Sonomar Collection- Pianos

The Sonomar Collection: Pianos sound effects library began with a curious question: What new and unconventional sounds can be made with a piano for use in sound design?

The result is 652 enigmatic sounds exploring the sonic properties of various pianos to create suspense and tension in your audio projects. Created by sound designer and recordist Martin Pinsonnault (Big Little Lies, Dallas Buyers Club) and the Sonomar team, the Pianos library blurs the line between music and sound design – captured at 192kHz using contact mics and an MKH-8040 for endless possibilities in pitching and processing.

Available in three unique collections, this expressive library combines the resonant nature of pianos with experimental approaches to recording, performing, and preparing this classic instrument:

Pianos – Broken contains 63 rusty, grinding, rhythmic growling piano hits for eerie roars and anxiety-inducing resonances. Includes percussive performance by Thomas Brodeur from the Sonomar team.

Pianos – Prepared features 539 textured punches, decays, chords and notes – ripe with complex harmonics, string rattles and vibrations. Created by placing objects on the strings of a piano with a performance by Mingan Sauriol.

Pianos – Designed expresses the limitless possibilities of the raw recordings with pitched and processed sounds ready to drag-and-drop directly into your designs.

Each sound file is embedded with rich metadata to help you find the sounds you need with a fast and precise search. Unique descriptions of each recording encompass both literal sonic qualities as well as the images they invoke to enhance your creative workflow. Advanced metadata fields include translated French descriptions and additional info to ensure compatibility across any database search platform such as Soundminer, BaseHead, Netmix, Workspace (Pro Tools), Find Tool (Media Composer), Media Bay (Nuendo), Reaper, Adobe Premiere, and beyond.