The piano is an instrument that is so familiar to most of us and yet accurately capturing its sound, feel and essence in both recording and virtual instruments remains challenging and elusive to even the most obsessive and meticulous virtual instrument developers. I think to a great extent, it’s the very familiarity of its sound that makes recording and recreating a piano, in all its dynamic range and glory so difficult, because anyone will immediately be able to hear when it is not quite right.

 Thankfully, modern day virtual instruments have come a long way in overcoming the prior technological hurdles in capturing the rich and versatile instrument that is the piano. Some use clever cutting edge physical modeling, some stick to brute force massive multi sampling, some use a combination of both with convolution. No matter what the method, there is most likely a sound that will work for you, in the context of your music and production.