by Border Audio
Piano Macro – Contact microphones have a wonderful way of completely transforming their subject.
They touch the sound source, giving us the most intimate, honest and fragile means of recording possible.
A magical sound rarely heard.
Piano macro is an upright piano filtered through this delicate lens.
An instrument with a real story to tell, it has been meticulously sampled and arranged into an inspiring, user-friendly, truly one-of-a-kind musical tool.
Please note: FULL retail version of Kontakt 7.6.1 or later is required. NOT for Kontakt Player.
$18.00 $45.00
Piano macro lets you blend and independently pan two simultaneous signals.
“Contact” controls the contact microphone’s signal, while “distance” lets you balance this with a more rounded and traditional dynamic mic.
Run this through some easy-access effects processing, and that’s it!
No menu-diving; no analysis paralysis; all inspiration.
Groundbreaking use of contact microphones gives piano macro an ultra-intimate personality all of its own.
A “stethoscopic” take on a beautiful piano with years of history.
Perfect for intimate melodies in cinematic, ambient and lofi compositions.
It all started when I decided to make an album using nothing but contact microphones.
They enable a totally unique form of listening, and I soon became obsessed.
All of a sudden everything is an instrument: water, cans, paper, and everything in between.
But people overlook “real” instruments through contact microphones.
You can’t get any closer to an instrument than actually touching it, and so you really can’t get any more intimate either.
All of the microscopic sounds of materials and mechanics and movement are suddenly revealed.
It is totally transformative.
Long after the album was finished, I never forgot the particularly special sound of a piano through a contact microphone.
And so, many months later on a rainy December evening, I sat at the piano.
A beautiful, dusty knight upright which used to sit in the hall of my primary school – and begun to sample note after plaintive note through the delicate, all-hearing ear of my contact microphone.
Realising I was no longer restricted to using exclusively contact microphones, I decided to supplement closeness with distance.
A dynamic microphone supports the contact microphone, balancing its magnification with a more balanced, rounded sound.
