SoundEngine.com has announced the availability of Upright Pianos and Prepared Piano, two sample libraries for the Kurzweil Forte stage piano.

SoundEngine Upright & Prepared Kurzweil Forte

The Upright Pianos collection features the samples of two Hanson uprights, a Ladbrooke upright, and an indeterminate upright simply called “Charlie’s Piano.” All of these uprights have a unique character that hearkens back to the upright piano your grandmother had in her place, slightly out of tune, but unique and playable.

Recorded using Coles, AT, and Sony microphones, these instruments have lots of variations and expressiveness provided by the powerful V.A.S.T. sample playback engine of the Kurzweil Forte.

The Forte Prepared Piano collection is a versatile tribute to the prepared piano work of John Cage. This prepared piano library is a must for film composers and sound effect designers. From percussive and plucked effects to oddly melodic basses, the library offers something unique and different.

A Yamaha C3 was recorded using 2 DPA (formerly Bruel & Kjaer) series 4000 omni-directional microphones. Digital recording, after 24 bit AD conversion, took place on Tascam DA45 24 bit DAT-master. Recordings were edited in ProTools 4.3.1 on a PT24 Mix card. A little Trueverb and some Focusrite F2 & F3 (EQ and dynamics) were used, and then the samples were mastered to hard disk.

Upright Pianos and Prepared Piano are available now at SoundEngine.com for an MSRP of $40 USD and $30 USD each, respectively. Upright Pianos is also available for the Kurzweil K2x00 family of samplers, as well as Logic Pro’s EXS24.

More information: SoundEngine / Kurzweil Forte libraries