Native Instruments' Elektrik Piano

Native Instruments' Elektrik Piano is a blast from the past. Are the sounds classic or past their sell-by date...

There's no end to the wonderful things you can do with a sample engine and some custom samples. Native Instruments has lately been found at the forefront of new soft instrument developments, partnering with East West and Zero-G to create several sample-based instruments (links to follow). Now the company has developed its own instrument, complete with Teutonic Ks - the Elektrik Piano containing four classic electronic pianos.

The box contains both PC and Mac software, and stand-alone and plug-in versions for VST 2, DXi, AudioUnit and RTAS. Installation is easy. You select the plug-ins you want to install and the routine searches your hard disk for the correct folders. In typical NI fashion, the program will stop working unless you register it although you do get a more sensible 30 days to do this rather than the five days of some other NI software. However, registration is essential anyway in order to download the Direct From Disk extension which you need to get the most from the software.

Wurlitzer one for the money...

In addition to normal tuning, there are stretch tuned versions of all four pianos. The human ear perceives tones in the upper keyboard range as being flat even though they may be correctly tuned. Piano tuners compensate for this by 'stretch tuning' the upper notes. 

The user interface is cute, generic vintage electric piano with Tuning, Pan and Volume controls on the right. In the middle is an 'LCD" display which shows the current instrument preset and on the left are four control knobs that vary according to the preset. For example, with the standard Mk I preset the controls are Speed, Stereo, Release Volume and Reverb. Select the Mk I Saturator preset and they become Bass, Treble, Drive and Speed, while with the Mk I ADSR Envelope preset they become, naturally, Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release.

Although the controls are fixed for each preset - you can't add a Phaser control, for example, to the standard sound - the additions greatly increase the range of sounds each instrument can produce far beyond what was possible with the raw original instruments. The ability to tweak the controls lets you customise the sound still further. If you really want to play fast and loose with the sounds, you can import the samples and presets into NI's Kompakt sampler for full tweaking and editing although that probably won't be high on most user's priority list.