This is NOT a Piano

Demos in Dolby Atmos

Demos in Stereo

In our effort to push the boundaries of acoustic immersion, we decided to run an experiment that resulted in a beautiful library: ‘This is NOT a Piano’.

With the massive amount of Pianos and Sound Design libraries out there, we tried an combine the two concepts, but this time, in a reversed way: What if instead of preparing a Piano and then doing some Sound Design with its sound, we designed some sound, and then played it THROUGH the Piano so as to record its resonance?

‘This is NOT a Piano’ comes packed with details we paid so much attention to, just to deliver the most NOT realistic sounds:

‘Keystroke’ samples in case you want to feel as if you were playing a Piano (although you aren’t).

Pedal Down resonances so that when you press the Sustain Pedal, the sound spreads just like in a real Piano (although it isn’t!)

‘Sustains’ and ‘Pedal-Down’ sustains are completely independent so you can go crazy layering and combining multiple Articulations.

You can also let the Pedal-Down articulation ‘always on’ as we organised our layered engine to suit all the possibilities!

Everything was recorded and mixed both in Ambisonics and Stereo, so you can have so much detail in the sound’s immersion, you’ll experience music to another level.

D’you have any questions? Continue reading below for a detailed concept!

The Sound Design Phase

The first part of our epic journey was to design 20 Articulations that would play through the body of a Piano, but our idea was to EXPERIMENT and experience sounds in original ways, so we focused on creating a wide variety of sounds so as to experience how the Piano’s resonance would behave from corner.

Additionally, because exciting higher frequencies on a Piano can be challenging, the designed sounds with a lot of frequency richness so as to be able to quite cover the whole frequency range of the soundboard.

Finally, we partnered with our friends from ‘Cinematic Alpha’, where they helped us create amazing sounds thanks to their DOVInst technology used for approaching instruments’ sounds created ‘from scratch’

The Recording Phase

Just the way we love it: Difficult!

Next step was about transferring all the created sounds to the Soundboard of the piano to record its behaviour when the sounds made it vibrate.

So we ‘prepared’ our Piano in a very original way: How would it make it sound? Let’s fill it with monitors.

We placed a small monitor on its base (turned towards it), two full sized monitors looking right at the strings and two full-sized monitors pointing right at the wooden body.

Then we filled the piano with speakers, including two Ambisonics, 4x414 and 4xC451B.

But we wanted only the Piano sounding and not the original Sound Design - how?

Well, let’s just say we found a way :)

Finally, we recorded each articulation both with the pedal completely down and with the pedal semi-down (and not up, as it would really cripple the richness of the sound. The results are this amazing experiment!

Ambisonics + Stereo Version

10.400 Samples
104GB Compressed to 39GB

Articulation List

Patches below come in Normal Sustains, Looped and Reversed versions

This is NOT a Piano 1

Keys (Strokes)
Gentle (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Black Light (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Digifelt (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Mechanical (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Darkened (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Pan-o (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Plucky (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Fly (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Strummed (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Octaved (Sustain | Pedal-Down)

This is NOT a Piano 2

Keys (Strokes)
Swarm (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Feather (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Leslie (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Crescendo (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Mooger (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Rhodes (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Crunch (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Density (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Lo-fi (Sustain | Pedal-Down)
Short Synth (Sustain | Pedal-Down)

Presets

Short 1
Short 2
A Weird Choir
Another One Pads the Dust
Arpeggiandro
Crunchy Pad
Dawn Crescen-dos
Dawn Crescendo
Delay Shortness
Kinda Choirs
LoFi Lead
Long Soft and Glitchy
Piano Intimate Keys
Piano Jazzy Solitude
Piano Magic
Piano Soft with Wah
RetroNes
Specks
Stutter Heaven
Stuttermania