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by Johnny Stone

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Naked Metamorphosis 1

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I recently bought the Imperfect Samples Braunschweig Upright (Pro) sampled piano for Kontakt after falling in love with the sound of the demos.

I have several sampled pianos (Akoustik Piano’s, alas now discontinued, Kontakt pianos, Logic pianos, etc…) but none of them had the kind of rich, deep, sound I was looking for. I wanted something like the piano Michael Andrews uses in the Donnie Darko score. When I heard the Schimmel demo from the Imperfect Samples website I realised I’d met my piano.

Since then I’ve been using the Braunschweig upright every day as my practice piano and I just love the sound of it.

Several people have asked about the sound so, rather than point them at the demo’s, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and do another take on Philip Glass Metamorphosis-1. I learned this piece some time ago but it had drifted away from me in the meantime and that made me sad. I wanted to get it back.

I spent half an hour re-familiarising myself with the score and it pretty quickly started coming back to my hands. Once I had the chords and timing in reasonable shape I made this recording (via MIDI) into Live.

I used a metronome at 90bpm which is slow enough that I could semi-comfortably keep time without too many mistakes (I had to edit out a couple of blips in the MIDI). However the tighter I try to get my timing the less control I have over the dynamics. When I was practising without the metronome it sounded better, softer. But, alas, I didn’t record that.

Another issue is that my use of the sustain pedal is still rather hit and miss and this creates some abrupt changes from a rich, thick, tail to silence that somewhat spoil the effect. I guess, again, it’s just practice. I’ll aim to do a better take another time.

Lastly I didn’t quite finish the song since I forget to put the 3rd page of the sheet music where I could see it. When I got there I realised I couldn’t quite remember how it ends. Hopefully PG would forgive me.

In terms of production I didn’t use any effects either in Kontakt or in Live, you’re hearing the naked Braunschweig Upright (Mic pos. 2) as it comes out with just a compressor & limiter on the master channel to tame any output spikes.

I love this piano and a better version will be forthcoming (after a lot more practice!)

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Wildgeas Music's avatar
Wildgeas Music said

What a pleasant surprise. I didn't know you had such talented piano fingers. More please..

Max Sipowicz's avatar
Max Sipowicz said

by all week, i just realized, i mean all of last week. and this week so far :P seeing as its only tuesday.

Max Sipowicz's avatar
Max Sipowicz said

very nice. love it. ive been listening to glass' piano work almost non stop all week.

dAb's avatar
dAb said

Lovely! Closing my eyes listening to this I can imagine stop-motion skies...

Guest said

This is you playing piano? Oh my, floored! BRAVO! You're a musician, you traitor!

Johnny Stone's avatar
Johnny Stone said

Nice one mate really cool

mmi's avatar
mmi said

Holy shit! Bravo!!!!!! This is truly inspiring.

kavin.'s avatar
kavin. said

Agree with Kirk, this is great. Must pull out my copy of Koyanisqatsi and watch it again.

kirklynch's avatar
kirklynch said

Beautiful! That's a great piano sound. You can hear the room the piano was sampled in

Galileo's Cough Drop's avatar
Galileo's Cough Drop said

Definitely a great piano sound. I'd be pretty happy with that, too!

Guest said

wow I love this too! The sound is amazing! Great playing too!

Guest said

Great sound.

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