Spitfire / Autograph Grand (free LABS library)

[Piet De Ridder]

Spitfire have released another one of their inexplicably weirdly programmed pianos, the Autograph Grand. The good news is that it’s free and that it’s got a great sound. The bad news is that, like the Glass piano of last year, it doesn’t respond (or hardly responds) to incoming velocity data and the dynamics have to be controlled instead with the mod wheel. Someone really needs to explain the reasoning behind this strangest and most unpianistic of decisions.

This could actually have been a really great piano library because the timbre is quite nice across the entire range and the recording is excellent. Making it all the more frustrating to play this thing as it doesn’t behave or respond like a piano at all.

__

[Guy Rowland]

They should have gone the whole hog and made it controllable by breath ONLY.

[Linos]

Bizarre.

[Tobias Escher]

I think this is an example of the trend of "one trick pony ultra artisan product" where you take something and make it into something that works completely different from how it would usually work, just for the sake of being different.
The value lies not in the product itself, but in the way if works completely counterintuitively to what you might think as "art". Kind of like a painting that is just a blank canvas.
I never got that aesthetic, and I think I never will.

[Ashermusic]

[Linos]

The culprit is probably cc11. I have found that when cc11 is set to zero, volume and dynamic layer respond to key velocity. The more you raise cc11, the less that is the case.

[doctoremmet]

This. As soon as you make CC11 zero, it behaves as a regular sampled piano. Albeit one with a limited set of velocity layers, but still one with a rather nice tone. Is this system confusing? Yes. It the plugin an utter failure. Nah.

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) Piet are you sure? (...)

Quite sure in the sense that the library doesn't respond or behave like a piano at all, yes.

On my system, cc11 (expression) merely acts like a volume control so when that fader is down, I don't hear a thing. Have to have it up to get sound out of this plugin. And with the modwheel (cc01) at low or medium settings, the higher dynamic layers (or, at least, what is supposed to sound like higher dynamic layers) are inaccessible with velocity. Now matter how soft or hard you play, you get a mezzopiano-ish timbre. It's only when the modwheel setting exceeds 80-85% or thererabouts, that a brighter sound (which we associate with a higher dynamic level) comes peeping through (but with that setting, the lower dynamic range becomes inaccessible).

Perhaps I phrased it not entirely accurately in my first post (my inner modwheel must have been down): where I said "dynamics", maybe I should have said "dynamic timbre changes".

__

[Piet De Ridder]

I have nothing negative to say about LABS as a concept and series, Anders. Got four or five LABS instruments installed and occasionally find very good use for them. It's just the way these recent LABS pianos are programmed that I just don't understand. That's all. How anyone would think it's a good idea to have to control a piano's dynamic timbre differentiation with a modwheel rather than with velocity, is completely beyond me. I searched but can't find a single argument for that approach to make any sense, nor can I think of a single situation where that would be the preferred way to work with a piano.

__

[Ashermusic]

I have several LABS, I rarely, if ever, use them. This piano holds no appeal for me and Piet is right, the concept is nuts.

[Lawrence]

I have several LABS, I rarely, if ever, use them. This piano holds no appeal for me and Piet is right, the concept is nuts.

I thought the original Felt Piano was very useful and have used it a lot. However, I agree-what a weird programming choice on Autograph.

[Ashermusic]

I have several LABS, I rarely, if ever, use them. This piano holds no appeal for me and Piet is right, the concept is nuts.

I thought the original Felt Piano was very useful and have used it a lot. However, I agree-what a weird programming choice on Autograph.

I like Sonuscore’s LoKi felt piano.