Westwood Instruments Alt Grand [KONTAKT]

A grand piano beyond tradition

Alt Grand is a unique relic from the 1930s. Filled with the music and memories from almost 100 years of performance.

Captured with and without felt and can be blended for a completely individual sound. With dozens of controls at your fingertips to completely alter the sound and vibe, Alt Grand offers remarkable flexibility. This is a highly detailed and playable piano, recorded through multiple microphones to reveal all of its distinctive personality.

The original recordings have been transformed into over 20 transformative textural layers that can create subtle background ambience or stand alone as atmospheric organic sounds.

An unbelievably valuable addition to your toolkit, this is a grand piano sample library that delivers years of character and extensive tone-shaping possibilities. A must-have for anyone looking for a highly versatile and adaptable piano – from cinema-filling soundtracks to songwriting and modern production.

Natural or felted (or somewhere in-between)

As has been applauded and loved in Alt Piano, we recorded Alt Grand with and without felt. Providing you with two very different and versatile characters. Felting a grand piano is meticulous work and we spent ages on getting the weight and placement of felt just right for every single octave (and in some cases each note).

The natural sound of the piano without felt is bold and open, with the felted recordings much gentler and warmer.

But best of all, you don’t have to choose. There’s a control which lets you blend between the two recordings to dial in a sound that suits you.

Transformative textures

As with most of our sample libraries, we love to create new sounds from the original instruments. Pushing the boundaries and crafting original sounds. With Alt Grand there are 23 brand new textures made from the source recordings. Tape, guitar pedals and some other unusual methods to create a range of incredible sounds.

These can be used in the background behind the piano to create an atmospheric sub-layer. Or they can be used front and centre on their own as a organic synth-like tone.

Each sound has its own unique secondary layer which can be accessed using the Texture slider. What happens is different on every texture and can be used to morph and manipulate the character of sound.

Behind the sampling

We searched for years for the right grand piano and finally found this beautiful 1930s Chappell grand piano. It was shipped all the way to our second home, Nave Studios, where we spent days sampling it. There are plenty of velocity layers, 3 round robins, pedal up and pedal down samples as well as the complete set of felted samples too. A meticulous task but totally worth it.

Recorded in Studio 1, a live room which has a warm and immediate sound. Captured through vintage Neumann and AKG microphones, a rack of Neve 1073 pre-amps and an AMEK Rembrandt desk.

You can choose between 3 production-ready mixes or create your own mix from 5 discrete microphone positions. An incredible tone that captures all the nuance of this piano.