The Crow Hill Company releases Harmonic Piano, a FREE experimental piano instrument from the Vaults series

The latest release from the Crow Hill Company is the Harmonic Piano, a free experimental piano instrument that is a part of their Vaults series.

The Crow Hill Company isn’t opposed to the unconventional when it comes to capturing sound or rethinking how that sound is typically used.

We’ve seen it in previous releases like Glass Beaker and Dulcet Vocal.

In making Harmonic Piano, The Crow Hill Company returned to the familiar location of Castlesound Studios, just outside Edinburgh, Scotland.

Although the use of such harmonics isn’t as accessible for pianists as it is for guitarists and other stringed instruments, it’s not entirely uncommon.

But it is, as I mentioned, unconventional to have two beautiful grand pianos and focus on bringing out that almost hidden sound from within, and that’s why it’s interesting.

Harmonic Piano has the standard Vaults interface; the two large dials this time are LPF/HPF and Expression.

The smaller dials are where it gets more creative. The first of the small dials is Synth, a concert-pitched synth layer that fills some of the low-end that’s lost from the piano’s sound. The Synth dial, along with the Reverb, turns Harmonic Piano into something a bit more polished.

It’s the middle controls, Delay and Pitch Shift, that I like most. With these, you can create lovely rhythmic patterns that suit the percussive and melodic nature of the sound, and lean further into experimentation with pitch shifting.

The pitch shifting complements the sound well, too; as sweet as it can be, it can also be quite eerie, which gives it a broad application in composition.

The plugin is available in AU, VST, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS (11 or later) and Windows (10/11).

Quite often, when pianists reach for the strings, it’s to play muted/percussive rhythmic patterns, or it ventures into John Cage territory.

Harmonic Piano is a lovely middle ground where you have the percussive element, you have room for experimentation, but most importantly, it turns the somewhat fragile sound of piano harmonics into an extremely playable instrument (with a little help from the onboard controls).

It’s always worth checking out the latest Vaults release.