The Keyless Piano Body

The Keyless Piano Body is a Kontakt Patch library that features an abandoned upright piano without keyboard. It combines the sounds of 3 extensive recording sessions that took place for the Rolfing series which was originally available as Live Pack only.

For session 1 and 2 the body was brought to a studio and literally laid back so that various things like plastic balls, felt balls, glasses and much more could be thrown in to excite the strings. At the end of both sessions tons of samples were ready to edit. They now form 13 Kontakt instruments that encompass several precisely tuned pianos plus many prepared piano sets.

Session 3 was kind of a field recording gig as the piano remains were meanwhile moved to a rural garden area. The nightly recordings were done 6-channel so that several sample sets from 2 acoustic mics and 4 contact pick ups could be created. Again, the Kontakt instruments from this session feature the sounds of a rotten piano that is lovely and impressive at the same time. In a second pass the piano strings were treated with a stell jazz brush to bring up 3 multi-channel sets with prepared piano-like sounds.