Developer Somerville Sounds has released Dusty Felts, a free felt piano for macOS and Windows.
Jon Meyer, the man behind Somerville Sounds, is responsible for one of my favourite free instruments this year, Antiquarian Echoes.
Dusty Felts is the latest addition to the Somerville Prototypes collection, which includes the abovementioned Antiquarian Echoes and the charming Meyer Choir.
Dusty Felts comes from Jon’s Kawai upright piano, which has already lived a storied life, virtually speaking.
Jon used the same Kawai piano to create The Meyer Felt, a Kontakt instrument from a few years ago. The piano was then resampled to create Postfelt, a more advanced instrument.
Although newer, Dusty Felts is somewhere in between the two; it’s more faithful to the original instrument but has a few twists.
I have a minor obsession with Kawai pianos, new and old; they are the perfect blend of articulate clarity and warm, soft tones.
Dusty Felts has two velocity layers, and in his overview video, Jon states that you can’t really dig into it, but that’s not a bad thing.
I know that sometimes we need a little more room to work, and something like Keyscape’s Double Felt Piano is sublime, but generally, the warmth, nostalgia, and gentle percussive quality is what we want most from a felt piano, and Dusty Felts delivers that.
For me, the most crucial aspect of a good felt piano VST is the ability to combine the above qualities with melodic playing without it becoming too washy. Dusty Felts has that ability and lends itself well to simple melodic playing rather than any complex or dense harmony.
Jon explains that, while sampling, other notes were sometimes triggered in addition to the one he was sampling. Happy accidents in music often lead to magic, like Phil Collins’ gated reverb snare, and, in this case, the harmonic artefacts left behind add to the charm of Dusty Felts.
Another key contributor to the charm and character of this piano is the Ampex 600 tube amplifier. The vintage nature of the amp, coupled with the imperfect condition of the particular unit, provided the ideal way to add lo-fi noise to Dusty Felts.
The amp control (on the Noise page) has a link to the playback function, which means you’ll only hear noise when you play. You also get a slider that adjusts the key release noise to add a little realism.
Jumping into the Main page, you’ll see Filter, Saturation Wow, Flutter, and Dust controls.
The Dust effect introduces random volume modulations to mimic what happens to a vinyl record when dust gets in the grooves.
It comes with a bunch of presets, some leaning more toward the lo-fi character than others.
I love these Somerville Prototypes instruments; they are utterly charming and make you want to shut everything else out and play.
Dusty Felts is available in AU, AAX, and VST3 formats for macOS (11 and higher) and Windows (7 and higher).
Download: Dusty Felts (FREE)
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