Review: Homestead Piano by Fracture Sounds

by Sam Burt

Homestead Piano, from Fracture Sounds, brings us that emotive feeling of a vintage piano in an intimate setting. The minimal mic set up reveals a hugely characterful instrument, brimming with full bodied resonance. Add in some beautifully nuanced atmospheric layers and you get an upright piano library that is a pure inspiration machine for composers and songwriters.

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Review Homestead Piano by Fracture Sounds

If you’ve been in this game a while you have probably noticed there is no shortage of sampled pianos to choose from. So, when a new ivory tinkling library is released it has to offer something special. Happily, Homestead Piano does just that. Fracture Sounds built their reputation on piano libraries and from there branched out to a variety of other sampled delights. Homestead Piano sees a return to their roots, with a distinct nod to the softer sounding Woodchester Piano that remains their most popular product to date. It shares the same characterful and intimate upright vibe, both being recorded in a small, dry room. However, Homestead moves away from the contemporary dampened felt approach for a more dynamic and bold resonance, with a distinctly vintage tone. It also offers more flexibility with two mic positions and doubles down on the atmosphere layers with nine on offer.

Homestead Piano normally sells for £79 from Fracture Sounds

Thoughts

As the trend for felt pianos slightly fades, Homestead feels right on the zeitgeist; retaining the intimacy of a felt but with a more enveloping, resonant soundboard and greater dynamics. For composers scoring an emotional scene, or songwriters working on a ballad it really delivers. Having the atmospheres to add, if required, for additional depth and complementary tonalities is the icing on the cake.

The power of this library for me that is most telling is as a pretty average, non-trained pianist and busy composer with little time to practice, plus having no real piano in my studio, it is already making me load it up simply to play for pleasure. It’s just so evocative of an old home family piano. My aunty has a gorgeous upright in her longhouse cottage, in a mythical corner of rural Wales, that I adore and playing Homestead Piano takes me right back there in a second. That’s rather special.