Toontrack Modern Pop Piano EKX - Download

Built on a foundation of a carefully sampled vintage upright piano, but featuring extensive layers of synths and resampled sounds run through granular and time-stretching effects, outboard processors and more, this expansion for EZkeys 2 presents the ultimate synthesis of old-world charm and cutting-edge sound design. If you're looking to boost your EZkeys 2 with an expansion that is equally as timeless in tone and it is limitless in scope, this is the one.

The principal instrument in this EKX is a classic Grotrian-Steinweg piano dating back to the mid 1950s. Recorded using an array of different microphones in the famed Riksmixingsverket studio in Stockholm, Sweden, by engineer Linn Fijal, it presents a stunning natural timbre just by itself. The bare-bones piano can, of course, be called up in a variety of presets, but the core concept of this EKX wasn't to provide only that, rather a palette of multi-layered and complexly textured tones where the piano acts as the common ground. To achieve that, the original recordings were duplicated and resampled through various pieces of analog and digital outboard processors, like compressors, EQs, saturators, tape emulators and more. To add, a host of analog synths were recorded separately. All of these raw sources of sound were then intertwined and seamlessly blended in the product's collection of 80 individually crafted presets. These presets are categorized in three distinct groups: Natural, Processed and Experimental.

The first category offers mostly acoustic-sounding renditions of the instrument using different microphone and ambience blends in combination with sparse use of effects, like reverb and delay. The Processed category, on the other hand, features sounds of a more layered nature, often involving non-natural reverbs and more saturated effects. Finally, the Experimental section has all the out-of-this-world-sounding textures that blend the piano with tweaked and warped synths as well as extensively pushed effects. All in all, this gives you sounds that span the entire range from natural and organic to wildly distorted, ambient and unconventional.

In addition to the sounds and the presets, a basic collection of MIDI unique to the product and tailored for the instrument is included.

Whether you're working on an ambient sound design concept, an EDM banger or virtually any facet of popular music spanning subtle singer-songwriter to experimental electronic-meets-acoustic, this expansion has the sounds you need. If you got a limitless mindset and aren't afraid to let sound be a determining factor in your composition style, have a go at this EKX - you won't regret it.