There’s certainly no shortage of piano sample libraries these days, but the latest release from The Crow Hill Company aims to stand out from the crowd by capturing an instrument with a rather unusual back-story. The Vertical Piano features an upright piano that was airdropped from a US plane to be played for troops during the Second World War!
The company sourced a restored instrument, and set about capturing it at Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions facility. In keeping with the age of the instrument itself, the engineers employed a range of 1940s-style ribbon mics, as well as modelling an array of speakers and radios from a collection of old communications equipment.
The GUI has been designed to encourage experimentation, with a collection of effects and processing modules offering a variety of built-in tone-shaping options. A Tape Reel section models a broken tape machine, offering control over the age and wear of its tape along with bias and speaker emulation controls, while an Effects module houses a collection of retro-sounding reverbs and delays as well as a granular synth. An EQ section does exactly as you might expect, but also contains some compression and saturation controls, while a Settings panel makes it possible to tweak the playing response and adjust parameters such as pedal noise and resonances.
Compatibility
The Vertical Piano is supported on PCs running Windows 10 and above, and Macs running macOS 11 or higher. VST, VST3, AU and AAX plug-in versions are available.
Pricing & Availability
The Vertical Piano is available now, and is being offered for an introductory price of £129 until 30 April 2024, when it will increase to £169. Prices include VAT.
