Inside the grand: the dampers and strings, photographed close in warm light

hetki
A character piano,
with the noises left in

One grand, three mics, one room in London. VST3 · AU · Standalone. Autumn 2026.

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The imperfections are the instrument

Overview

hetki is a piano with a point of view. One grand, in one room in London, with three microphones left exactly where they were put: close over the strings, overhead, and back in the room.

Then everything that usually gets edited out was kept. The key going down. The dampers lifting and landing. The pianist breathing, the clothing, the bench. All of it has its own fader, so you can turn it down. I would rather give you the choice.

Tuning pins over red felt, close and shallow

Ten moments, named for light, weather, and the small hours

The names are Finnish. Some stay close to the instrument. Others drift further: felt, tape, weather, strings. Each says in one line exactly what it did.

The moments

The story

One piano

I recorded one piano.

hetki is Finnish for a moment. Not the grand kind. The kind that passes while you are looking for something else, and stays with you after.

A microphone hanging over the strings, inside the piano

It is a 1908 Steinway Model O, and it lives at Greystoke Studio in London. We set three stereo pairs around it and let them stay. One close over the strings, where the hammers work. One overhead, where the lid throws the sound. One out in the room, where a listener would sit. Every note you play here was played on that piano, in that room, into those mics.

Then I kept the things that usually get edited out.

The dampers resting on the strings, red felt between them

The key going down. The hammer. The dampers lifting off the strings and landing again. The pianist breathing, the clothing, the bench. On most libraries someone spends a week taking all of that away, because it is not the note. But it is the instrument. It is the sound of a person being in a room with a piano, and when you remove it you are left with something that plays perfectly and belongs nowhere.

The rest of it is what I wanted at midnight. Felt over the tone, the soft pedal down, the lid closed, the tape running a little worn. I built the instrument around the feeling of sitting at it late in the evening, when the house is asleep and the piano is the only thing awake.

Most libraries try to be every piano in the world. hetki only ever wanted to be this one. That is the whole idea.

The interface

Every noise has a fader

Press a mark to see what it does.

The hetki interface: a hand-drawn grand piano in cream ink on warm near-black, with mic faders, character knobs and the noise layers

The interface Hand-drawn, in ink, on warm near-black paper. Nothing in it is a stock knob.

The full harp of the grand: strings crossing the gold frame

It is the sound of a person being in a room with a piano

piano

The instrument

The first four are the instrument. No pads, no bowing, no tape doing the work. Just the grand, the felt, the pedals and the lid, arranged four different ways.

hetki

the grand, honest — all three mics open

The default, and the one everything else departs from. All three mics open, no felt, nothing done to it. Start here. Leave it here if nothing is wrong.

hiljaa

felt on, close mic, played at a whisper

Felt over the tone, the close mic alone, the overheads and the room muted out entirely. For playing at night without waking anyone. It barely speaks.

kirkas

lid open, bright overheads forward

The lid up and the overheads pushed forward. The brightest thing here, and the one that survives a busy mix without any help from you.

yö

felt + una corda, for after midnight

Felt and the soft pedal together, so the hammer shifts and strikes fewer strings. The softest voice the instrument has. The pianist's own movement is up, too: at night you can hear that someone is there.

hetket

Textures from the piano's own voice

The other six go further out. Underneath every one of them there is still the same piano, if you listen for it. Here it sits under pads, under tape, under weather. One of them bows it until it is barely a piano at all.

usva

felt under a slow pad wash, long reverb

The piano stops being the front of the picture. Room air behind the close mic, a long tail. For underscore, where the keys are not the subject.

sade

raindrops play with you, sparse

Something else is playing too. Sparse, above you, not quite in time with what you are doing. Leave a gap and something will land in it.

lumi

frozen overtones, particles drifting

The overtones held still and left to hang, with particles drifting through them. High, thin, and very little left at the bottom.

jouset

strings bowed from piano sustains

Barely a piano any more. The sustains are bowed out into something like a string section, voiced an octave and a fifth over a slow attack, and it holds a chord the way a section does.

iltarusko

afterglow — tape-warmed decay, golden

Warm and late. The tape does most of the work here: wow, flutter, a little saturation. Behind the warm close mic there is a glow of room.

unohdus

vinyl memory, worn and half-forgotten

The most damaged one. It has been over the tape too many times and it does not come back clean. Worn, narrow, close-leaning.

London at dusk: a footbridge over the river, people crossing

It opens in autumn 2026

€20.

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There is no trial yet. The moments above are recordings of the real instrument.

Requirements

VST3 · AU · Standalone
MacOS and Windows
25 GB on disk
About 3.4 GB of memory, streamed from disk
It runs on an 8 GB machine

The recording

A 1908 grand, recorded in London, June 2026. Three simultaneous stereo pairs: close, overhead, room. 96 KHz, 24-bit.

About 5,100 samples. Six velocity layers.

Up to three round robins. The quiet notes needed them and the loud ones did not.

The noises

Recorded, and played: the key and hammer mechanics. The sustain pedal's dampers, lifting and landing, in two takes each so it does not repeat back at you. The felted hammers, across the keyboard and across velocity. Three beds of the pianist's own movement: breath, clothing, the bench.

The noise floors are recordings too. The room's air, the tape hiss, the vinyl surface: real sources, each on its own fader.

Felt, here, is a voice rather than a preparation. The engine softens the tone the way cloth against the strings would, and under it sit the recorded thunks of real felted hammers. Together they are the quietest voice the piano has.

What it does

Three mic positions, on independent faders
Lid open, half, closed
Una corda and the felt layer
Recorded releases: the note letting go, not a synthetic tail
A recorded sustain-pedal bank and an una corda bank
Ten moments
MIDI learn: right-click any knob
Full host automation, arrow-key nudging, undo/redo, a/b compare
MPE

hetki A character piano, with the noises left in