Tonehammer Old Busted Granny Piano KONTAKT DVDR-DYNAMiCS
2012 | DYNAMICS | KONTAKT | 250 MB
The Old Busted Granny Piano is pretty special to us, though it doesn't sound all that fancy. Actually, it sounds pretty damn rough around the edges, but that’s just the way we like her. Sure, there are plenty of other great upright piano libraries out there, with their shining lacquer and pristine strings, but none of them ever captured the authentic beauty of a cheap, dusty, beat up, rusting, long untuned upright piano. This is the kind of old heap your grandma had in her living room. This particular instrument has been in Soundiron co-founder Chris Marshall’s family for many years, before being passed on from one new home to the next. This was also one of the very first instruments Mike Peaslee deep-sampled. We don't know the brand or model off hand, but she looked to be about 60 or 70 years old and quite beat up the last time we saw her.
Her tone is watery and faded. There are a number of broken and dissonant strings, especially in the upper register. The wood is pitted, faded and banged up and the ivory is missing from a number of keys. Every key lands with a loud, wobbly, wooden thud and and lifted with a hollow rattle as soon as you lift your finger again. Sometimes, she seems creak and groan in the middle of the night, for no reason at all really. Clearly, the years have not been kind to her looks or her voice, but the soul of this old upright piano truly has aged like a fine moonshine.
We captured 3-4 velocity layers on all keys, with added round-robin variation on the two middle octaves in the mf range.There are actually two independent release trigger samples for every note to better replicate the natural behavior of the instrument as we recorded it. Each note has separate string release samples and key release samples.The “key” release trigger is the soft, distant sounding mechanical wooden “thud” that naturally occurs whenever any key is lifted, even after the resonance has faded. The piano was so old and rickety that you'd have to very slowly releases the sustain pedal or all of the hammers come crashing back down on the strings and occasionally even get stuck there if you lifted your foot too quickly.
Originally recorded in 2006 and released by Tonehammer in 2008, this library has become a classic, finding its way into an endless roster of soundtracks, trailers, commercials and records. For this brand new 2.1 version of our Granny Piano, we’ve tweaked the mapping and layering to make it feel more responsive and natural, combined the “Tuned” and “Untuned” versions into a single preset with an easy Tuning mode switch and implemented our proprietary voice management technology to minimize noise-?oor build-up while maintaining performance. We’ve also incorporated a full range of user controls to allow total sonic shaping. and ?ne control over every detail of the sound. The brand new Geriatrocities atmospheric sustains presets include 12 custom ambiencies that can be blended and shaped freely.