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Spitfire - HZP - The 'Ultimate' Piano - New Rachmaninoff Demo

Spitfire Team

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THE MUCH ANTICIPATED ULTIMATE PIANO



In his fourth collaboration with Spitfire Audio, the legendary trailblazer Hans Zimmer presents the ultimate piano library. Recorded in the Hall at Air Studios over many weeks, with Hans' crack team of engineers, and the award-winning Spitfire crew. This library embodies what Hans described as a “once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to create a top-of-it's-class writing tool for discerning composers the world over.

FOR MORE INFO AND TO BUY GO HERE



The task was simple. Over the last two decades of producing oscar-winning and world-renowned scores, Hans had often stolen a rare moment of downtime to play the glorious piano in the inspiring setting and luscious acoustic of the hall at Air Studios. These brief solitary sojourns at the piano often produced a spark of inspiration for his next Oscar-nominated blockbuster score. It had happened time and time again. So Hans pondered, what if I could capture that degree of inspiring potential, box it and take it anywhere?

Over a series of impassioned phone calls with Spitfire director Paul Thomson, it was agreed a no-holds-barred approach was required. With Hans having used and favoured certain piano VIs over the years a careful plan was calculated to make sure this once-in-a-lifetime project would yield success. That this project would give him what he needed as a composer, to inspire, to write and to create masters from a wonderfully recorded and performed set of recordings.

HZP features the combined signals of over 60 microphones passing through the unique Air “Montserrat” pre-amps via a Neve 88R desk into Prism AD converters. The piano, a world class stretch concert grand, was played utilising a mixture of technical wizardry and dogged performing talent to produce literally days of recordings. From a huge array of round robins, dynamic layers, staccato and long notes to some extraordinarily detailed studies in the quietest layers of the piano, and a vast collection of effects and additional techniques. The Spitfire team of over a dozen highly qualified editors has spent nearly 12 months treating each sample like a little rough diamond, carving and polishing it by hand. Every sample has been cut, cleaned and refined and placed gently in a queue waiting for implementation, experimentation and review by the whole Spitfire team and Mr Zimmer himself. With recall sessions booked in the hall for more days of recording to make sure the full timbral 'gallery' of sounds was captured, the Spitfire team then cut, and polished again. The final version of the piano was then further refined by expert technicians working side-by-side with esteemed piano players testing on a number of different controllers (including Hans’ preferred Deopfer LMK4+) to make the most responsive, true and inspiring set of instruments.

FOR MORE INFO AND TO BUY GO HERE



Balanced to give you an ultra-realistic experience that is robust and scaleable to differently powered systems. Use the fullest version on your main rig, the cut back version on your laptop for use on the red-eye from LA to New York. You can hype the quieter layers in a specially prepared “soft” patch and we have some extraordinarily quiet articulations for you to investigate. With the release edition there are 16 mic positions with the tree offering up a lush contextual position ideal for larger orchestral arrangements, highly useful 'mid range' that couple the intimacy of the piano with the beautiful wide screen effect of the hall, to a series of close “spot” stereo mic pairs, engulfed by the huge instrument to give you a pure and intimate recording. There is also a huge array of effects and playable "additional techniques" instruments that feature the talents of first-call pianist Simon Chamberlain and percussion supremo Paul Clarvis utilising many different techniques and a large supply of cotton buds and paper clips!

This is a big-daddy of a tool, the Bugatti Veyron of virtual instruments, the Concorde of sampleware. If you write scores on, or for piano, and feel you deserve a piece of production history that has cost considerably more than buying a concert grand of your own. If you feel respect and admire the craftmanship that goes into making something truly special? Then you deserve HZP.




FOR MORE INFO AND TO BUY GO HERE

PRESETS / ARTICULATIONS
INSTRUMENTS:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Full and Bright (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Full and Bright (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Full and Bright (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Full and Bright
MIC SELECTIONS:

  • LIGHT AND BRIGHT:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Light and Bright (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Light and Bright (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Light and Bright (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Light and Bright
LOW AND WEIGHTED:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Low and Weighted (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Low and Weighted (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Low and Weighted (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Low and Weighted
WARM AND ROUNDED:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Warm and Rounded (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Warm and Rounded (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Warm and Rounded (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Warm and Rounded
MIC SETS:

  • MID MICS:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Mids (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Mids (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Mids (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Mids
SPOT MICS:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Mids (Various FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Spots (Percussive FX)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Spots (Super Soft)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano - Spots
DISTANCE COMPENSATED SIGNALS:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Alt room)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Bottle)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Far Gallery)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid A)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid B)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid C)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid D)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Near Gallery)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Outriggers)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Room)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot A)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot B)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot C)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot D)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Surround)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Tree)
INDIVIDUAL SIGNALS:
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Alt room)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Bottle)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Far Gallery)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid A)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid B)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid C)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Mid D)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Near Gallery)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Outriggers)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Room)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot A)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot B)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot C)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Spot D)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Surround)
  • Hans Zimmer Piano (Tree)
MICS & MIXES
MICS
  • Spot A
  • Spot B
  • Spot C
  • Spot D
  • Mid A
  • Mid B
  • Mid C
  • Mid D
  • Tree
  • Outriggers
  • Surounds
  • Room
  • Room Alt
  • Gallery Near
  • Gallery Far
  • Bottle
FOR MORE INFO AND TO BUY GO HERE

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...and for those of you who are tight on hard drive space here's a useful sample management tutorial from Paul:

 
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211.2 GB disk space required, holy crap....

My thoughts exactly. The price didn't put me off, it's within my expectations (and very reasonable considering the amount of £ that Paul, Christian, and the SF team sunk into this), but the sheer footprint is what I'm concerned with.

Spitfire -

I skimmed through the site, and didn't see note of this - how will the instrument be delivered? In one large product, or will there be separate downloads with some logical division, like per mic selection, like there was with HZP? If there is some way to only download chunks at a time based on need, that would be really be of great benefit (for me at least).

Incredible work! This must have been a fun project. Congrats on the release.
 
It sounds truly beautiful. Does it support performance nuances like repedalling and half pedaling?
 
Beautiful sound, considering the size of the package but looking at the individual patches memory footprint, I wonder if making this available in smaller individual libraries is an option. ?
 
It sounds truly beautiful. Does it support performance nuances like repedalling and half pedaling?
Exactly my question. I would have liked any information regarding that in the walkthrough as well as some example of short note seqences in low and mid register to see, how well it works ín orchestral context. And information on velocity layers and RRs would be grreat, too! Still in the market for a beautyful instrument recorded on stage, but it has to have all kinds of features that modern piano VIs give me. Apart form the nice sound design parts, I am not sure, if the HzP really has these ...
 
Wow. Gorgeous sound! They really did a good job of capturing pristine spot samples - and the other mics speak for themselves.
 
Spitfire I truly hope you didn't scrape and bang that gorgeous Steinway for the FX patches. :)
 
Just watched the walkthrough. Beautiful library, Spitfire!

I'm curious how this compares to one of Native Instruments deep sampled pianos
 
Wow. Christmas comes early :2thumbs:Waiting for the library to show up in the library manager. Can't wait to play with this!

Miguel
 
Meant to add - my god Andy, can I pay you all my money to steal 1% of your musical ability?

(do you tutor?)
 
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