Seeking a Kontakt Piano that includes the sounds of the piano hammers and keys

[UltimateOutsider]

I am looking for a Kontakt piano instrument that includes a lot of extra piano noise (for example, the sounds of the springs and hammers inside the piano, or even the sounds of the keys being depressed). I remember a Kontakt-based piano that included these sounds, and I could have sworn it was a Native Instruments library included with Komplete, but I have not managed to find it yet. Is this ringing bells with anyone here?

At first I thought it might have been Una Corda or The Giant (regular or cinematic), but after checking both of those out again, I don't think they're what I'm remembering.

In 2014 I did an audio review of all of NI's pianos as of that time for my blog, and I don't hear the sounds I'm looking for in any of those examples- but for those clips I was using the default preset for each piano, so those extra sounds might have been in a preset, or a control that was turned down in the default settings.

Does anyone know of a Kontakt piano instrument that lets you mix in the hammer and/or key sounds of the piano? (Even 3rd party is fine if it does what I'm looking for.)

[UltimateOutsider]

Turns out Una Corda was in fact the NI piano I was thinking of. I had missed the "Workbench" tab where those options reside. Unfortunately for me I don't care for that piano's sound too much. I will see if I can make it work in my current project. If not, I discovered two third-party options that seem to have similar features (and sound pretty good, judging by demos):

Echo Soundworks Loft Piano: https://www.echosoundworks.com/loft-piano

Fracture Sounds Woodchester Piano: https://fracturesounds.com/product/woodchester-piano/

[mixyguy2]

Check out Piano One (free): https://plugins4free.com/plugin/1100/

(Edit: sorry, not a Kontakt instrument, but I can't imagine why that would matter)

[planetearth]

Turns out Una Corda was in fact the NI piano I was thinking of. I had missed the "Workbench" tab where those options reside. Unfortunately for me I don't care for that piano's sound too much. I will see if I can make it work in my current project. If not, I discovered two third-party options that seem to have similar features (and sound pretty good, judging by demos):

Echo Soundworks Loft Piano: https://www.echosoundworks.com/loft-piano

Fracture Sounds Woodchester Piano: https://fracturesounds.com/product/woodchester-piano/

I'm hard-pressed to think of a Kontakt piano released in the last 10 years that doesn't also offer the sounds of the hammers, keys, pedal, and in some cases, even sounds a pianist might make. Alicia's Keys, Noire, The Gentleman, The Giant, The Grandeur, The Maverick, and (as you know), Una Corda all offer these sounds, or more.

Some of these are virtually hidden within a fly-out menu whose activation arrow you might not see, but they're all there. For example, in Alicia's Keys, look under the Settings tab, then the Noise tab. In any of the "The" pianos (Gentleman, Giant, etc.), look at the fly-out arrow in the Anatomy box.

I'm a pretty big fan of NI's pianos, and some of these sounds are among the first settings I tweak when I'm trying to create an "intimate" piano sound.

UVI's MD Romantic (a fairly standard Steinway Model D) mostly just offers release volume and pedal sounds, Addictive Keys' piano (another Steinway Model D) offers pedal sound, and Arturia's Piano V3 offers almost as much as NI's pianos.(I know you were only asking about NI's offerings for Kontakt; I've included these for anyone else curious about which pianos offer these sounds. I don't have Pianoteq, but I know it also offers a few noises to make the piano seem more realistic.)

Steve

[UltimateOutsider]

I'm hard-pressed to think of a Kontakt piano released in the last 10 years that doesn't also offer the sounds of the hammers, keys, pedal, and in some cases, even sounds a pianist might make. Alicia's Keys, Noire, The Gentleman, The Giant, The Grandeur, The Maverick, and (as you know), Una Corda all offer these sounds, or more.

This is probably only the third time I've needed an acoustic piano sound for a track, so I will admit I hadn't dug too deep into these libaries. You are right that most of the newer ones do offer these kinds of features. After looking at a few of the post-komplete-8 pianos again, there's a variety of different mic and mix options, mostly in panels you have to open up to activate.

Una Corda still turned out to have the right kinds of sounds/features I was looking for with this project, but I will keep these options in the other NI pianos in mind for future tracks. I am trying to keep the GAS under control, after all.