Ada’s Distorted Piano
A baby grand piano processed through effects
ByAda Maskil
The story
Hello, my name is Ada Maskil. I had been excited to sample my childhood baby grand piano since I got an email about the creation of the pianobook website years ago, but I felt like sampling was very difficult and time consuming, (it is). But after I watched some of the helpful videos from Christian, the Spitfire team, and David Hilowitz, I thought it was much more reasonable to do with their help. I have been working as a freelance composer for some years while living in a few different foreign countries, so I didn’t have access to the baby grand piano I grew up playing on. Thanks to a pandemic, I decided to go back home for a while, which gave me the opportunity to use/record my childhood piano which my parents still have.
This instrument, Ada’s Distorted Piano is from a bundle of songs I wrote for game development. I sampled the piano, only AFTER my chain of effects on the piano, but I am hoping to go back and do a true dry sample in the future. I was inspire by Christian’s youtube video showing how he made his “Cool Piano”, and I wanted to build one similar but with my own style. I love the sound that came from the combination of effects. It definitely lends itself to minimalism and horror type genres, but I would be interested to hear something more industrial and electronic with it.
Although having a lot of experience with recording and composing, this is my first time sampling or creating a Kontakt instrument. Any feedback is appreciated.
Reviews
I HAVE to give this a perfect score.
This is a perfect instrument. Don't expect it to be a plain piano that can get a little distorted through some options and effects though. The sampling is amazing and it's very dynamic as well. Its character is amazing and overall the instrument is extremely inspiring to my ears. In addition to that, the illustrated wallpaper is fantastic and matches the feeling perfectly. The knob is assinged to the modwheel and works perfectly in both ways. This is simply amazing.
Lovely Surprise
What a great piano this is. I am not a great piano player by any means, but even I sound good playing this. Music just falls out of it. Ada's piano really rocks. A fantastic first attempt.
NOICE!!!!
What a great sound this is! It has this sense about it that it's not an acoustic instrument, but it also has this sense about it that it is something acoustic. It is beautifully ambiguous. It's really hard to pin down what this sound is, but I know that I love it! My only tiny suggestion for improvement is that the lowest velocity layer is too low. I found it hard to reliably trigger it. I changed the top layer to 110-127, the middle layer to 65-109, and the lowest layer to 1-64 and it plays like a dream! Can't wait to hear more from Ada!