Brilliant Black and Whites

If you were to tour the world's top recording studios, you'd probably notice more and more Yamaha Concert Grands showing up in the corners of these exquisite rooms. Unlike a lot of European and American concert grands, Yamaha pianos have become the choice of many studios and musicians because of their clarity and low-to-high consistency when going to tape. They also record with a distinctively broad stereo image that blends and projects very well, even in dense mixes.

Sonic Reality has successfully captured these instruments in this very well conceived and executed collection.

Featured are a Yamaha C7 recorded in-studio and a CFIIIs nine foot grand recorded on a well-known scoring stage. We've even included pedal down notes with resonating harp. These pianos respond beautifully to 88 note weighted controllers. Each dynamic is provided in stereo or mono and can be loaded together or individually for maximum flexibility with your set up. You get a slew of programming options for loud or soft music and a useful variety of memory sizes ranging from 10 to 128 megs.

Concert Grand Pianos also boasts the best sustain loops of any piano CD-ROM, with enormous, long sustains that rival the real thing. If you think you already have the best piano CD-ROM, think again. These pianos play beautifully and will add richness and depth to your tracks.

To take full advantage of these types of sound libraries, it is recommended that you have at least 32 megabytes of RAM in your sampler. Of course, the more RAM and polyphony you have, the better.

About these Grand Pianos

We chose two outstanding Yamaha grand pianos for this project, a model C7 and a CFIIIs. The Yamaha C7 is a seven foot concert grand recorded in the "piano room" of a top-notch recording studio. The Yamaha CFIIIs is a nine foot concert grand recorded in a concert hall type sound stage used for recording film soundtracks and classical music. We refer to the CFIIIs as a "C9" for simplicity in sample program naming. Both pianos have distinctly different qualities from each other as well as from other pianos. We chose the Yamaha pianos because they are very versatile for different styles of music from classical to pop and jazz. Also, their consistency of tone and rich sustain make them ideal for use in a sampler. Thus, even the smaller sized versions still sound great, which is rare for a piano library. Two separate stereo dynamic levels as well as sustain pedal down samples are presented on this disc in various megabyte size configurations to suit the available RAM in your sampler(s) at any given moment. Pianos of sizes 8 to 128 megs or more can be loaded provided your sampler has the RAM to handle it.

These pianos will actually respond differently depending on which keyboard controller you are using. You may need to make adjustments in your keyboard's response curves, or even your choice of keyboard. Of course, 88 weighted keys is recommended whenever possible for the most realistic piano-like response. Adjustments can also be made in your sampler for volume, dynamics and other settings. Some variations have already been made and you can select from available bright or dark versions. But, since there are so many possibilities in response to specific keyboard set-ups, some of the fine tuning of dynamics and tone is up to you. Consult your sampler's owner's manual for more options in customizing the programs. You can often save your program tweaks to a floppy which can be loaded after each time you load the corresponding piano from this CD-ROM. Or, you may save your program edits along with the samples to a hard drive.

Stereo vs. Mono Versions and Flat vs. EQ

These pianos were mic'd to sound great in stereo. When at all possible, use the stereo versions with two channels panned hard left and hard right to achieve the quality intended. (Although there are a few mono version programs for convenience, they are significantly less representative of the quality we were after and therefore not abundant on this library.) These pianos were also recorded with a minimum of processing leaving open the flexibility of using external processing like compression, EQ, reverb and so on. The same processing one would do when mixing a real piano within a piece of music could apply here as well. If you like the way these pianos sound relatively flat (as they are), then less external processing will help keep your stereo separation and piano sound pure.

A Note from the Producer

Hey, you have at least 32 megs in your sampler, right? One of my favorite pianos to use is the 30 meg C7 with sustain pedal down (on the Akai, Partition: F/Volume 1). Try loading that one up and see what you think. The 16 meg version in the next volume is also nice if you have less available RAM. Even the 8 meg version is good to use if you want a quick piano to load or if you have serious memory limitations. The forte dynamic loads are great when you need to "cut through" and the mezzo-forte loads are nice for a darker, rounder tone. The two dynamic cross-switching versions are great when you need a wider response between soft and dark to bright and aggressive tones. There are programs with smooth dynamic transitions and some that are more distinctively switched. So, use your ears and pick out the ones that sound and play well for you.

When creating a top-notch sample CD, it's important to start off with a really good instrument. The Yamaha C7 lives in a popular Los Angeles studio and is a favorite of many well known recording artists. For the recording, we used three different stereo miking setups with Neuman and AKG mics, and three different stereo mic preamps, API, Neve and Focusrite. Then, we blindly picked the best sounding combination to create the sound. The result is a bright and punchy stereo grand which I happen to like a lot.

We had the opportunity to sample the CFIIIs nine foot grand immediately after an orchestral session for a very famous soundtrack (sorry we can't say which one). We just left everything as it was, including the mic setup and mix, and went straight to tape with it. At the very end of the CD-ROM you can load the sound of my finishing the last session and walking back into the control room through the rather large hall. We included this program just for fun.

So, between the two pianos and the various RAM sizes, dynamics and sustain pedal samples, you have a wide selection to choose from. Selecting the right piano for you is subjective. We worked hard to make these pianos sound as good as possible, no matter what size you are using, and were very particular in the selection of multisamples and program parameters. You may also notice that the sustain depth and length is better than on most sampled pianos. We had our editing staff re-do the loops three times to get it right, and ended up using some very exclusive, proprietary DSP software and hardware to do the job.

If you don't happen to have a seven foot grand in your living room (or even if you do), I hope you'll enjoy this virtual re-creation of these instruments as much as I do.