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Get A FREE Grand Piano From The Crow Hill Company

By 16 Comments3 Mins Read
The Crow Hill Compay launches its Vaults series with the FREE Attic Grand piano

The Crow Hill Company launches its Vaults series with the FREE Attic Grand piano.

The Crow Hill Company is a project led by Christian Henson, formerly of Spitfire Audio, while Vaults is a series of plugins that host exclusive sounds, like Attic Grand.

As I understand, there will be various Vaults that you can subscribe to in order to access everything inside. The first Vault (Vaults Beta) containing Attic Grand is free and always will be, but other Vaults require a paid subscription.

YouTube video

The Crow Hill Company will continue to add new items to the free Vault but will also remove items over time. Anything you take from the free Vault is yours for life; just make sure you take what you want while it’s available.

Attic Grand is something of a happy accident that comes from some forgotten, dusty old recordings.

In 2008, Christian sampled a piano with the celeste pedal down; the result was a virtual instrument named The Felt Piano (later The Soft Piano) that has been downloaded over three million times.

While going through the master recordings from that 2008 session, Christian found some unused material that has since become Attic Grand.

YouTube video

Attic Grand is one of those pianos that won’t be perfect for everything because it has a distinct character, but it sounds lovely.

The piano is quite lush and dreamy, but more in a nostalgic way than being overly polished or refined. It’s a piano that helps you make simple harmony and melody sound great by letting that beautiful character ring out.

The neat GUI features six macros, two large central sliders, and four control knobs below.

The first two macros control Reverse and Offset.

Reverse piano is a sound I love when used well, and one of the cool things about this particular instrument is that the reverse effect is less pronounced further down the keyboard to avoid becoming too muddy.

The offset macro allows you to adjust the tightness of the piano action.

The remaining macros are Smash, Hair, Echo, and Splosh.

Smash adds a combination of limiters and compressors in a not-so-subtle way. Hair adds crunch based on a British combo amp and upper harmonics that help the piano sit in a mix better. The Echo and Splosh macros are interesting because you can reverse the order and have the reverb before the echo or vice versa.

It’s a lovely piano, and given its history, it’s a fitting debut for The Crow Hill Company. Sign up, and Attic Piano and future freebies are yours.

Our Milestone Madness giveaway is almost over, but there’s still a little time before we announce the winners; if you haven’t entered yet, go now!

The Vaults Beta plugin is available in AU, VST, VST3, and AAX formats for macOS and Windows.

Download: Vaults Beta (FREE / Sign-up required)

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James is a musician and writer from Scotland. An avid synth fan, sound designer, and coffee drinker. Sometimes found wandering around Europe with an MPC in hand.

16 Comments

  1. ER

     on

    This is not necessary to post it here (unless you want to).

    Just in case. This is what i got from my antivirus. What do you think? Thank you:

    “Infected web resource detected
    11 minutes ago

    Feature:
    Online Threat Prevention

    We blocked this dangerous page for your protection:
    https://thecrowhillcompany.com/
    Accessed by: dwnetfilter.exe
    Dangerous pages attempt to install software that can harm the device, gather personal information or operate without your consen”

  2. Zach Bennoui

     on

    Did he ever publicly apologize for the tweet he made last year? I feel a little weird about using this to be completely honest after learning the whole story. I’ll probably still check it out, but I hope he’s been learning and educating himself.

    • Oliver

       on

      Can’t you just leave the damn politics out of this? Is it so hard to just talk about the topic that connects us all…? M U S I C !!!

      BPB is the only place where I am not bothered with any “opinions” that have nothing to do with the actual topic. Use the plugin or not if you can sleep better with it. But leave the damn politic out of this. Thank you!

      Make music, not politics!

      It’s not that hard.

      Respectfully, Oliver

      • al

         on

        Christian (and anyone else for that matter) doesn’t owe anyone an apology just for having an opinion. He already resigned from Spitfire and suffered a ton of fallout from it. It might not be a popular opinion these days but people are actually allowed to believe what they want

        • Will Clay

           on

          Christian has nothing to apologise for, I agree. It’s Spitfire Audio that need to check their heads…

      • Radiofloyd

         on

        I’ve got trans friends. They don’t get to escape the “politics” of a dude’s transphobic rampage, they just have to live with further fear of the erosion of their rights.

        This isn’t just a difference in opinion, politics affects real people, and it’s important to realize that.

        It’s disappointing seeing people dismiss someone calling all trans people groomed autistic victims.

        • Adam

           on

          Well, pitty for you. I have a question : why all regular people are nicknamed because they have their own mind and vision of the world by people of rainbow society ? It’s not right to treat others like that. Developers are real people. We are here not for politycs and if your friends are not here why to even mention? Do they make any music or just consume what big million $ labels give them? Here is blog and forum for people who are aside from all that world crap, sitting in their bedroom, trying to make better music. Please for the record don’t break in this society with your own vision of the world but insted keep it for yourself. Peace

    • Nick

       on

      Are you serious? He put time and effort on creating a product that offers you for free and you “feel a little weird about using” it, because of an old tweet that didn’t allign with your political views?…
      You can’t be serious.

      Obviously, Christian is not the problem here…

  3. Bani

     on

    Hi guys. Thank you for posting about this!

    I want to let you know that I can’t watch the videos, it throws a gray screen and an error. So I can’t hear how the plugin sounds. Not complaining, obviously, I can just look it up on youtube.

  6. JEP1928

     on

    I can’t do that politics again, it so bothersome to read or listen these, just let go the flow and make music. It’s not worth your energy to create some controversies out of this Pandora’s box.