Mezza Coda: Baby Grand Piano Kontakt Instrument by Sonora Cinematic

The core of Mezza Coda is a baby grand piano sample set. The Cassette layer comes from the same process used for Verticale: the piano samples were played back through an old Portastudio at maximum speed, then converted to digital and slowed down as far as possible. This adds vintage character and a touch of grit.

The Distbox layer is new to Mezza Coda. It was made by recording a stereo piano mix to cassette with the Portastudio preamps driven hard, then slowing the tape down. The result is a raw, distorted signal that can add edge or lo-fi texture to a piano part.

Mezza Coda offers three stereo mic positions: room and two spot mics. A pair of ribbons and a pair of large diaphragm condensers let you shape the tonal character of the piano. Activate microphones with the dot at the bottom of each fader, and route them to separate channels if you want to mix them independently in your DAW.

Two sends feed reverb and delay, each with multiple modes. A Color knob works like a tilt EQ, darker and fuller to the left, thinner and brighter to the right. The Sync Toggle switches delay timing between tempo-synced musical values and milliseconds. The Cassette section includes a Crunch control for tape saturation and a Lo-Fi macro that reduces bit depth and sample rate. Selecting mono gives a more vintage result.