Free Upright Piano SFZ Library Released By Rudi Fiasco

Italian pianist and audio engineer Rudi Fiasco has announced the release of K18 Upright Piano, a free multi-sampled upright piano sound library in SFZ/WAV format.

This is a relatively lightweight upright piano sample library (939 MB in size when extracted) containing 212 audio samples in total (24-bit WAV). Featuring four sampled notes per octave and seven velocity layers per sampled note, the library pretty much hits the sweet spot between audio quality and performance optimization. It sounds natural while not consuming a lot of RAM resources. Apart from the sampled notes, the author has also included the pedal on/off samples, which is a nice touch.

The samples were captured using a pair of Samson C02 small diaphragm condenser microphones that were hooked up to a Focusrite Sapphire 6 USB audio interface. Cockos Reaper was used as the DAW for editing and organizing the recorded samples. The entire project is the practical part of a thesis that Rudi has recently proposed during the last course of his masters degree studies.

The captured samples sound very good and it is actually quite refreshing to play a lightweight upright piano sample library as opposed to huge deeply sampled grand pianos such as Piano in 162 (not saying that Ivy Audio’s grand piano library isn’t absolutely amazing in its own right). The library loads very quickly and it sounds rather convincing, especially with a bit of EQ and some subtle reverb added in post.

I haven’t encountered any issues while testing the provided SFZ patch in Plogue sforzando and Beat Zampler. Being that the included WAV samples are clearly labeled and organized, building your own custom patches for other samplers shouldn’t be a problem either, although the included SFZ format patch is already compatible with a wide variety of freeware and commercial sampler instruments on the market.

The library is available for direct free download on Rudi Fiasco’s artist website linked below. The website is in Italian, but it’s easy to navigate so the language shouldn’t be a problem for downloading this excellent freebie. Simply click the Soundware button in the main menu and hit the download link to grab your free copy of the library. No registration or signup required.

K18 Upright Piano is available for free download via Rudi Fiasco’s website (553 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 212 upright piano samples in 24-bit WAV format).