Homegrown Piano VSTi for PC

Homegrown Microtonal Piano VSTi
£20.00
Sale price of £20, usual price is £35

This demo version has lo-fi 8k samples and no Microtuner, but apart from that is identical to the full Piano.
Download Demo Version

Interactive Flash manual

The demo MP3s attempt to show the many possibilities of the Piano, including 2 dry Beethoven tracks to give an idea of the dynamic range of the samples.

The presets demonstrates a few of the presets in action and the Night Porter tracks are messing around with settings in real time.

Everything was recorded directly from the Piano using the built in WAV Recorder.

SALE - Reduced to £20 for Xmas

Homegrown Piano is based around 88 samples of a Steinway B Grand Piano which were recorded at medium velocity. It was developed like many other HGSounds products to be great for Ambient/Atmospheric music, though is useful as a standard Piano as can be heard with the Classical demos on the website. The 128 presets cover a diverse range of sounds from Standard, Honky Tonk, Bright, as well as many echo landscapes, high resonance/distorted, and synthetic instruments. Though it is primarily designed as a Piano, it is still a synthesizer at heart and as a result has plenty of experimental potential.

The VSTi uses 2 duplicate Piano layers, the second of which can be manipulated in several ways leading to a diverse range of Piano based instruments. It can be either identical to Piano 1 allowing slight detuning to achieve Chorus type sounds, or relationally tuned by -/+ 1 Octave, as well as detuning this will either dull or brighten the sound for example allowing more Harpsichord type sounds. Additionally the entire instrument can be Tuned via Octaves, Semitones and Fine tunings, and can also be positionally shifted -2/+2 Octaves which moves the positions of the samples as opposed to actual detuning. Piano 2 may also be Looped (with adjustable loop points), looped back and forth, Shifted by -1 Octave, and Reversed.

The Piano also features an FX section consisting of Drive, SoundScaper - a Reverb/Comb/Delay effect great for building complex atmospheres, a Flanger/Filter with a complex LFO, and a BPM Synced Stereo Delay. There are 3 FX Routing Modes which allows some flexibility in the sound of the FX. There is also an Arpeggiator with many modes.

Finally, the Piano also contains a Microtuner which uses standard Scala files, opening up a huge world of custom tuning possibilities, and comes with 300 tunings as standard and stretch/shrink capabilities.


Update - Two more Instruments have been added, Piano B and Homegrown Rhodes.

Homegrown Piano B - A second sample set from the Steinway B has been added which was recorded at a harder velocity than the original Piano. The harder attack results in a much brighter sound and as a result has a very different character. It has all the same features as Homegrown Piano but comes as a separate instrument called Piano B. Patches are interchangeable between the two instruments.

Homegrown Rhodes - Also included as a second bonus instrument is Homegrown Rhodes which uses samples from a well worn Rhodes Piano and has one sample per key. The Rhodes had a long history on a cruise ship and was rumored to have been played by Duke Ellington. Some of the keys are in bad condition and the idea was to capture the instrument as is, rather than creating a realistic Rhodes emulation. It has all the same features as the other Pianos but with the addition of adjustable key noises.


  • Dual Piano Layers - The 2 layers use 88 x 16bit 48k samples, one for each note.
  • Filter - Cascadable up to 8 times and includes Low Passes, Hi Passes, Band Passes, Comb, Low Shelf, Hi Shelf and Peak.
  • 2 ADSR Envelopes - Simple Envelopes. Envelope 2 can either be used to control Piano 2 volume or used to shape the Filter Cutoff Frequency.
  • Drive - Auto Volume Distortion
  • Arpeggiator - With many modes include classic Arp modes.
  • Microtuner - Microtuner uses most standard Scala files of any size for custom tunings
  • SoundScaper - Comb / Delay / Reverb Effect for creating interesting soundscapes.
  • Flanger/Filter - Switchable between Flanger and Filter effect, LFO has over 300 predefined shapes with smooth control as well as standard shapes.
  • Stereo BPM based Delay - Synced delay.
  • FX Routing - 3 different Paths available.
  • Drift - Adds a random pitch detune with each note played.
  • Stereo Spread - Allows setting a random value to the Pan of each voice.
  • Recorder - Allows recording directly to disk at 16/24/32 bits. Wavs are auto-named by date and location is set via a config file.
  • Limiter - Output is limited to prevent clipping.
  • Default - Sets Piano to default settings
  • Randomize - Randomizes all settings. There are also local randomizers in each section.

Created with Synthedit, though most of the modules are unique to HGSounds, additional modules are also created by Chris Kerry.

About VST Plugins

Homegrown Sounds VST effects and Instruments are for PC only, with support for Windows XP and above. They may work on earlier operating sytems but they are not officially supported. All are in downloadable format and can be downloaded immediately after payment.