Spitfire Audio Gwilym Simcock Felt Piano Virtual Instrument Library, Electronic Download

There's just something about that practice pedal. It draws you up to the very inner workings of the piano itself, quiet and difficult to play, but for drama and soft, intimate ballads, you'd be hard pressed to find something more beautiful.

• 7055 Samples
• 29.1GB Uncompressed .WAV
• 25.0GB Disk Space Required
• 50GB Disk Space Required During Install
• Kontakt Full Required

Soft Delicate Beauty
If you like the Labs "Soft Piano", you're going to love this hand-crafted German piano played with the 'Celeste' pedal engaged by a living jazz legend and Mercury Music Prize nominee.

Background
Why be a jack of all trades when you can be a master of one? It is this sentiment that led them to search high and low for the most sensitive, beautiful, sonorous and honest piano sound. Perfect for those delicate ballads (think "Mad World" by Gary Jules), that intimate heart rending cue (think Newman's "American Beauty"). When carrying out sampling experiments some years ago they discovered the very beautiful world of an upright piano with a middle "practice felt" or "celeste" pedal engaged.

Whilst being hard to get a decent sound from (strange to play a piano loudly and have a muted soft sound come out), when it rang, boy did it produce the most beautifully unsophisticated but gentle and touching sound. This became their widely loved "soft piano" available in return for a small donation to Unicef as part of their Labs range. Their renewed quest to find the perfect "celeste" pedal piano ended at Peregrines pianos on the Grays Inn Road in London. They then set about sampling in much more detail.

This piano has been performed by Mercury Award nominee Gwilym Simcock and has been recorded with a number of microphones in different perspectives via neve pre-amps and Cranesong AD converters at 96k. From the almost vintage sound of a mono soundboard mic to a beautiful natural surround perspective of the room itself. Most celeste pedals allow for only one dynamic layer but this piano is more responsive than others, so not only did they record several round robins, they recorded 2 dynamic layers, release triggers and round robin pedal damping and releasing. They also recorded the pedal noise separately so you can adjust this from the front panel.

Function
Part of the Producer Portfolio which answers requests for drier sounding more manipulable samples, for more non-orchestral material and for libraries that are affordable to all. Recorded by the Spitfire team in a number of smaller but excellent London studios, including the new Spitfire HQ in King's Cross and their old favorite, the classic vintage studio Air-Edel in Marylebone.

With a useful selection of classic/ vintage, modern, broad and room microphones, the Producer Portfolio features the talents of legendary musicians, producers, composers and programmers. With Spitfire's existing orchestral and definitive ranges, they're very proud of the "impression" that the hall at Air studios gives, but it's not right for every application. With this new range, they have recorded in smaller spaces, close, mid-range and room perspectives with carefully positioned 'A class' mics and pre-amps to give you the raw materials you need to make these sounds your own.

GUIS

The Overview Panel
Gives you a quick and easy way to access, view and load the different articulations, mic mixes and essential controller functions which you can then re-assign to suit your workflow.

General Controls Panel
A deeper but still simple UI panel that allows you to tweak the general settings. How many round robins you would like and how you would like them to behave. How would you like memory to be organized alongside pitch options and how velocity works.