The Drinking Piano

Welcome to The Drinking Piano by Soundiron!

This fat-bottomed monster upright has a classic beer hall sound, evoking images of the roaring 20s and pre-war 30s. It’s got all of the brutal wear and tear that you’d expect from a hundred-year-old instrument that has been played hard and put away wet, night after night. With a fat, wide and close sound, it puts you right on the bench with the yellow, cracked ivories under your fingers. It was recorded right up against the strings in a small, slightly reflective hall, giving it all the presence of a dry studio recording with just a hint of live ambiance.

The years of alcohol-fueled abuse have been less than kind to this once stately instrument.

With worn and rickety key action, unreliable dampers, loose pedal mechanics, wear hardened felts, the occasional misaligned hammer and decades of baked-in dust, every key has all the character and frailty of a hundred-year-old bartender. The strings were far too corroded to be tuned without risking breakage and further internal damage, so the whole thing is a little over a half-step flat. But beneath the beer stains and cigarette burns, this massive aging troubadour has a substantial pedigree. It’s an original Ivors and Pond model from the dawn of the 20th century, made of solid mahogany, with expert hand-craftsmanship and detail rarely seen in any modern uprights.

The Drinking Piano library features a range of proprietary features

This includes the latest version of our Uberpeggiator arp system, optional tempo synching volume and filter LFOs, custom convolution effects, parametric EQ and standard performance shaping parameters. Note attack and sample offset allow you to simply tighten the sound or create pad-like effects. Release timing with extended decay range settings, independent release sample volume and separate pedal SFX volume knobs give you complete control over the release and decay of the notes.

Micro-tuning and stereo-imaging allow you to fine-tune how the piano sits in a mix with other instruments.

The special Sober/Drunk switch gives you the ability to instantly tighten the sound wiping away years of wear and tear or hear the piano as it naturally sounds; a bit rougher around the edges. The Tuned/Untuned switch corrects the tuning of the entire piano, getting it about as close as it will ever be again to 440 and fixing the misaligned hammer action that can be heard souring a few notes here and there

Specifications:

• 5.25 GB Installed
• 1,778 Samples
• 25 .nki files (open format) – 22 K4 / 3 K5
• 24 bit / 48kHz uncompressed PCM wav audio
• Unlocked Kontakt presets and wav samples to allow user customization