Pssst! Instruments have announced the forthcoming availability of Avant-Gardist: Tonally Prepared Cinematic Piano, available to pre-order for $54.00 (subject to waiting list sign-up), increasing to $119.00.
Yes, Avant-Gardist is their best instrument so far.
No, it is not another prepared piano.
It is literally a new, unique set of tonal cinematic acoustic instruments which you can play like a piano but… they don’t sound like a standard or prepared piano.
Avant-Gardist has the most original, yet natural and beautifully organic sound you can imagine. It can be dark, it can be subtle, it can be unpredictable or warm, intimate (and simultaneously extraordinary and cinematic!).
Recorded and sampled with techniques which aren’t used in piano libraries (explained below). And yes, it’s dirty, sometimes out of tune and full of artifacts. You can hear and feel the pianist sitting at the keyboard.
Why does it sound so unique? Imagine a group of pianists. Each of them plays only on one upright piano string with their fingers, horsehairs, chains, ebows, sticks, patafix, magnets, kitchen strainers, etc. And what’s the most important: they play tonally. Even more: each string has it’s own close stereo microphones (instead of standard mics positioned farther to record a whole piano) And finally: patches use creative sampling techniques (which keep samples acoustic and almost unprocessed) and creative tuning (it’s slightly out of tune but in a very natural and variable way, which is unusual for pianos! It reminds hand-andjusted tuning on strings). This is how Avant-Gardist sounds.
In other words: it allows you to achieve tonal articulations that aren’t possible to be played by one pianist and a sound which does not exist in a standard instrumental library. Including highly playable unique melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic multi-articulation instruments, tonal and non-tonal playable textures, loops and creative menus, even piano noise & ASMR.
You can play Avant-Gardist like a piano because it sounds genuinely rich and full when played solo. It has so many colors that you can even create a whole soundtrack using only this library. Besides that, don’t forget about the big catalog of playable textures and SFXs which help in keeping the consistent sound without frustrating repetition of samples.
Everything was recorded as close as possible with such a beautiful sound, that almost all instruments remained acoustic and unprocessed (besides standard eq, compression and pitching). This means you really do not have to mix them, they already sound great.
And what if you need a distant cinematic sound? Simply move one knob of the in-built reverb. Need a close and intimate tone? Remove the reverb. The whole interface is easy and very user-friendly. You will find there one-knob filters, tone, attack/release, stereo, pitch, compressor, lofi, distortion, bit crusher, decimator, rotary, delay and reverb.
Now a few words about the recorded piano. It’s a hundred-year-old GUSTAV ROSLER upright piano which definitely needs a repair and tuning. Pssst! Instruments were going to repair it a little and tune it up but when they made test recordings… they realized that it sounds awesome just the way it is. It’s not the type of sound you would like to play sugary Chopin but gives an exceptionally organic and beautifully dirty, unpredictable sound when you prepare it with ingenious techniques and play subtle, dark, or mellow cinematic parts. Skipping tuning was the best idea ever!
Usually, you try to stay quiet during the recordings. Not this time. Pssst! Instruments’ piano surprised them with the amount of mechanical noise and sound artifacts. So they decided… to make them even louder. Pssst! Instruments recorded some patches by playing sounds and simultaneously making additional noises by pressing keys too hard, pushing the soundboard, slightly squeaking the sustain pedal, “accidentally” rubbing strings and wood, sometimes even breathing “too” close the microphone. They liked that so much that they even recorded “noise-only” and “ASMR” patches (e.g. room ambience, player foleys and our favorite: playable keys & mechanism noise only). That’s why it sounds so intimate.
This wouldn’t be possible without Pssst! Instruments’ highest quality microphones: Sennheiser MKH8020. They are very special because they have an incredibly low noise floor and record everything up to 60kHz. As said before, they have recorded each string separately for the playable patches. This means they had to move microphones every time we were going to record another string. This allowed Pssst! Instruments to capture even the most subtle and intimate sounds which gave the impression of sitting very close to the instrument.
Watch the intro video HERE.
Avant-Gardist: Tonally Prepared Cinematic Piano requires a full version of Kontakt 6.8 or later.
For more information and to subscribe to the waiting list, click here:
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