I strived to create an authentic sound within the limitations of a generic synthesizer. PianoTeq does better with dedicated techniques, but Grand Piano B in Surge XT is free and might suit your music project.

The journey to 1.4

Listen on the journey of developing this into the patch for Surge XT 1.4, in the Let's revisit that Piano Discord thread, where I improved the piano with stretch tuning, a reduced 7th harmonic, soundboard approximation, sympathetic resonance, and many tweaks to improve the tone and expression across the playable range.

Use this sound for free

The synth plugin (Surge XT) is free and open source, available as VST, AU, and CLAP, for many platforms.
My patches are free, released under a maximally permissive CC0 licence.
You can donate to support this work.

All my patches

Play the patch

In the Surge XT patch browser, select John Valentine > Keys > Grand Piano.

Play it like a piano. It responds to velocity and sustain pedal.
Adjust Dynamics and other macros, to suit your performance and mix.
If you perform live, and your CPU can't handle enough polyphony (24 or more is ideal), then set the Scene mode to Single, and play just Scene A. This removes Scene B which creates the sympathetic resonance.

Configure the patch

Use the macro controls in the UI of Surge XT, or map your controller to use CCs 41−48. By default, my Sticky Fingers touchscreen web app has keyboards and macro sliders for Surge XT over MIDI.


Macro	MIDI CC	Name	Description
1	41	Brightness	Affects filters, resonance, exciters, and attack profile.
2	42	Dynamics	Changes the loudness of quiet notes. Use this to quickly adapt the instrument to fuller arrangements or your playing style.
3	43	Hammer	Controls how much the hammer sound contributes to the overall sound, similar in effect to placing microphones closer to the hammers. It also affects how the string is excited, and how the power dissipates.
4	44	Soundboard	A delayed resonance from the soundboard that adds volume to the sound.
5	45	Ring decay length	Lets the strings ring for longer when sustained.
6	46	Compression	Uses a waveshaper with compensations, to introduce harmonic distortion to the strings.
7	47	Sympathetic Resonance	Lets active notes resonate other open notes.
8	48	Reverb	Controls room ambience and some of the ring-out characteristics. You might want to reduce this to zero and use your own reverb.

Customize the patch

To make the piano more sonorous, increase the Mix or Size of the AW FX.
Change stretch tuning with the modulations from Keytrack to oscillator Pitch parameters.
By default, the piano creates a stereo image for a player sitting at the piano. If you prefer, you can reduce the stereo width, and use an effects plugin to position the piano in your own acoustic environment.
For anything else, you can just go change it, because it's an open patch design in Surge XT.

Finally

Piano practice is cancelled today.

This slams many notes at the same time, and demonstrates sympathetic resonance.