Xtended Piano

Xtended Piano, a Kontakt Player-powered collection of 5 instruments exploring 'extended' piano techniques.

"Extended" is a term usually used to describe unorthodox techniques used when playing a musical instrument in an unconventional way, to coax new timbres from a traditional instrument. Soniccouture created the Bowed Piano instrument in 2008, and now have revisited the same piano to build on that concept and further explore extended piano techniques for an exciting new suite of instruments.

The instruments included are:

• Mute Piano | a technique in which you lightly touch the finger at a nodal point on the piano string and play the key to produce a harmonic.
• Plucked Piano | the piano notes are plucked, either with the fingers or a plectrum of some sort. We used a guitar pick and recorded plucked notes with both the piano dampers down and up.
• Mallet Piano | The piano strings were struck with foreign mallets: wooden & marimba, producing strange and different timbres.
• Bowed Piano | The strings of the piano are bowed with fishing line and horsehair to produce both sustained and short notes. This is the full original Bowed Piano sample set in a 2.0 Kontakt Player instrument.
• SFX Piano | Strums, scrapes, percussive noises and all kinds of sound-scapes from the guts of the piano.