Created by The Imperfect Drummer: "My mother owns a 1974 Wm. Knabe & Co. baby grand piano that she bought new back in 1974. I grew up with this piano so for me it’s my baseline. Every other piano gets judged by this one. Knowing she’d eventually give it away or give it to my Brother who isn’t an easy day’s drive from me to be able to play, I wanted to get it sampled and see if I could reproduce it in a way that I can enjoy without having the real thing. I’m also looking forward to mom (who is nearly 80) getting a digital piano to replace the Knabe so I can hook her up with a copy of the instrument on her laptop and she can continue to enjoy the sound of “her” piano.

So, I packed up my Soundcraft Signature 12 MTK mixer/interface and a bunch of mics and headed to Ohio to get this thing sampled. I set the lid to its highest open position and used 8 mics: a borrowed AKG 414 set to omni mid-way back in the center, 2 cheap Behringer pencil mics with omni capsules mid way back in an x/y pattern (which were surprisingly quiet!), 2 sE 8 Cardioid mics pointed at the hammers in an X/Y pattern, an sE v7x pointed into one of the sound holes, an sE vKick up under the sound board closer to the lower notes and a Studio Projects C1 up on the stair landing behind the piano to get ambiance. In the end, the sE 8s just sounded the best (and clearly I had no idea what I was doing lol!). I may eventually add more mic layers you can mix in, but for now I just wanted to get this released. I also plan on releasing it in all the various sample player formats.

Over the years, age has worn on the piano. More recently my mom paid to have it reconditioned and the felts sanded down. The result is that it’s not an old, dead piano. To me, it’s got a beautiful tone and when you punch the hard layer, it really comes through. I may have processed and cleaned the samples too much, but so far, it sounds great in my tests. Certainly not a pro level, commercial sample, but very usable. When I compare it to some commercial pianos, I think it just feels more personal and real."

Download it for free here: https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/moms-1974-baby-grand/

Mom’s 1974 Baby Grand

Watching your wife struggle with devastating news about a close relative is heart-wrenching.

Turning that anguish into music seems to help a little, and that's what this is.


Created with two free Kontakt sound libraries available from Pianobook, in order of appearance:

* Mom’s 1974 Baby Grand by The Imperfect Drummer
[https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/moms-1974-baby-grand/]

* Arco Marimba: Calm/Flux by Sage Reynolds
[https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/arco-marimba-calmflux/]

Summer Tears

This is a live performance of my older piece, "Tabula rasa", composed sometime in 2012. Performed live on "Mom's 1974 Baby Grand" piano library from Pianobook. Apart from some rough mastering, no editing nor further processing were made. Original photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash.

Tabula Rasa (live)

I originally created this track with drums and just wasn't feeling it. I removed the drums and added a little piano intro and some nature sounds and it all came together. This track uses Mom's 1974 Baby Grand (which I created) from Pianobook.co.uk and Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony Orchestra Pro package.

Quiet Sunrise

Usually I use guidelines to keep my songs in key but I just followed my heart on this one,  it must be atonal or switching keys and borrowing chords because it doesn't fit any scale. Anyway... I hope you like it.

This track was created using a library from the pianobook project, the library used in this track was:
https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/moms-1974-baby-grand/

To find out more about the project, how you can get involved and to download these libraries and many more visit www.pianobook.co.uk

For further information and updates visit www.youtube.com/@pianobook

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