St. Helen’s Steinway Pad

Popping in one day last week to my deserted, locked-down school to pick up a few things from my office, I put my head around the door to our main school hall, and there, in the middle of the stage, in near darkness, stood our beautiful Steinway concert grand, unloved, and unplayed for months. I thought it might be fitting to try to create a thing of beauty from such a sad sight.

St. Helen’s Steinway Pad was made by recording middle c and the octaves above and below it in a random sequence with the only recorder I had on hand – an Olympus LS-5 digital dictaphone. I then fed the whole 72 second recording through Valhalla’s Supermassive plugin and Arturia’s tape delay and captured the 100% wet output.

The resulting instrument, with a super-slow attack and release, undulates and evolves due to the octaves in the original recording, and provides a dreamy, airy texture, a promise of when the hall will once again soon be filled with music and joy.