Another first from the Props. Propellerhead Software and Abbey Road Studios partnered to produce Abbey Road Keyboards ReFill for Reason. The refill consist of seven unique Hypersampled instruments and Combinator patches for various microphone blends, processed combinator patches and template pre-wired user patches.

Also Abbey Road Keyboards ReFill box has a 40-page booklet Guide to Abbey Road Keyboards, by author Mark Vail, packed with full color pictures and descriptive session diagrams giving you an in-depth info on the featured instruments and the Abbey Road technology used to record them.

Update:
Mark Vail is an authority on audio vintage technology. His books “Vintage Synthesizers” and “The Hammond Organ” are famous among the vintage sounds lovers. So he was the best choice in writing the “Guide to Abbey Road Keyboards“, a 40-page booklet that is included in the Abbey Road Keyboards ReFill package. Containing full color pictures and microphone placement diagrams, this book gives you facts and trivia about each of the featured instruments, as well as detailed info on every piece of vintage kit used in the recordings.

Read Guide to Abbey Road Keyboards Excerpt
(0.9 Mb, Adobe Reader PDF document)

All instruments, Steinway Upright, Challen Studio Piano, Hammond RT-3, Mannborg Harmonium, Schiedmayer Celeste, Mellotron M400 and Premier Tubular Bells were recorded in Studio Two (where The Beatles recorded most off their hits), using the original Abbey Road Studio vintage equipment and Propellerhead’s Hypersampling method.

I think the next refill from Propellerhead should be Strings 2 created using the same Hypersampling method in order to be in same league with their Reason Drum Kits 2, Reason Pianos and the, already soon to be released, Abbey Road Keyboards reason refills.

Update:
If you already own Abbey Road Keyboards then you should know that Propellerhead released Abbey Road Keyboards 1.1 with the following additions:
- Lots of new presets: Standard presets, style patches and the well sough after producer patches(these flexible patches are created from a producer/mixing engineers perspective and geared towards the mixing situation containing all necessary tools at hand)
- ReWire templates: ReWire Templates in the form of pre-wired Reason Songs (rns) as well as Combinator patches were added.
- Fixes and changes: Abbey Road Keyboards 1.1 also contains a number of adjustments and fixes to bring the ReFill even closer to perfection.

The update is free for ARK refill owners and it can be downloaded from here: Download Abbey Road Keyboards 1.1 Refill Update

I believe that everyone that creates music has to go through this vintage sounds love phase. It’s very important to know the sound of the past successes. Many still love it today (myself also) and rely on it to add more spice to their tracks. But, from my point of view, the best way to use use the vintage sound is to twist it and to create a totally new different sound out of it using today’s technology (like Propellerhead did) resulting in a rich and original compositions. There is a lot more about the vintage sound
than what I wrote …

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