Augmented Piano by UVI Review

Augmented Piano by UVI is a prepared piano that differs from your normal piano. The beauty of this piano is driven by the total opposite of traditional piano tone. Those sounds which can be still related to a piano is most cases spicy up your score and help to drive home the emotion.

If you wonder what a prepared piano is? This is an instrument where the piano sound has been altered by putting objects between or on the strings or playing the strings not with the hammer in the piano. UVI did send a review copy with no strings attached.

Installation

You register the new piano with the provided codes at UVI directly, activate it in your iLok account and you are ready to use the instrument in UVI’s Falcon or Workstation.

Sound

Prepared pianos and especially when recorded and served in more than 20 preparations. all recorded and based on a 1909 Pleyel grand piano which was used in a different way. The 1909 Pleyel was played with a bow, picked like a guitar, with Una Corda pedal pressed, screws placed between the strings or plucked with fingers. Overall there are 24 unusual ways this piano was recorded in.

It’s an inspiring set of sounds that range from beautifully recorded traditional piano to new, eclectic and avant-garde tones ready to breathe life into your music by taking the sound of the piano further than it’s ever been. In a nutshell, you gain access to a phenomenal range of effects and atmospherics piano sounds.

This is not your bread‑and‑butter piano instrument, Augmented Piano is that instrument that you pull out to make an impression or have it sit in the background to support your song or score.

UVI did prepare the piano in many different ways: Bow, Brush Slide, Brush Tap, Caps, Coin, eBow, Finger, Finger Muted, Harmonics, Key Noise, Metal Foil, Metal Sticks, Muted, Normal, Pick, Pick Muted, Rubber, Screws, Structural Effects, Tack, Tacked Muted, Una Corda, Wallet, Wood Stick and mixed preparations. All have a different tone and that gives you the flexibility that you expect from such a piano with so many options.

To my astonishment the normal version of the piano that is also included sounded stellar great, I did not expect that the source piano would produce such a touching and lovely sound.

Some patches are so augmented that I first thought I listed to a hardware synth, the Slow Sweep Bow patch is a good example of that sound.

I can really only suggest going through all different patches, sometime the sound you can generate will amaze you some will just blast you away.

User interface & Usability

UVI uses the UVI Workstation and Falcon software as a player, the interface is clean and easy to use, as with other reviews of other libraries of this developer UVI has found a good way to design interfaces.

Rating:  Five out of five stars

I admire prepared pianos, Augmented Piano is a very nice addition to an uplifting sonic hybrid space where you need expressive instruments. You can use Augmented Piano to transport a specific emotion in a truly musical‑sounding way.

UVI second version of a prepared piano resulted in a dramatic piano version that fit very well when you score to picture or just need that extra new timbre in your composition. The normal version of this piano are also included and they sound astonishing as well.