Instruments

Ships Piano

Available for £15.00

Kontakt 2/3 , EXS, Reason Combinator Soundfont

Audio Example:

Pendle Poucher – Ships Piano Demo

Buy via Paypal http://sound-dust.co.uk/audio/ships_piano_demo_pendle_poucher.mp3

I’ve meticulously sampled every usable white note binaurally with 4 and sometimes 5 velocity layers for 155mb of 16bit samples.

Here’s another small, slightly portable and largely neglected keyboard instrument. Designed by JB Cramer and Sons of London in the late 1800’s, the ships piano (or yacht piano) was built especially for the cramped confines of Victorian pleasure boats. The perfect thing for a little sea bound entertainment in the good old pre-ipod days of the empire.
International adventurer Captain Robert Scott (of the Antarctic ) was apparently a fan and always had one onboard for those times when a hearty, spirit lifting sing-along was just the ticket. James Joyce also briefly mentions a ships piano in his book  The Dubliners…. which must be worth a few cool points.

Other than that these things are very rare and pretty much ignored these days.

A ships piano is basically a tiny rudimentary upright piano with a five octave keyboard that folds upwards to save space. It has no bottom half and sits either on a low table or a stand with a small leather and chain contraption dangling from its bottom that loops around the foot for the sustain pedal.

Because of its small frame size it struggles with low notes so the bass strings are very wide gauge and particularly flabby, resulting in a strange almost atonal metallic sound in the lower reaches.

The ships piano is no Blüthner or Steinway, and there’s no chance of extracting rich sonorous tones from this fella …but its charming simplicity has lots and lots of useful character. Its very plinky without being too plonky….if you know what I mean.

One thought on “Ships Piano

  1. Sam Kidel says:

    This is a really great virtual instrument. So fragile and crisp.

    If you listen REALLY carefully there are ghosts of children playing in the background of the mid/upper register! Very easy to mask with a little reverb, but I like to leave it in there… ghost in the machine.

    This has become my go-to virtual piano, so much more interesting than the multi-sampled concert pianos I had used before. I highly recommend it!

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