Orphica Piano

The Orphica Piano library offers an very special little piano: Invented by Carl Leopold Röllig, the small portable piano type was exclusively built by piano maker Joseph Donal at the end of the 18th century.

Produced for merely about 15 years, the Orphica remains one of the rarest pianos today – worldwide, only 30 instruments have been preserved at the very most. Inven-tor Röllig was reminded of the “Lyre of Orpheus”, so he chose the name accordingly for what happens to be a predecessor of today’s portable keyboard.

The instrument featured in this sample library was built around 1798 and offers a slinky, charming and lively piano tone unlike any regular piano sound – thanks to its small size featuring three octaves, it has a different main focus: Twinkle-toed, yet present with chocolate-like mids and with the typical piano-like grace, it can be great for any piano track asking for a fresh, unconsumed sound.

This unique instrument in the collection of Andreas Beurmann still remains in great condition and is fully playable despite its age. It is now available for the first time in a sampler within the Orphica Piano library, presented in its original tuning at 402 Hz.

In order to deliver the ultimate Orphica experience in your studio, we captured the sound with 16 velocity layers of each note to compliment the surprisingly expressive dynamic range. Furthermore, we recorded release sounds of each key in 8 variations to complete the experience of this wonderful instrument.

The sample library consists of nearly 900 single samples.

For the critical task of recording the harpsichord, we employed custom-made Wag-ner™ U47w® tube microphones in conjunction with Crane Song™ Flamingo® pre-amps and Universal Audio™ 2192® digital converters to do the instrument justice. For maximum sound quality, we recorded in 192 khz/24 bits resolution, downsampled to 44.1 khz/24 bits.

In addition to the samples, the library contains an essay in German from Professor Andreas E. Beurmann himself, explaining both the historical and musical background of the instrument.


Instruments:
Piano / Keyb.

Genres:
Classic/Orchestral

File sizes (compressed):

GigaStudio:	947 MB
Multi Format:	321 MB