City Piano – Free Ableton Instrument
When bigcat instruments released the free City Piano a few weeks ago, it was a big hit. But it was only available in Kontakt and SFV formats…until now! We took all 440 samples and ported them over to Ableton, and made a few tweaks in the process.
The City Piano is a fully-sampled Baldwin baby grand, with four velocity layers and release samples, to boot! All samples are in 44.1/16 stereo WAV format. We ran all the original files through a de-noise filter to clean them up…but even though these aren’t “perfect” samples, they’re expressive and have a lot of character.
This version for Ableton has a bunch of parameters mapped to macro knobs, so you can dial in a wide variety of tones and timbres, from a warm mellow tone to crisp and bright, a nice detuned honky-tonk sound, and even koto and organ-ish tones with some of the more extreme settings.
Check the demo tracks below, then download the City Piano and let us know what you think!
P.S. – If you’re looking for more cool free pianos, make sure to visit bigcat instruments and check out their Free Piano Collection for Kontakt, which includes the original City Piano as well as a Yamaha C5 and Steinway Model B.
Demo video – How to get the honky tonk sound:
Photo Credit: nosha via Compfight cc
Tags: Ableton, free downloads, Live Packs, piano
Comments (6)
Dwight
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Downloaded the city piano and the .alp is corrupt, so says Ableton Live.
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Critical Vibrations
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Sorry you’re having trouble with it…I just tested it and it’s fine, so it sounds like just a glitch in the download. Try it again, and if you still have problems, please let me know.
-Jeff
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Luke
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Loving the sounds so far, but I’m kinda new to this. What sort of settings should I use to get the desired Honky Tonk sound. Cheers.
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Critical Vibrations
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Hi Luke! Scroll up on this page, I added a video to this post describing how to do what you want.
-Jeff
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Edgar
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hey Jeff, thanks so much for your contributions..Love your work! Any chance you’re gonna sample a Moog? that would be yummy :)
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Critical Vibrations
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You are very welcome, I’m really glad you like the sounds! A Moog would indeed be really great, and I’ve been keeping eyes (and ears) out for the opportunity to sample one.
Reply