Free Toy Keyboard VST/AU Plugin Released By SampleScience

SampleScience has released Toy Keyboard, a freely downloadable sample based virtual instrument (VST/AU plugin format) featuring the sounds of the Yamaha PSR-78 portable keyboard (WAV samples also included).

Toy Keyboard is a lightweight rompler instrument packing 73 instrument patches that were sampled from the Yamaha PSR-78 toy synthesizer. In addition to the VST and AU plugin versions of the instrument, SampleScience has also included the WAV samples for each patch, as well as an additional set of sampled percussion and drum hits.

See also: FREE Yamaha PSS-390 Sample Library!

I was a bit surprised to see that each instrument patch consists of just a single WAV file, but this actually makes sense considering the nature of the source instrument. In use, Toy Keyboard sounds exactly how I’d expect a Yamaha PSR series keyboard to sound, so there was obviously no need for capturing multi-samples. Indeed, pitching artifacts can be heard in the lower and higher octaves, but it works well for a synthesizer that was actually rather lo-fi to begin with.

The user interface is nicely designed and easy to use. There are only four controls on the front panel: amplitude attack and decay knobs, a reverb knob and a volume control. A simple patch browser is also included.

You can download Toy Keyboard completely free of charge by entering $0 as the desired amount on the product page linked below, or you can choose to enter any other amount you prefer if you’d like to support SampleScience’s future work. The plugin is distributed in a ZIP archive containing the plugin files. The installation process is completely manual (simply move the extracted files to your preferred plugin installation folder and you’re all set).

Toy Keyboard is available for free download via SampleScience (173 MB download size, ZIP archive, VST/AU plugin format for Windows & Mac OS, 98 audio samples in 24-bit WAV format also included).