Retro Keyboards

UVI Retro Keyboards is a collection of the most essential keyboards of all time, now available for all platforms and formats. Truly plug and play.

Seven legendary instruments captured in stunning audiophile detail, with a range of expression that feels like the real thing under your fingers. Three "eras" of a classic tine-based electric piano – a famous electro-acoustic piano; a soulful reed piano; one funky keyboard plus his "little brother".

Each instrument included in Retro Keyboards is organized into "families" of presets to simulate the essential vocabulary of these classic keyboard, including Amp simulator, Tremolo, Vinyl emulation, and much more.

These presets can be designed thanks to the UVI Workstation sound design section, which allows you to add unlimited effects per instruments, from classy convolution reverberation to analog modeled Chorus and Flanger, from a Studio Limiter to high-class EQ... This section also provides Filters and 4 LFOs per instrument.

Classic Electric Pianos

Electric pianos were particularly popular from the early 70's-mid 80's, and many of its signature songs date from this period: The Doors' "Riders on the Storm", "Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel, "Still Crazy After All These Years" by Paul Simon, "Babe" by Styx, "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" by Stevie Wonder, "Peg" by Steely Dan, the intro to "Sheep" by Pink Floyd, "Get Back", by the Beatles (with Billy Preston), plus jazz fusion/crossover classics like "Spain" Chick Corea (Return to Forever), "Watermelon Man" by Herbie Hancock (Headhunters), "A Remark You Made" by Weather Report and "Angela (theme from "Taxi")" by Bob James. They have never gone out of style, however, and are an integral sound in current neo-soul, smooth jazz, and other genres.

Super W (Reed Piano)

This electric piano is usually a 64-note instrument whose keyboard range is from A an octave above the lowest note of a standard 88-note piano to the C an octave below the top note of an 88-note piano. Some classic Reed Piano songs : "Dreamer" by Supertramp,"What'd I Say", by Ray Charles, "No Quarter" by Led Zeppelin, "Mama Told Me Not to Come", by Three Dog Night, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by Cannonball Adderley, "Stay With Me", The Faces….

Electric Grand

This electric-acoustic piano is a particular type of piano manufactured and marketed by a famous japanese manufacturer during the 1970s and 1980s, although experimental instruments of similar type were made as early as the late 1920s. Unlike a digital piano, this one has hammers and strings. What makes an electric grand unique is its means of amplification, which is done via pickups under the strings (like an electric guitar). Some famous artists who used it: Phil Collins, Tony Banks/Genesis, Jeff Lorber Fusion, Hall and Oates, Journey, Howard Jones….

Funky Clav

This instrument is essentially an electronically amplified clavichord, analogous to an electric guitar but is better understood as an electric harpsichord. The archetypal clavinet sound can be heard on Stevie Wonder's track "Superstition", Led Zeppelin's "Trampled Under Foot", Sun Ra's "Atlantis", The Commodores' "Machine Gun", Billy Preston's "Outa-Space", Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tank" from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" and Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne". The track "Up on Cripple Creek" by The Band, is the first recorded example of patching a Clavinet through a guitar wah-wah pedal. A Clavinet was also used in Tori Amos' track "Not David Bowie", which appeared on her anthology "A Piano: The Collection" and in Soundgarden's "Fresh Tendrils" from Superunknown.

Planet H

Those were a series of electric pianos built in Trossingen, West Germany from the 1950s to the 1970s. The early models of this Electric Piano were used on a number of hit recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, including « She's Not There » by The Zombies, « Louie, Louie » by The Kingsmen, « I Am The Walrus » by The Beatles, and « Joy to the World » by Three Dog Night. This instrument is enjoying a renaissance due to the popularity of retro sounds and the availability of new pads for the earlier models, most of which had been reduced to unplayability due to pad decay.