About the Piano
Model: Steinway Model L
Year: 1926
Serial: 241663
Why I made this Plugin
There are a lot of piano sample libraries out there. I have a whole bunch of them, some that I love.
I spent a vast majority of my piano playing life using digital pianos driving piano plugins. I loved this setup for so many reasons. With a great set of samples, you could get great recordings, you could play at night when the kids were asleep, you don’t have to worry about tuning, they’re light and easy to move. I just loved everything about playing “fake” pianos. I didn’t want a real piano. I didn’t want to deal with the noise or the hassle or the space. I was perfectly happy in my MIDI->VST piano world…
Until I got a real piano. I thought I’d hate it. It was a Steinway Model L, built in New York in 1926. The strings, the hammers, the keys are all original. The action was a little heavier than I was used to. But I found myself wanting to just sit down and play more. A lot more. It was just so much more fun playing on the real piano than any of the sample libraries I had. 3 years passed and I found that I had basically quit playing my MIDI controller altogether. Every time I tried, it just felt so lame and I went back to playing the real thing.
But I still had kids. They still sleep at night (sort of). The real piano is still loud. And it still slips out of tune. And recording it is a lot more work. I wanted to love playing my MIDI piano again, or at least like it enough to not hate it.
So I sampled my piano. And spent a ton of time going back and forth to get it to feel “right.” I wanted to sit down at my MIDI controller and feel like I was playing the real thing. I didn’t get there. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. It isn’t the same as playing the real thing, but it’s pretty darn close. Close enough that I can sit down and play without getting frustrated. Close enough that when I need to record a piano part, I reach for this rather than mic up the real piano. Close enough to where I can sit down and lose myself in hours of practice.
After my 3rd rewrite, I’m finally ready to let this thing out into the world. But I’ve been so close it it for so long, I know that I’ve lost some perspective. That’s why I want feedback from other piano players. Players that aren’t attached to my piano. Players that have different objectives than I do. Players that have a library of other pianos that they use. I want to make sure this is usable for anyone beyond just myself.