The Sound Board

Piet De Ridder wrote: ↑Aug 15, 2024 4:14 pm I have no idea, I fear. The first few times I listened to this cue, I was actually convinced it was a sampled piano, but since the orchestra is obviously and gloriously real and since these recordings appear to have been done by some of the top people in the business, I’m no longer sure.

Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s a particularly great piano sound. (Everything else sounds pretty impressive though.) It does the job and it works well for its part, which is of course not unimportant, but I would never point to this as a reference for recorded pianosound of the highest quality.

If I had to come up with something similar, I would look more in the direction of sampled Steinways (or similar sounding instruments) than sampled Asian brands. You need classic roundness of tone for this and that is rarely a defining characteristic of Asian pianos (and even less so in the sampled variety). Any decent virtual Steinway should get you close enough, I would think. Especially since the piano in this track does everything it was written to do without needing all the detail, dynamic nunaces and timbral complexities that a grand piano is capable of.

The cue immediately reminded me of Williams ‘Over The Moon’ music for E.T., by the way. Very different music of course, but the piano part springs from the same stylistic well in both pieces and there are a few harmonic connections too.