Particular-Sound has introduced Toy Piano, a completely free toy keyboard sample library for Native Instruments Kontakt and all WAV compatible samplers and digital audio workstations.
The library contains 20 multi-sampled lo-fi instruments and an additional set of 50 lo-fi drum loops. It’s not clear which instrument was sampled (or perhaps multiple toy instruments have been sampled?), but this sounds to me like a Casio or some other similar toy keyboard. I’m generally a big fan of such sounds so I’ll definitely find some use for this pack, but I was kind of hoping that these will be samples of a real toy piano.
Unfortunately, there are no audio or video demos available at the moment, however, the library is available for direct free download from Particular-Sound (no registration required) so you can grab these free samples and check them out without much trouble. If you like the included samples, you can also consider purchasing the library for $1 via Sellfy (more info about this on the product page linked below).
The library also includes a set of 24 instrument patches in NKI format for NI Kontakt and these are really well made, sporting a custom user interface with ADSR envelope controls and a couple of built-in effects. Users who don’t own Kontakt still have access to WAV files which can be loaded in pretty much any sampler instrument or DAW.
If you ask me, the quality of the included samples is pretty decent and the provided Kontakt instrument is quite useful for getting the most out of the included sounds. If you’re on a lookout for some authentic toy piano samples (such as the ones listed in our free piano samples shoot-out), you might end up being a bit disappointed. If, on the other hand, you’re simply looking for some lo-fi toy keyboard style samples to add to your music, you should definitely give this free sample pack a try.
UPDATE: The instrument is no longer free. It is now priced at $1 to cover the file storage costs.
Toy Piano is available for $1 via Particular-Sound (122 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 273 multi-samples and 50 lo-fi drum loops in 24-bit WAV format, 24 instrument patches for Native Instruments Kontakt).
