Plucked Piano - Manual
Contents
1. USER MANUAL Welcome Thanks for being part of the Spitfire Audio project We ve tried to make this as brief and interesting as possible but we also understand that reading manuals is a bore so stick this next to your loo and give it a read whenever you can About Spitfire Spitfire was formed in 2008 by a group of successful British composers as a means of producing the tools they needed for their busy work schedules Sick of dry humourless ugly unrealistic sounding libraries Spitfire set about redefining the way samples were created Our aim is to reproduce the conditions of top movie recording sessions and approach sampling as if we were record ing a film score one note at a time To record performances and parts thereof not scientifically created samples To capture the timbre of a world class set of players but also to record the room they were playing in If you are wanting perfectly tuned normalised or dry samples you have probably come to the wrong place For here you may find the odd string squeak a fruity note and lots and lots of room but put the whole package to gether write some fierce music and suddenly this library and our approach will make perfect sense About Plucked Piano As composers were always on that quest to find a lead string instrument that does the job of a piano harp or guitar without sounding like one without having the stereotypical association Or indeed t2. ENVELOPE WOBBLES FILTERS FREQ 0 01Hz FREQ 0 01Hz FREQ 0 01Hz X None LI PORT GLIDE J AMT S Y Mone FX k Rewerb 10 10 THE PLUCKED PIANO MERCURY SYNTH Although these sound excellent out of the box we ve also given you an easy to use and ingenious front panel 1 Lo amp Hi Pass Filters LPF Low HPF Hi For some a counter intuitive industry standard in titling Adjust the graph on the LPF to chop off the top end HPF to chop off the bottom So if you want to reduce your fizzing synth sound to a muted sub tone just drag the LPF graph from right to left 2 Wobble Amount Three modulator windows that give you wobble or sometimes WAB WAB WAB Adjust the AMT to effect the amount of WAB WAB 3 Wobble Frequency Adjust the graph to change the frequency or speed of your wobbles For tempo syncd modulators this will tune coarsely to provide you with 8th triplet 16th etc etc 4 A D S R Attack Decay Sustain Release envelope These knobs will adjust the shape of the sound from a volume point of view Adjust attack to make the sound come thudding in or gradually fade in Adjust release to make the sound go from a sharp end or off to a gradual decay For an 808 style bass pull up one of the subbier sounds and pull the attack all the way to the right Then release to about mid way to taste and play some short notes 5 FX Parameter Display We ve pre loaded a selection of FX Activate
3. by clicking the FX icons along this bar 6 Portamento Glide On Off Toggle Click this to make the sound monophonic so you only can play one note at a time and to activate the portamento glide function 7 Portamento Glide Amount Now that your Glide toggle is on hold one key down and whilst holding press another Because you re in monophonic mode the sound will transition from the first pitch you depressed to the second this fader controls the time this transition takes 8 Yoke X amp Y FX Selector The yoke 10 is a dual FX controller that adjusts your FX parameters in real time for fantastic sequenc ing options Y vertical controller X horizontal Scroll down to select which FX you wish to control 9 Yoke X amp Y FX Parameter Selector Determines which parameter from your selected FX you wish to map to the X or Y yoke controller You can also alter the FX parameters further and map them directly to the Yoke controller right ctrl click by accessing the additional FX parameter Bar Command Right Click on the FX Icon youd like to acces ad ditional parameters for OQ uo Q O Time Damp Pan Feedb Dry Wet Map to Yoke Y 11 A OUICK THANKS Christian 8 Paul would like to thank the cabal of genius assembled herein To Dominic Kelly and the sear ing talents of the English Session Orchestra to Alison Burton and the whole of the Air Studios team To Jake Jackson for wrangling and controlling this beast To the remar
4. cked Piano In cluded in your download email are some detailed installation instructions please follow these carefully before going any further We ll see you back here when youre installed GETTING STARTED Before opening Kontakt please make sure you have THE LATEST VERSION OF KONTAKT 4 2 4 OR 5 IN STALLED 95 of all service enquiries relating to spurious or strange behaviour of our wares are solved by installing the most recent version As this is NOT a Kontakt Player Library YOU WILL NOT SEE THE MODULE IN THE LIBRARY PANE Simply navigate to the Plucked Piano via the File browser pane If you have never used Kontakt before we wholeheartedly recommend your familiarise yourself with the basics of patch or instrument loading multi management outputting and MIDI routing detailed in the Kontakt user manual provided with your copy of Kontakt or in the documentation folder of your Kontakt file THE FRONT PANEL GENERAL CONTROLS MIC MIX POSITIONS gt Plucked Piano Output st 1 amp Voces Plax 32 SPITFIRE 6 Midi Ch A 1 tt Memory 0 93 MB OPTIONS RE HE Presets Purge unused Transpose 0 EXPRESSION CONTROLS Purge ROUND ROBIN amp LEGATO i No extra functiona O CC1 mapped vel PAGE 6 ARTICULATIONS AND ADVANCED STAVE CU controlled RAM CHIPS The chips beneath the articulations denote load status of the articulations If you play an art
