This instrument occupies a sweet spot between perfectly unbelievable and purposefully flawed.
It’s what you would get if you had a friend with a fine instrument in a moderately well treated living room and some decent mics. For me that’s the sweet spot because it’s honest and compelling without trying to be perfect.
Hear it
Apologies for the playing — I'm just noodling around to show the range and dynamics of the instrument. No effects. I wasn't intending to share this one; I didn't want to try and create a showpiece, so I grabbed the last thing I played while testing it and called it a demo.
Free one-day unlock in the plugin. Beat Kitchen residents are authorized for the length of their residency.
story-time…
About 20 years ago, I spent a couple weeks making samples of my 1926 Mason & Hamlin AA grand piano. It’s a special instrument and it’s recorded more virtuosic hands than I can count.
I never intended to release it as a commercial product. It was more of a convenience so I could do small edits and overdubs when I was away from the instrument. A hard drive failure interrupted the project and I never picked it back up.
Fast forward
I’ve been recovering data off of old hard drives recently, and I was able to re-create an almost fully playable instrument using reconstructed EXS instruments in the Logic sampler.
These recordings were made early in my career and have some flaws that make them kind of interesting. There are some tuning anomalies and mechanical noise from things like the microphone stand. I corrected some phase problems and was able to swap out some of the most offensive notes using neighbors.
the result?
I’ll let you decide. Most piano sample libraries sit somewhere between sterile, perfect instruments that lack realistic warmth or character versus purposefully flawed instruments made to sound old or out of tune. This one sits somewhere in the middle, skewing toward the nice side. I think I might take this one over a lot of the alternatives I’ve heard.
There are a few problem areas such as the forte and fortissimo layers which still jump out too quickly. One of the casualties of the hard drive crash was the una corda and sustain pedal layers. I did have the presence of mind to record a massive impulse response inside the piano and I’ve used that to trigger a resonant layer when the pedal is down, which is probably the right way to do it anyhow.
Originally I would’ve seen these as liabilities, but in today’s landscape of airbrushed virtual instruments — or caricatures of real ones — I’m finding these imperfections make it sound warm and friendly. A warm and friendly piano is a feature and not a bug, and it’s a rare thing to find these days. I’ve grown to like this one quite a bit, and so I’m sharing it, and hope you do too.
Get it
Download
Always the current version. Release notes →
Always the current version. Release notes →
Windows: two warnings you can ignore. I have not invested in a Windows signing certificate, so your browser will say the file “isn’t commonly downloaded” — click Keep. Then Windows may say “Windows protected your PC” — click More info, then Run anyway. Nothing is wrong with the file.
Unlocking it
Install it, open it in your DAW, and type your email address — or your Discord name, if you are in the Beat Kitchen Discord. A six-digit code comes back. Enter it and the piano unlocks.
The code expires after ten minutes.
A free one-day unlock is available in the plugin.
Beat Kitchen residents are authorized immediately — the same six-digit code, but it keeps the piano for the length of their residency.
Residents get it. Beat Kitchen School residents get Beat Kitchen Grand for the duration of their residency, along with every other plugin we make.
More from Beat Kitchen
The piano is one of several instruments we build and give to residents. See the rest in Tools, or start with the BKS Harmony Wheel and the BKS Harmonic Synthesizer.
