UVI Soundbank Attack EP88 v1.1.3 for Falcon Expansion
TACKED ELECTRIC PIANO
World’s first tacked electric piano library
Massively customizable; 5 signal sources, over 47,000 samples
3-bus architecture with per-note voicing and tuning control
Tack Piano
A ‘tack’ piano is a form of prepared piano most commonly seen on acoustic uprights where, as in this example, each of the hammers has had a brass tack or metal device installed on or between the mallets and the resonators. The sound is most definitely still piano but the initial attack phase is accentuated, it’s more present, with a resonant metallic brilliance.
As it turns out this preparation is quite exceptional on electric piano. The tonal character is almost bell-like in quality, giving a completely new perspective and life to the classic electric piano sound.
APPROACH
Origins
Attack EP88 begins with a perfectly restored 88-key Rhodes Mark I prepared with a brass tack on the striking surface of each hammer. The goal of the project was to essentially deliver an entire virtual studio built around this instrument, allowing users to customize and explore it when and how they want. Doing this properly requires a number of sound sources and quite extensive recordings of each. Throughout, the utmost attention to quality and detail was made for everything from equipment selection to final editing, from UI and preset design to assembly.
Immaculate Detail
For the acoustic signals we employed a stereo pair of Bruel and Kjaer mics, a Neumann U67 in the mono position and per-key recordings with a contact mic attached directly to the tine. For each note 8 velocities and up to 5 round-robins were recorded per-source, along with 5 round-robins for both the sustain and release samples. This was done 3 times for the electric sources, once for each of the 3 included voicings (where the tack position is shifted on the hammer, resulting in changes of color from deep to thin). Additional recordings were made to capture the pedal-up and pedal-down sounds, this was done for the mono, stereo, contact and DI signals with 7 round-robins for each. The result of this process was a working base of over 47,000 samples, a truly massive library that beautifully captured even the most subtle nuances of the piano.
INSTRUMENT
The next task was to distill this enormous sample complexity into a focused and easy-to-use instrument. Attack EP88’s audio sources are routed internally via three busses, one for the contact mic, one for mono and stereo mics, and one for the DI and tube channels. Each bus is equipped with a number of useful mixing tools including envelopes and effects, making it easy to dial in particular sounds or explore new ones.
The user interface was carefully designed to make editing these signals as simple as possible, with acoustic sources at the top of the UI and electric at the bottom. The acoustic busses are equipped with a 3-band EQ, Dual Delay and Sparkverb, and the electric bus with distortion, the 8-voice Thorus, phaser, Dual Delay and Sparkverb.
Full control of these busses is made across 3 pages, Main, FX and Settings. A fourth and final page provides per-note control of voicing (each of which represents an entirely unique sample set per-source) and per-note control of tuning. Attack EP88 comes with 70 expertly designed presets which quickly display its fantastic detail and extraordinary sonic breadth. These can be used either as ready-to-play configurations or launchpads for near-endless exploration.
Unlike Any Other
Attack EP88 is an easy-to-use yet brilliantly deep instrument, one most people aren’t likely to quickly exhaust. Providing everything from basic DI setups to rich and elaborate multi-channel configurations with custom envelopes and effects, Attack EP88 provides an extreme versatility, musical quality and immediacy that make it both a joy and inspiration to use.
Features:
- 88-key Rhodes Mark 1 prepared with brass tacks
- 5 discrete and fully mixable signals (DI, tube, contact, mono and stereo pair)
- Internal signal routed via 3 busses (contact, mono and stereo, and DI and tube)
- Independent envelopes and effects per-bus (including Thorus, Dual Delay and Sparkverb)
- 8 velocity layers and up to 5 round-robins per-mic, per-note
- Pedal-up, pedal-down and key noise recordings (7 round-robins each)
- Contact mic recordings made per tine
- Per-note voicing control (3 tack positions recorded, per-signal, per-note)
- Per-note tuning control
- Intuitive and easy-to-use interface
- 70 presets
- 47,000+ sample library, losslessly streamed for speed and efficiency
- Flexible licensing supports 3 concurrent authorizations