Topic: Native Instruments UNA CORDA
While visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, traveling with my tablet computer, X-Key 37 keyboard, and a pair of folding MEelectronics earphones, I took advantage of the Native Instruments Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale and bought the David Klavins' UNA CORDA instrument for Kontakt for $75 instead of $150. Having heard various YouTube clips of it previously, the purity of the concept was intriguing. I have previously worked through Pianoteq to try to simulate its sound through Preset modifications, but not done a great job.
At 10 GB, the sampled item is quite large. Three sampled sets are included: the "pure" instrument, and then one sampled set each with a curtain of cotton and then a curtain of felt between the hammers and the strings. There are many ways to tweak the sound, including the standard resonances, reverb, etc., as well as ways to tweak the mechanical sounds of the open-framed piano. Each of their three sample sets comes with various presets, some excellent, and some annoying. So far my favorites are: Pure Instrument (Basic, Church Organ, Compressed Wool); Felt Instrument (Basic, Sad, Tremolo Rhodes); and Cotton (Basic, Light Swell).
At my stage in the 'learning piano' business (not actually my business), I often play simple tunes and simple improvisations - the Una Corda is quite elegant for this, as it has a haunting sparsity to it. Even standards, like Summertime, played as a solo right-handed melody, or over a single left-handed harmony note series instead of full chords, takes on an almost eerie yet gripping importance on such an instrument. It's kind of like a clarinet or saxophone version of a piano - those instruments do quite well with single tones and no accompaniment - the Una Corda brings that type of beautiful sparsity for the piano world.
