8Dio – Plucked Grand Piano (KONTAKT)

Welcome to Plucked Grand Piano – a library dedicated to deep sampling of plucked and hammer struck grand piano strings. The Plucked Grand Piano was created by public demand from our users, since its never been properly deep sampled before. We took a world class piano (same as our Bowed Grand Piano) through a humiliating process by recording every string with a custom pick, but with more emphasis on round robin (4 pr. string), since the playing style has a percussive quality to it. The instrument is best described as a hybrid crossbreed between a harp, clavinet, guitar/lute and the unforgettable sound of the harpsichord. In addition we added a bonus hammer-struck articulation, using a custom miniature hammer. The sound has some resemblance to a hammered dulcimer. The fancy naming and branding of the piano is irrelevant to us. We want the samples and music to speak for itself and we hope it speaks to you too.

We captured every note, with sustains and release triggers, over multiple velocities and round-robin variations, using an massively over-sized nylon guitar pick for the “plucked” articulation.We then used a small 1-oz. stainless steel hammer to strike each string for the “hammered” articulation. Once we completed our little masterpiece, we tunneled even deeper into the sound, building-in a broad interface packed full of of custom performance, tone and effect controls to allow plenty of creative freedom. After spending so much time and effort searching out the right piano for our Emotional Piano library, we decided to keep it around for awhile longer.There were just some things that needed to be done to it. The unique thing about plucking or hammering a piano string that creates such a starkly different sound from simply playing it with the normal keys is that first, you only strike a single string, rather than the full choir of 2-3 identically tuned strings that a pianos hammer normally strikes to achieve the full sound typical of a piano. Even though the other strings resonate sympathetically with the primary string being struck or plucked, the sound is much more singular, focused and narrow, with more buzz and “wah” in the sound. It’s much more like a harp crossed with a gigantic 88-string guitar, yet completely unique. The purpose of this library was essentially to focus on the clean and most direct interpretation of plucked and hammered piano, presenting it as a massive ultra-wide-ranged zither/dulcimer-esque instrument, as a clean, fundamental starting point on what is becoming our long journey into the inner world of the piano.

• Deep Sampled Plucked Piano
• Direct download / Cloud Server System
• Product only available as download
• Plucked Grand Piano
• Hammered Grand Piano
• Advanced controls, including dulcimer
• Sustain pedal SFX
• Dampening control, including arp modes
• Full Retail version of Kontakt 4.1 or later required