Soundiron releases "The Drinking Piano" - Vintage Acoustic Upright Piano Library for Kontakt

Soundiron has released The Drinking Piano, a new upright piano library for Kontakt that features an old time beer hall sound, evoking classic saloon, ragtime, honkey tonk and silent film music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Captured with a historic solid mahogany Ivors & Pond over-sized upright, it has the well-worn sound of a hundred-year-old instrument that has been played hard. Each key has a uniquely aged character rickety key action, with unreliable dampers, loose hammer mechanisms, worn felts and plenty of dust. It was recorded with large-diaphragm mics on the strings in a small hall to capture the presence of a close, dry studio recording with just a hint of live ambiance in the tail. The piano has been sampled with an average of 9 velocities per note and 12 velocities per release, with a full selection of dynamic action, pedal, bench and hardware sfx. It even features a special muted bass string finger-pluck instrument as well.

The Drinking Piano library is 5.25 GB and features 25 Kontakt presets, 1778 samples and 50+ custom convolution impulses built in to the GUI. It includes full-sized and Lite master presets, along with 16 special FX patches. There's also a 500MB collection of ambiences, atmospheres and tonal drone pads created using the raw piano source, with dual-layer selection, cross-blending and polyphonic legato controls.

All presets feature full performance and sound-shaping controls. The main interface also includes Micro-tuning and stereo-imaging, as well as release time/volume settings with extended note decay. The special Sober/Drunk switch automatically tightens and loosens mechanical hammer strike behavior. The Tuned/Untuned switch corrects the tuning of the entire piano. Most presets also include the Uberpeggiator arp system, tremolo and resonant filter LFOs with optional tempo-syncing, selectable room/FX reverbs and parametric EQ.

Content Summary:

• 1778 Samples (stereo wav).
• 22 Kontakt .nki preset files (unlocked open format).
• 3 bonus K5-only preset files (unlocked open format).
• 5.25 GB installed.
• 24-bit / 48kHz stereo.
• Available by Continuata Direct Download and DVD.
• Format(s): Kontakt 4.2.4 (or later) and PCM .wav.

Please note: This library requires the full version of Kontakt 4.2.4 or later. The library also features a few special K5-only presets that allow Uberpeggiator pattern saving/loading - a K5-only feature. This is an open-format library, so the free Kontakt Player does not support this product. However, the sample contents are included as stereo wav files that can be imported into most audio software.

Price: $79.

Listen to audio demos on SoundCloud