My Piano

My Piano is a warm upright piano sample library for Native Instruments' Kontakt designed for cinematic soundtracks, intimate jazz and classical impressionist-like music.

There are special and unique controls for different parts of the piano, for the internal resonances, pedal sound and there's even a knob to put some random noises into the recording. The samples were taken with AudioTechnica AT4060 tube microphones, with NEVE preamps, to ensure the highest quality and warmth. The pedal resonances are handled separately, as well as the overtones and the body resonance of the piano, to allow the user to have a complete control over the piano sound.

The sampling technique we used involves looping at the very end of samples, and sample decaying with scripting. So we managed to reduce the impact on RAM and disk size, without damaging the pure sound and response of the piano. We also implemented a sample masking technique, that simply fades old notes sustained over the same key: this helps to prevent phasing issues common to standard piano libraries and to control the polyphony.

This strict control over polyphony allowed us to implement an emulation of the interaction between keys that is evident on every piano. If a key is held pressed while another one is struck, you'll hear a third pitch that is the result of the interaction of the first two. This is called Sympathetic Resonance and the result is a warmer piano sound, very suited to soundtracks and delicate, intimate piano works.