It is particularly good at creating cinematic sounds suitable for film and television scores, video gaming and production music.Īrturia’s Augmented GRAND PIANO is available directly from the company’s website and has a price tag of 99 euros (approx. And of course, you can add your own creations to the database.Īugmented GRAND PIANO brings a whole new world of sounds to the party. To aid selection, these are tagged into various categories and cover a massive range of expressive, contemporary and abstract piano sounds. The software includes 300 presets arranged in a library. The editing screen for the 4 sound macros (click to zoom) Here, by virtue of cross-blending, the whole is substantially greater than the sum of the parts. This melds the overall sound giving it its own identity with enhanced dynamics, articulation, and timbral transformation.Ĭonsequently, Augmented GRAND PIANO is more than a piano with a synth laid on top. So each macro can drive up to 8 different parameters. These macro controls are individually assigned to multiple parameters from any of the sound or effects sources (see screenshot below). Four of these are effects controls, the other four shape the sound. The main control panel (shown above) has a very simple layout, with just eight knobs (macros). Augmented GRAND PIANO: Main screen (click to zoom) The synth engine features a collection of preset synth sounds generated using analogue, granular, harmonic or wavetable synthesiser technologies.

They can be further modified as required. Samples are arranged under the headings Real Piano, Processed Pianos and Additional Samples. created using more unusual techniques such as bowing, plucking, etc). These recordings are both straight and “affected” (i.e. Setting up Layers A (here with two piano samples), and Layer B (with two synth sounds) (click to zoom)Īt the heart of Augmented GRAND PIANO is a set of premium acoustic piano samples derived from a 1980’s Steinway Model D grand. And in turn, each layer has two slots both of which can be loaded with either of the two sound engines.

Augmented GRAND PIANO proffers two types of sound engine: (i) piano-based samples and (ii) synthesizer generated voicings.Įach sound produced by the software comprises two layers (A and B).

Arturia grand piano model d