Today, our friends at Waves have released the eagerly anticipated Grand Rhapsody Piano, a new keyboard virtual instrument that I had a small preview of at NAMM 2017. The Grand Rhapsody Piano sits alongside the Waves Electric 88 Piano, Electric Grand 80 Piano and Element instruments, to name a few, in Waves ever growing line of virtual instrument products. 

At NAMM 2017 I headed over to the Waves stand to have a go of The Grand Rhapsody through some headphones and I was quite impressed with how natural it felt to play. The NAMM show floor is a very noisy and difficult venue to properly experience a product's strengths and weaknesses so watch this space for a Pro Tools Expert review of Grand Rhapsody by Waves in the coming weeks.

What Is The Grand Rhapsody Piano By Waves?

This isn't the first time we've seen this piano in a virtual instrument product. At the end of 2016, Wavesfactory released a new piano instrument for Kontakt called Mercury, this product was also sampled from the same Fazioli F228 grand piano that Waves used to produce The Grand Rhapsody.

What Makes The Fazioli F228 Grand Piano So Special?

The Italian made Fazioli F228 model is currently housed at Metropolis Studios in London and has been used on countless top records by artists such as Adele and Amy Winehouse... and was previously owned by Freddie Mercury.

How Was Grand Rhapsody Sampled?

Grand Rhapsody offers an enormous amount of tonal versatility as 8 different pairs of top draw microphones and preamps were used to capture the tone and personality of the piano in its fullest entirety:

• B&K 4007
• Shure SM57
• Neumann U87
• Royer R121
• SE RN17
• Neumann KM84
• Coles 4038
• AKG C451

Main Features

Users can mix up to 3 movable microphone pairs with controls for setting the level of the pedal, key up and sympathetic resonances. The Grand Rhapsody also features built-in effects including EQ, compression, limiting, delay, and reverb based on Waves’ brilliant sounding H-Reverb.

• Blend together 3 different pairs of microphone recordings
• Control the level of key up, pedal and sympathetic resonance in the overall mix
• Includes EQ, compressor, limiter, delay, and reverb based on the H-Reverb algorithm
• Can be used as a plugin or as a standalone instrument

Pricing & Demo

At NAMM 2017 Waves couldn't tell me what The Grand Rhapsody would eventually ship for as it was still in development. I assumed it would cost between $99 to $149 - well I couldn't have been more wrong. I had to make a double-take - Waves have The Grand Rhapsody available to purchase for what I feel is an extremely competitive $29. What's more is that Waves also have a demo available so go have a go for yourselves and let us know your thoughts on The Grand Rhapsody by Waves in the comments below.