Today marks 25 years since the world lost one of the greatest rock singers/songwriters of all time. Freddie Mercury will always be remembered for his amazing stage presence, singing ability and most importantly, the music he wrote and recorded with Queen from the early 1970's to early 1990's. Today, Wavesfactory launch a new piano library called Mercury that I feel celebrates Freddie's piano sound and style.
Over the last year, Wavesfactory has developed a new piano sample library for Kontakt based on a Fazioli grand piano Freddie actually owned. The piano is currently situated at Metropolis Studios in London. Metropolis was also the studio used for sampling the piano.
Do We Need Another Piano VI?
Over recent years I have all but stopped using piano VI's as I am fortunate enough to have a very decent Kawai upright in my studio that lends itself well to being mic'd. On the rare occasion when my Kawai doesn't fit a production, for tonal reasons, I'll find myself reaching for piano VIs as I'll be looking for a piano sound/tone more fitting to the song I am working on. After hearing the examples of Mercury I must say that I am really impressed with the tonality and depth to the sound and in answer to "Do we need another piano VI?"... Yes, especially when a new piano library sound as good as this one. I am very much looking forward to trying the Mercury VI out, watch this space for a video review in the coming weeks.
Sampled With Five Microphone Positions
- Ultra close
- Close
- Mono
- Mid
- Far
These five microphone positions should provide users with a very large tonal pallet to mix with. Listen to the Mercury examples produced by Wavesfactory. You may recognise the tone of the piano in some of the examples as in recent years the piano from which this library was sampled was used to record "Hello" by Adele.
Main Features
- Classy GUI design that not only looks great but also is quick and simple to use
- HQ mode for seamless transition between velocity layers
- Sampled with eight dynamics (soft-hard) with HQ mode expanding velocity layers to 127 for extra details and depth to dynamics
- Built-in mixer including controls for pan, volume, stereo width. Can even output to tracks in DAW
- Flip player perspective feature
- Kontakt NKS support
- Unquie position enhanced fader control that increases one mic at a time whilst turning down other microphones
- 4 built-in effects - Metropolis Plates Reverbs, Compressor, EQ & Chorus
- Round Robin engine for authentic playing and sound
- Global velocity control
- Piano mechanical noises sampled with options to turn off
The Making Of Mercury
Watch The Making Of Mercury video by Wavefactory to get a glimpse inside Metropolis Studios and to see the gear used for recording Freddie's piano.
Price
Mercury is available to purchase/download from the Wavesfactory website at a special €99 introductory price (regular €149 after 1st December)