We love Mattias Krantz’s unbridled imagination and were excited to transform another of his inventively hacked acoustic instruments into a breathtaking, inspiring sample library (see more of his imaginative and ingenious projects on his YouTube channel). For Water Piano, he took a perfectly playable grand piano and filled its case with 34 gallons of water, recording it at different water levels from dry to fully submerged.

The initial state of Water Piano gives you a bright, vintage sound of a dry (pre-submerged) studio grand piano. Browse through the 36 snapshots and you’ll soon get a sense of Water Piano’s range: everything from lo-fi and honky-tonk to cool reverses to super ambient, new-age pads to dark atmospheric drones to stabs (played in the lower registers) that would be right at home in horror films.

Water Piano’s controls allow you to take these beautifully detailed, one-of-a-kind sounds and morph them into all kinds of other-worldly textures, atmospheric pads, and bizarre, real-sounding-but-not-existing-in-real-life pianos. At the top of the GUI, the wetness controls let you take the sound in greatly divergent directions:

• Water Level: Submerge the sound to increase its muted, underwater character
• Freeze: Lower the temperature until the sound is suspended in time, sustained infinitely as an eternal pad
• Extra Wet: Drench the sound in additional water-morphed reverb
• Water FX: Randomly sprinkle in effects like water slaps, drips, swishes, and whisks

Additional controls include microtuning, pitch editing, and ADSR, as well as tone, pedal, and release sample controls. Shape your sound further with the rich array of effects on the Console page, including EQs, compressors, an assortment of pedals, a phaser, chorus, distortion, tremolo, and many others.

What is the Engineer Series?

Mattias Krantz is a guitarist and YouTuber known for his wild, imaginative experiments with pianos and guitars. We are collaborating with him to bring his unique instruments to composers and musicians around the world. Check out the first two entries Hammer Klavier and The 88E!

Console: Modular FX Rack and Mixer

Console is a fully-featured mixer, modular effects rack, and pedal board, designed to give you full control over your mix. Effects include multiple EQs (digital and analog-style), compressors, spatial FX, modulation FX, amps, distortion pedals, reverbs, and more.

Each mic channel can be loaded with up to 8 FX in any order, plus another 8 slots on the master channel, with support for send routing as well. The new “Galois Reverb” added in Kontakt 6 Player sounds fantastic as an alternative to our included custom IRs.

Download the Console manual here to learn more!