Westwood Instruments Release FREE Upright Felt Piano For NI Kontakt

Westwood Instruments has announced the release of Upright Felt Piano, a freely downloadable upright piano sound library for Native Instruments Kontakt (full version of Kontakt required).

Upright Felt Piano features the sounds of an upright piano recorded in the crypt of a church. The piano’s naturally bright tone was tamed by felting the strings. This, combined with a set of authentic vintage recording gear that was used to record the instrument, resulted in a beautifully warm and intimate sounding sampled piano library. The piano has a unique sound character that is great for use in a movie score or as the main instrument in a piece of ambient music.

The recording engineers at Westwood Instruments recorded the piano using a matched pair of Coles 4038 microphones which were placed as close to the strings as possible. The room sound was captured using a stereo pair of AKG 414 microphones. The rear soundboard was recorded with a single SE-2 microphone. All audio was passed through Neve 1073 pre-amps and Burr-Brown AD converters for a pristine sound.

The volume of each microphone can be adjusted individually thanks to Upright Felt Piano’s custom Kontakt user interface. The user can also adjust the volume of the key and pedal noises and the intensity of the built-in saturation, reverb, and stereo width effects. A 3-band equalizer is included for shaping the instrument’s tonal balance.

Upright Felt Piano requires the full version of Native Instruments Kontakt. It will only work for fifteen minutes per load in the free Kontakt Player (read more about the Kontakt Player demo mode). Samples in WAV format are not included so other sampler instruments can’t be used either.

To download your free copy of the instrument, visit the product page linked below and enter your email address. Once you’ve confirmed your email, you will receive a second message containing the download link. The library is packed in a ZIP archive.

Need more piano sounds? Take a look at our list of free piano samples.

Upright Felt Piano is available for free download via Westwood Instruments (350 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 1 instrument patch in NKI format for NI Kontakt).