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Native Instruments Alicia's Keys Sale Plugin Boutique 12th Anniversary (Exclusive) for $13

Larry Shelby

By Larry Shelby
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PavlovsCat

PavlovsCat

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13 bucks? Insta buy for me (I bought it as soon as I saw the deal, although I can't help but wonder if it will end up in the next KOMPLETE standard,  which I faithfully by with each new version). I've contemplated buying this in the past, but never picked it up. At this price, it was a no-brainer. 

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bitflipper

bitflipper

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Almost 40 years ago I bought my first acoustic piano, a baby grand made in Korea by Yeoung Chang.

It was the most expensive thing I'd ever purchased short of my first home, so I had to finance it over 10 years. While I was in the piano store waiting for the contract to be drawn up, I walked around the room plinking on every piano in there. When I sat down at one of them, the hairs on my arms stood up. It was incredibly responsive and had a lightning-fast action. But it was the amazing tone that got me excited, bright and harmonically rich. I ran to the sales office and said "hold everything! I fear I'm about to make a big mistake - I have found the perfect piano!".

The salesman barely looked up from the paperwork when he said "that piano's $60,000". OK then, carry on I said, crushed. This was in the mid-80's. For perspective, my aforementioned house had cost $43K.

That piano was a Yamaha C7. Many years later, I'd come to acquire multiple sampled Yamahas. For a whole lot less money. It's still my favorite piano tone for rock 'n roll.

Alicia's Keys is sampled from a similar model. Although itself a rarity (only a few were ever built), at its heart it's that classic Yamaha sound. When you hit a low note, it's got some real gravity to it. You just want to play the theme from Jaws. For $13, I am tempted to pick this one up despite having three or four nice Yamaha libraries already. 

 

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Niky Serrano

Niky Serrano

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1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

Almost 40 years ago I bought my first acoustic piano, a baby grand made in Korea by Yeoung Chang.

It was the most expensive thing I'd ever purchased short of my first home, so I had to finance it over 10 years. While I was in the piano store waiting for the contract to be drawn up, I walked around the room plinking on every piano in there. When I sat down at one of them, the hairs on my arms stood up. It was incredibly responsive and had a lightning-fast action. But it was the amazing tone that got me excited, bright and harmonically rich. I ran to the sales office and said "hold everything! I fear I'm about to make a big mistake - I have found the perfect piano!".

The salesman barely looked up from the paperwork when he said "that piano's $60,000". OK then, carry on I said, crushed. This was in the mid-80's. For perspective, my aforementioned house had cost $43K.

That piano was a Yamaha C7. Many years later, I'd come to acquire multiple sampled Yamahas. For a whole lot less money. It's still my favorite piano tone for rock 'n roll.

Alicia's Keys is sampled from a similar model. Although itself a rarity (only a few were ever built), at its heart it's that classic Yamaha sound. When you hit a low note, it's got some real gravity to it. You just want to play the theme from Jaws. For $13, I am tempted to pick this one up despite having three or four nice Yamaha libraries already. 

 

I agree with the Yamaha C7

Take into account this Kontakt Library:
https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/dolan-piano/

 

 

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bitflipper

bitflipper

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1 hour ago, DamienF said:

But this ugly pink GUI...

Yeh, it is kinda girlie. But hey, so's Alicia. She's even been public about it, referring to herself explicitly as a girl, albeit one who's on fire.

Maybe it would have sold better with a black and blood-red theme, maybe an image of bloodthirsty Vikings swarming out of the gates of hell. On motorcycles. Now that would be a manly piano library.

Fortunately, it would sound the same either way.

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bitflipper

bitflipper

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The story I read was that the library started out as a personal project to solve a real-world problem, rather than as a commercial enterprise. Her piano was a key (!) component of her recorded sound, but impractical to take on tour. It was probably her engineer or producer who suggested sampling it for that reason. It was sampled by her own crew at her own studio. Nowadays for gigs she often plays "her piano" via a MIDI keyboard.

My guess is that some marketer heard the story and figured the pun was just too good to pass up. I remember thinking it was a lame gimmick when the product was first announced, and was as surprised as everyone else when it turned out to be pretty good.

