THE ORIGINAL: 1907 BLÜTHNER STYLE VII
In May 2021 I began the hunt for my first ever acoustic piano. I'd given up on finding something perfect at the price point I was going in with until I stumbled upon this Blüthner, which was sat in the back room of a music shop awaiting restoration, and a bit of a sorry sight. It was clickety-clackety, and a lot of the notes didn't work, but it was love at first sound.
After a five month internal restoration, I had a go at making it into a virtual instrument, recorded on a pair of Soyuz 013 FETs, raising the ultra-soft, felt-like tone to be more easily playable. Lighthouse Piano blows it out the water, but if you want a free tester for how that instrument sounds in your projects, you can download Marcus Warner's Bluthner (v.1.0.) for free. Let me know what you think!
EXPERIMENTS
Hello - if you've made it this deep into my website (i.e. not gone straight to 'Contact'), then you have my admiration. Welcome.
Here you will find my creative work that is not strictly music or film related. It will mostly include my endeavours in photography, art, and the occasional virtual instrument for you to download. I hope you enjoy.
AMERICA ON FILM
Filmed from September, 2022
Shot on a 1957 Bolex B8SL.
ABURA
Charcoal on paper; for the album LEGENDARIUM
Originally intended as the album artwork for the piece 'Chihiro'. The word abura is a translation of the kanji symbol meaning 'Oil' - referring to the aromatic oils used in Japanese bath houses and displayed on the tower which, along with the kuromatsu tree, is lifted from Spirited Away. The same can be said of the 'spirit' bridge, also an interpretation from the film, which serves as the entrance to the bath house and the crossing point into the spirit world. The tree on the right is a sakura, from The Tale of Princess Kaguya; both are perched atop cliffs from The Wind Rises and set against a backdrop of mountains from Howl's Moving Castle.
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REGARDING PRINTS AND PRICING.
LIGHTHOUSE PIANO
My grand piano, now available as a virtual instrument.
I have harboured the dream of owning a grand piano probably since I was about four years old. It has always seemed like such a romantic thing: this giant piece of Victorian equipment taking an obnoxiously impractical amount of space in your studio, and physically (and financially) beyond the reach of most sensible, home studio composers. I had also assumed, through school years of playing Yamahas and Bechsteins, that a grand piano would simply be too bright for my needs, and so had settled on the idea of an upright for my studio.
That was until I came across this 1907 Blüthner Style VII. I had just discovered this understated marque through a restored concert grand in the front room of a restoration shop; imagine my surprise when, in the back room, I found a smaller version of the same thing, with the same gorgeous tone. This piano had witnessed the sinking of the Titanic, two world wars, and the turn of the millennium; now, here it was looking a bit tired and worse-for-wear. Many of the hammers were stuck; the notes that did work were very noisy, but despite this, the graceful, delicate tone was perfect. I knew it was the piano for me, and so there and then I put down a deposit and commissioned a full internal restoration.
The original soundboard was miraculously still intact, so I requested that this be kept, and the exterior of the piano left untouched, both to preserve the 100-year patina (or more honestly, to save some money) and to ensure the sound I had heard in the back room was unaltered. I feared even putting lacquer on it might change it!
This is the result: An incredibly versatile grand piano capable of giving the mellow, soft performance of a felt piano, yet with the ability to open up into a bright, concert-like sound in the upper dynamics. I have used it in every piece of piano music I have written, and much more besides. And, as with all good pianos, if I’m struggling with my writing, I turn to it as a source of inspiration, for which it never fails. A lighthouse in the dark, if you will…