5. hat can play like a dulcimer or cimbalom but doesn t have the geographical connection or insinuation So spitfire took quarter of a million pounds worth of concert grand heard on countless film scores from Harry Potter to Inception and well we plucked it Recorded by Jake Jackson at Lyndhurst Hall Air Studios on one of the finest scoring stages in the world through an array of priceless vintage microphones via Neve Montserrat pre amps to a beautifully serviced Studer 2 tape machine and then into digital at 96k via the best Prism AD converters this is an unparalleled signal chain We ve sampled the full range of the piano diatonically with two pluckung styles finger pad and nail with a selection of mic positions for you to mix to get up front and personal Or a more contextual perspective that will mix seem lessly in with your Albion and BML ranges of orchestral tools Whats more we ve included both direct and tape signals for if youd prefer pristine and clean to that rounded top and tidy bottom of tape System Reguirements KONTAKT PLUCKED PIANO IS NOT A KONTAKT PLAYER LIBRARY PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A FULL VERSION OF KONTAKT Please also make sure you have the absolute latest version 98 of all enquiries to our support dept are cured by the upgrade This is a cutting edge library and it simply wont work on anything but the latest version RECOMMENDED SPEC The better your computer the better the performance of the P
6. iculation that isn t loaded the front panel will alert you Click on the memory chip to load AW Make sure Kontakt displays the instrument load status as pictured If the left hand bar is illuminated and red its in a queue and hasn t started loading yet if the middle bar is lit and yellow the instrument is still loading up To save on RAM you may wish to unload articulations click off the chip to unload and it will become greyed out ARTICULATIONS Click on these notes to select the different articulations or indeed press their associated key switches There are four articulations to choose from Direct Mod Wheel Xfade that mixes between finger pad and Paul s poor nails via CC1 Modulation Wheel control or Direct Veloc ity Controlled which switches between these two sample sets depending how hard you play These are both direct ADD signals for the cleanest recording These two sets have also been recorded onto the pristinely maintained Studer tape machine for that rounded top tidy bottom and general analogue love To access these articulations click on the icons with the tape images SIDE BAR DISPLAY AND ADVANCE TOOLS On the left of your articulation stanza is a side bar that displays the name of the articulation youre cur rently playing Beneath it are three options KEYSWITCH SHIMMIER This shimmys the position of all the keyswitches left or right by clicking and dragging while holding the mouse button down c
7. kable talents immense intellect and invention of Stanley Gabriel and Blake Robinson oh and of course Paul Thomsons poor finger nails Most of all wed like to thank the amazing support and loyalty of our user base our Facebook friends and eve ryone on VI Control We are in the same boat as all of you We re not software developers by trade so appreciate your honesty in pay ing your way to be a part of our family and not distributing this illegally But more importantly if you have any ideas or criticism please let us know directly via our website and in a constructive manner You never know you just may have thought of something that we hadnt considered We want to make our entire range the best there is and we rely on you to help us achieve that With thanks Christian amp Paul COPYRIGHT SPITFIRE AUDIO LLP 2013 www spitfireaudio com
8. lucked Piano But not to worry if you re not specd up to the hilt All programs are provided with a set of parameters that enable you to tone back the CPU de mands of any given patch But moving forward we re confident this module will keep your computer busy for many years to come We recommend a combination of high processor speeds a good chunk of memory and a devoted 7200rpm eSata USBII Thunderbolt or Firewire audio drive The more memory you have the less demand placed on your drive and having a totally devoted drive gives you the chance to load less into memory and reduce load times The higher the speed of your CPU the more capable your computer will be to deal with some of the amazing but complicated scripts we ve written PGs We recommend an i5 or i7 Quad or 8 Core machine with 8 Gig or above memory Vista 64 or Windows 7 However it will work with SP2 Pentium or Athlon XP 1 4GHz 1Gig RAM MACs We recommend a Mac Pro Intel Based Dual Quad or 8 Core machine with 8 Gig or above memory Mac OS 10 6 1 Snow Leopard However we have made the module work satisfactorily on a Mac Mini 2 4 GHz anda MacBook Pro 2 4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo DRIVES Firewire USBII or eSata 7200rpm Ask your dealer for drives that are suitable for AV use We always recom mend as small a drive as possible as the platter will be smaller and the seek time less The library will eventu ally take up 25 Gig on your hard drive If using several large lib
