of its mic positions is a cell phone's voice memo app.

But nothing here was done cheaply. No corners cut.
$70.00 $85.00

THE SONGWRITER'S PIANO

The main patch - a piano carefully sampled twice:

-once without modification and

-once with a blanket draped between the hammers like felt

THE SONGWRITER'S DREAMS

The second patch - a reach to the beyond:

-Aleatoric, performed articulations and

-processed articulations transmuted into motion and texture

PIANO DEMOS

Lighter and Lighter
The Songwriter's Piano Only

IN THE QUIET

RACE WITH A RAINCLOUD

ROUGH IDEA #3

dreams demos

SUDDEN IN A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT
Songwriter's Piano and Songwriter's Dreams Only

Lunar pools
Songwriter's Dreams Only

THE UPRUSH (JOY OF MIGHTY BIRDS)

the signals

How about the demands of a Rachmaninoff concerto?

This library and its mic signals were built with songwriters in mind, but how do these loose and messy vibes hold up to extremely dynamic playing?

CLOSE-ISH

Close enough to be detailed. Far enough to get the room involved.

FLOORBOARDS

A pair of mics set up in the basement directly beneath the piano.

PHONE

A contentious little tool. The sound of capturing a new idea before it's gone like a dream.

THERE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THIS PIANO

That's what makes this library special.

Very often, the way we play, record, and spend time with an instrument is far more important than the thing itself.

So, this is a love-letter to the dumpy little pianos that overhear the puttering of daily life, conversations meant for precious few, and the birth of a thousand new song ideas.

I've taken great care to find ways to put that feeling into a virtual instrument.

Watch the full Songwriter's Piano walkthrough.

THE MAIN INTERFACE

THE "DREAMS" INTERFACE

MAIN INSTRUMENT FEATURES

Controls

  • Keys - control the volume of the hammer assembly and damper levers
  • Pedal - control the volume of the sustain pedal mechanism
  • Release Trigger - control the volume of note releases
  • Dynamic Range - increase or decrease the piano's change in volume in relation to MIDI velocity.
  • Beef - dial in the piano's low and low mid presence
  • Bite - boost or tame the high end of the piano
  • String Resonance - increase the liveliness of the piano soundboard's sympathetic vibrations
  • Roominess - add additional room reflections to the piano's overall sound

Standard and Blanketed Controls

  • Standard - the piano recorded normally
  • Blanketed - the piano recorded with a blanket between the hammers and strings (like a muffler/felt rail)

Click the linking button between these switches to enable a slider to blend seamlessly between the two sets of samples.

Signals

  • Close-ish
  • Floorboards
  • Phone

DREAMS FEATURES

Blend Slider

Mix between the sounds selected via the drop-down menus.

Articulation Menu (Sun)

  • 6 performed articulations including random pointillistic playing in arts like Droplets and unique kinetic playing in arts like Reckless Cascades

Articulation Menu (Moon)

  • 7 tangible, naturalistic textures ranging from atmospheric to sporadic. Created solely from the original piano recordings

Controls

  • Low/High Cut - adjust the cutoff frequency of Low Cut and High Cut filters
  • Attack/Release - adjust attack and release envelopes

Signals

  • Close-ish
  • Piano Speaker (recordings physically "re-amped" through a piano's soundboard)

SPECS AND REQUIREMENTS

Kontakt

  • Kontakt Player (the free version of Kontakt) | Version 8.9.0

Size

  • 20 GB of storage

System

  • macOS 14, and 15 (latest update)
  • Windows 10 or 11 (latest Service Pack)
  • Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU, or Apple Silicon, 4 GB RAM (6 GB recommended)
  • Graphics hardware support for Direct 3D 11.1 (Feature Level 11_0) or higher
  • 20 GB free disk space
  • Supports ASIO, Core Audio, and WASAPI

MADE FOR THE FREE KONTAKT PLAYER