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PavlovsCat

PavlovsCat

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5 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

I use this one when I need just a piano instead of scrolling through the ones I have.   I bought it years ago when it was 50% off.

When you wrote scrolling through the ones you have, I can relate -- and I think a lot of folks here can.  I've accumulated so many piano sample libraries over the years, from NI, SampleTekk, e-instruments, Toontrack (ezKeys), 8Dio, SoundPaint, XLN (Addictive Keys), Orange Tree Samples, Embertone, Production Voices, Spitfire, SonicCouture, etc., and filled up multiple hard drives with sample libraries that I've been committing more time to pruning then I ever have. The hardest sample libraries for me to delete (psychologically) are the libraries I've paid for (while I've bought a few sample libraries secondhand, I have yet to attempt to sell a sample library I've purchased). Of course, it's far easier to delete something you got for free.  I've long considered buying the Alicia's Keys library, but I had expected it would be included in KOMPLETE standard at some point. I have friends who own it and like it. I like the tone of it. At $50 USD on sale, it was always a maybe. At $13 USD, I bought it as soon as I saw the price (thanks @cclarry!).  One edge we hobbyists have over pros is time. Pros -- at least some of the time -- have urgency to purchases. For instance, they'll need a certain type of instrument to fit a project they need to deliver in say, a couple of weeks. Sure, hobbyists may seek out a certain type of instrument to complete a project -- but we aren't on a timeline that has an economic impact. We can "wait it out" until there's a sale. 

Time's also in our favor when it comes to mature sample libraries. That is, there's clearly been a trend in the sample library business to heavily discount mature libraries, like NI is doing with Alicia's Keys.  It makes sense on the balance sheet too, of course. As, when a library is introduced, a developer needs to pay back their production expenses, and libraries like Alicia's Keys surely paid back those costs years ago, so at this point, the costs are basically data storage and transfer, marketing and royalties incurred for each sale.  In other words, they can afford to sell it cheap.  

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kitekrazy1

kitekrazy1

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4 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

When you wrote scrolling through the ones you have, I can relate -- and I think a lot of folks here can.  I've accumulated so many piano sample libraries over the years, from NI, SampleTekk, e-instruments, Toontrack (ezKeys), 8Dio, SoundPaint, XLN (Addictive Keys), Orange Tree Samples, Embertone, Production Voices, Spitfire, SonicCouture, etc., and filled up multiple hard drives with sample libraries that I've been committing more time to pruning then I ever have. The hardest sample libraries for me to delete (psychologically) are the libraries I've paid for (while I've bought a few sample libraries secondhand, I have yet to attempt to sell a sample library I've purchased). Of course, it's far easier to delete something you got for free.  I've long considered buying the Alicia's Keys library, but I had expected it would be included in KOMPLETE standard at some point. I have friends who own it and like it. I like the tone of it. At $50 USD on sale, it was always a maybe. At $13 USD, I bought it as soon as I saw the price (thanks @cclarry!).  One edge we hobbyists have over pros is time. Pros -- at least some of the time -- have urgency to purchases. For instance, they'll need a certain type of instrument to fit a project they need to deliver in say, a couple of weeks. Sure, hobbyists may seek out a certain type of instrument to complete a project -- but we aren't on a timeline that has an economic impact. We can "wait it out" until there's a sale. 

Time's also in our favor when it comes to mature sample libraries. That is, there's clearly been a trend in the sample library business to heavily discount mature libraries, like NI is doing with Alicia's Keys.  It makes sense on the balance sheet too, of course. As, when a library is introduced, a developer needs to pay back their production expenses, and libraries like Alicia's Keys surely paid back those costs years ago, so at this point, the costs are basically data storage and transfer, marketing and royalties incurred for each sale.  In other words, they can afford to sell it cheap.  

Sometimes in FL Studio I use FL Keys.  It opens right up. I use pianos most of the time only for sketching. 

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njm255

njm255

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I had wanted this one years ago when I first started switching to vst pianos, but at the time I couldn’t afford it. By the time I could I found others I liked. Had to buy it this time though, so I’ll get to try it out tonight. 

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