9. nload the mics conversely turning the fader back up will reload MICROPHONES MIXES Right Ctrl click on mics to change Kontakt channel output assignment C Close mics A selection of valve mics placed for optimum focus close to the instruments This mic control is great to add in for added definition and at times a bit of rounding of sound in isolation it can be a way of achieving a more intimate or pop music style sound T Tree This refers to the Decca tree of three mics placed above the conductors podium In the case of Albion 3 priceless vintage Neumann M50s These are placed to give the ultimate sound of the band and hall These are the default mic position that loads in with each patch A Ambient A set of condenser mics placed high up in the gallery away from the band This mic position gives a massive amount of stereo spread and room sound over the band Great mixed in with the other mics but also ideal fed to your Ls amp Rs speaker sends for true surround information O Outriggers A set of vintage AKG C20s placed wide apart to the left and right of the tree These give a similar balance of room and band but with a broader stereo spread The effect of this mic is somewhere between the tree and ambient mics PAGE 9 PLUCKED PIANO MERCURY SYNTH N gt Pluckospnere Synth NastySwel 4 h Tune Output st di Voices OF az Purge SPITFIRE Midi Ch A 1 f Memory 10 38 kB
10. onvenient if you re creating your own multi instruments and dont want to hit keyswitches by mistake KEYSWITCH TO CC SELECTOR Use this to assign a CC controller to act as articulation key switcher Click on CC and you ll be prompted to move the controller you wish to use in order for the instrument to learn how youd like to select articulations ARTICULATION LOCK Many composers like to have a single articulation loaded to each instance of an instrument Once you have unloaded all unwanted samples and have settled to your preferred articulation click this to lock so you can t accidentally hit keyswitches and suddenly become mute This way of working is particularly vital if you re using slave computers where not all UIs will be instantly visible to you use this in conjunction with the template builder presets PAGE 7 OPTIONS FOUND ROBIN amp LEGATO ma Presets Neighbour zone RR GENERAL CONTROLS a Purge unused Resetonkey F 1 Transpose 0 Reset on transport OPTIONS O CC1 mapped vel PRESETS This allows you to load predetermined sets of articulations affectionately called Brush Sets quickly and easily to optimise your system speedily for essential articulations or to start building templates using empty shells PURGE UNUSED This control keeps unloading any samples you are not using to keep your memory usage as low as possible TRANSPOSE Toggle this on and tweak the numbe
11. r to the right to transpose your instrument Please note that this is not the same as tuning the instrument will actually offset the samples to the selected pitch CC1 MAPPED VEL OCITY Click this to have velocity controlled dynamics for the shorts for in stance mapped to CC1 as it is with the longs ROUND ROBINS amp LEGATO ROUND ROBINS This refers to the number of round robins multiple instances of the same notes that cycle around as you repeatedly play a note this can be toggled on or off RESET FROM F7 This enables you to control the round robin cycle so it sounds identical every time you play toggle on amp play the key selected default FO to reset RESET ON TRANSPORT As above but resets every time you press play Genius EXPRESSION CONTROLS CONTROLLERS Dynamics Visual representation of the various expression controllers available to you m Right ctrl click to reassign learn different controller assignments DYNAMICS For use with the velocity controlled patches EXPRESSION DEFAULT CC11 For Modwheel XFade patches This controls the amount of finger nail versus finger pad PAGE 8 MIC MEX J db Inm MICROPHONE MIX SETTINGS Welcome to the wonderful world of Air Studios and the mixes of our chief engineer Jake Jackson Use the blobs beneath the faders to load unload different microphones and the faders above to tweak the balance of them Turning a fader all the way down will also u
12. raries or a number of Spitfire modules from the same machine we really recommend having your samples distributed over a number of drives W highly recommend Lacie eSata or Quadras 7200rpm Moreover an exciting development lies in the recent arrival of some amazing solid state SSD drives With seek times reduced to a fraction 0 1ms vs 6 9ms of what stand ard drives can offer we are certain you will be able to reduce your sampler s pre load page 24 buffer tenfold meaning you ll be able to load enormous orchestral palettes into a single machine HOST The Kontakt 4 platform should work comfortably on most commonly found platforms and DAWs As always make sure youre as up to date as you can afford If you re planning on building or adding Spitfire to an already large orchestral palette we recommend running your library independently of your DAW either on your host computer e g via Re Wire or on a slave device e g via Midi or MOL This will assist your load in times and will allow your DAW to do what it does best sort out all your note ons and note offs We heartily endorse Plogue Bidule www plogue com as a virtual rack routing system For more advice and information about setting up please check our website CONTENTS INSTALLATION 8 GETTING STARTED THE FRONT PANEL MERCURY SYNTH A OUICK THANKS 05 06 10 12 INSTALLATION Because youre reading this manual we can presume you have successfully downloaded Plu
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