The Sound Board

Recorded at his home in New York City, this is legendary composer Philip Glass's beloved piano. His entire breadth of compositional work over the past 30 years has been written on this piano — including seminal works The Piano Etudes, all of his Academy Award-nominated film scores, and hundreds of other compositions. Discover the unique sonic personality of this baby grand with a range of sounds — from classic and beautiful, to soft and atmospheric.

https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/glass-piano

I wonder if they'll ever do a full version of this. Really distinctive tone and it's lovely to have, but I only two velocity layers obviously limits its usability. Can't complain for free, but there might be an appetite for a fuller version.

Strange how limited it is.

Strange indeed. You get access to the Glass house to sample the composer's piano, and then you come back with this? I don't get it.

It's also programmed very weirdly, I find: first virtual piano I've come across that requires the modwheel to change dynamic layers (producing something very unplayable and unpleasant-sounding when the modwheel is only halfway up because those 2 layers don't blend at all.)

Over on VI-C, people have submitted a few demos with this library, all of them in a minimalistic, repetitive style, and for that type of thing this library has some use I suppose (although I don't hear what use that might be), but the thing is: all of those demos would sound a lot better with a better piano library and (2) for anything else (music that requires a more capable piano-emulation) this Glass library is of no use at all.

Yeah, it's free, so yes, we should keep our criticisms to ourselves and only air our deepest gratitude, but ignoring that prescribed code of conduct for a brief moment: this is a piano library that would even have been considered a very weak effort back in 1989. It has resided about 120 seconds on my HD. A record.

_

I'm averse to these kinds of marketing strategies as a rule. I'm not sure why I would feel the urge to sound like Philip Glass to begin with? Let alone thinking just by playing his piano will indeed make me sound like him? Mr. Glass will sound like Philip Glass no matter what piano he plays. I guess that isn't really the point - more the sound palette you get from it? But I still generally feel meh about these kinds of libraries.

But it is strange for them to present it this way. Especially the mod wheel control? That seems very odd. I have long ago stopped downloading and buying from Spitfire, and this doesn't seem to be one to change my mind.

(also, putting on my Old Man hat - I am re-discovering that nothing is free. Hard Drive space, space "learning" the new library, time to download, the vast number of choices sitting on hand - all have a price to pay when it comes time to write. I am very much in the getting rid of libraries mindset. I don't need more choices.)

I didn't understand the modwheel either. I figured it was 2 layers on key velocity... so what actually is the modwheel doing? It felt like it was perhaps changing the responsiveness curve and maybe volume too? Agree it is totally pointless.

(Kayle - I wear the same old man's hat, though I don't delete the things I don't use quickly enough)