REQ: Sonuscore Chroma Grand Piano Kontakt
In a market that’s saturated with virtual pianos, it takes a lot to stand out from them all. When designing a flagship set of keys, it’s necessary to take a great leap beyond. At its heart, CHROMA is indeed a top-quality virtual piano instrument, sampled from the Yamaha C3 grand piano. But in its depth, it is a sound designer’s playground, a truly outstanding tool for both piano and cinematic experimentation.
Not only did we want a high-quality piano, we also wanted something more. We wanted CHROMA to be a premium cinematic tool, a complete exploration of all the dynamic qualities and sound colors that a piano could offer that could be applied to new and interesting sound profiles. Using the knowledge we gained from our diverse product palette and pushing the limitations of a virtual piano instrument even further, CHROMA was born.
CHROMA as a piano
CHROMA faithfully recreates the Yamaha C3 grand piano. Using a Neumann km 140 and Gefell UMT 70 S microphones, we were able to ensure the highest quality recordings and allow for a variety of microphone positions in playback as well, including A/B, X/Y, ORTF and submic.
We then applied a bit of algorithmic magic. Creating a customizable velocity curve, we made it so you can match the dynamic response of any piano keyboard. Along with adjusting the reverb and other onboard effects, this allows you to mimic the sound of many types of pianos, not just the Yamaha C3.
An exploration of the piano
The piano is already a complex instrument. The finger hits the key, the key triggers a hammer, the hammer strikes the string, and the string sounds the note. There is nothing that says this is the only way a piano should be played though—except maybe the piano manufacturer who is probably grimacing upon reading this.
Donning gloves and acting with surgical precision, we took every care not to damage the piano. But we did do everything we could to coax out the full sonic experience it could offer.
We went for the strings directly. We applied our own mallets, e-bows, palm mutes, and metal paperclips. With CHROMA, all these sounds can be layered together, adjusted and combined, not only creating truly unique sounds, but also allowing further modeling and creation of new, inspiring sounds. Adjust some options in the right way and it gives you the feel of a jazz upright, tweak some other knobs and suddenly it resembles a rain emulation machine.
Beyond the piano
This is where CHROMA shines even more. With its unique core engine that borrows from the Time Textures particle manipulation idea, it’s able to bend and warp the shapes in inspiring new ways. The core engine has up to 54 round robins per sound, which creates an organic sound by using variations in pitch, velocity and mic positioning. The tempo can be synced the DAW or set to free.
The result is an entirely new spectrum of sound.