Hip-hop and trap production thrives on having a blend of textures and instruments on your beats. And while a dissonant synth hit or affected vocal chop might sound dope in a track, nothing beats the authentic vibe of a real piano in your productions.
But pianos are tricky to get right in the digital production space. Suppose the velocity layers, dynamic range, and recorded samples aren’t on point in the plugin. In that case, it’s going to sound fake and inauthentic.
We broke down the best piano VST plugins of today so that you can get unique sounds in your next beat (even if playing the piano is something you don’t know how it’s done).
Hip-Hop Producers Playing Piano
Before we dive into the plugin recommendations for the best piano VSTs, here are a handful of today’s best producers and rappers flexing on the keys to motivate you to do the same.
ReFx Nexus 2
What Is It?
Virtual analog synths have their advantages, offering some extra programming options. Still, reFX’s Nexus 2 rompler provides some of the highest quality samples. We now have an expansive and ultra-fat sound of sampled instruments and all the programming power needed to create any kind of music we can imagine. This is a fantastic time to be making music!
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
Nexus 2 is one of the best-sounding synthesizers on the market at the moment, and not just for pianos. It sounds so dam good that tons of the top producers, Timbaland and South Side, are known to use this rompler heavily in their productions. So once you hear the classic sounds of the piano, it will be easily recognizable on some of the biggest hits on today’s radio.
This software is highly versatile and easy to use, with many built-in controllers and an even more extensive expandable sound library. Although reFX is not a large company, its products and business practices make it feel like you are working with a significant, reliable organization.
Spectrasonic’s Omnisphere 2
What Is It?
Omnisphere 2 is an incredibly inspiring software instrument. With its massive library of high-quality patches, I can explore musical territory that I’ve never been to before. Its piano sounds are only a tiny fraction of the benefits you can access while using this! With a library of thousands of sounds, this powerhouse synth allows you to get the best of all possible worlds when you’re making music. You can use their high-quality samples like a rompler or pull up their synthesized keys and custom-tailor the sounds to your tracks like any other synth.
This is arguably one of the best piano plugins a music producer can use.
Need Free Presets For This Amazing Plugin? We Got You…
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
This synth is one of the more significant investments you might make on this list, but for a good reason. I initially hesitated to purchase this plugin (which comes at nearly a $500 price tag). Still, when I eventually got tired of free piano VSTs and plugins, this was the one I finally invested in.
And Wow…
This product produces stunning sounds and has excellent audio quality.
I’m just learning about the product, but it is now my go-to synth. If you are undecided and the price makes it a hard decision, save up for a couple of months and buy this product.
Snag Soundpacks For This Powerful Plugin Here <<<
Tone 2 Electra 2
What Is It?
This synthesizer sounds much better than others but costs five times more. I can get huge, impressive sounds from it that are better than anything I could get from a Yamaha Montage or Korg Kronos. Those other synthesizers have displays that are so difficult to see, and navigating between editing pages is tricky. With Electra v2.7, everything is right there in front of me.
With 10 reverbs, four delay types, 12 mod effects, a vocoder, EQ, amp simulator, and compression at your disposal, you have up to 32 different effects available to use as inserts on your DAW.
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
Tone2’s Electra2 has a great wizard that simplifies sampling by importing, tuning your samples, and suggesting loop points. Sampling also allows you to mangle your voice to the point where it is unrecognizable.
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This alone offers way more functionality than most other pianos VSTs. So sure, I know we are talking about pianos for trap music production. Still, this plugin has this ace up its sleeve and is a powerful addition to what it can offer.
The Giant By Native Instruments
What Is It?
The Klavins Model 370i ‘Integrated Upright Concert Grand Piano’ is the basis for the Giant. This piano is prominent and integrated into the wall of the room it is located and holds the record for the most enormous grand piano in the world! This specific keyboard’s soundboard is near twice the size of a standard concert grand.
The Cinematic library is a great way to quickly create interesting-sounding piano presets. The ability to shape sounds from scratch makes it even more fun and valuable. This is a welcome addition to an already excellent sampled piano.
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
The Giant is a great piano plugin simply based on the contrast that it offers. The easy-to-use modulation and customization panels of the Kontakt instrument allow you to morph a piano into a bright and aggressive sound (like the pianos often seen on tracks by Post Malone) or a dark and subdued timbre (like the pianos in many of Travis Scott’s records). The Giant offers a Jekyll and Hyde approach to piano sounds. It allows you to access almost any piano sound you need when making beats.
ImPerfect By WA Productions
What Is It?
Imperfect’s architecture is similar to other soft synths, with five powerful oscillators, envelopes, filters, LFOs, and an arpeggiator. The three modulation sliders, named “Wacky,” “Cracky,” and “Shaky,” introduce interesting effects, saturated harmonics, and tuning inconsistencies.
Almost any of Imperfect’s parameters can be assigned to the constantly shifting dual X/Y pads and played live or programmed with MIDI automation.
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
Many digital synths have accessible features, high-quality digital sound, and tones in tune. “Imperfect” is different because it has detuned oscillators that produce a wavering sound, modulating effects, and other features that make it more like an analog synth.
This makes it a fantastic option for producing ominous, hard-hitting trap beats. The drifting pitch creates tension in your melodies that is hard to edit manually. This synth, which comes with a handful of powerful piano sounds, is a quick and easy solution to unsettling and dystopian piano tones.
Virtual Piano by Art Vista
What Is It?
Art Vista’s Virtual Grand Piano 2.0 does attempt to be a ‘universal’ instrument, encompassing classical and pop styles. The 5.5GB of samples it uses were gleaned from a 1960s Steinway B — an instrument roughly seven feet long. It has a sound that’s noticeably more concentrated and less velvety than a modern nine-foot (and £100,000!) Model D Steinway.
These samples are then delivered through Native Instruments’ Kontakt Player 2. They can be customized with a range of parameters to suit your taste. You can create your sound by adjusting the volume, pitch, and other settings.
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
This product has a rich, “classical” sound that is much more like a live recording than most competitors. This is accomplished without using “state-of-the-art” gimmicks and techniques like convolution verbs, extra release samples etc. Just careful recording, programming, and lots of samples for each key.
This piano is not versatile, but that isn’t necessarily bad. Although it has many presets mimicking “recording styles,” at its base level, it is focused on preserving the ambiance of one very good-sounding piano recorded in one very good-sounding space.
SampleTank Custom Shop
What Is It?
SampleTank 4 Custom Shop is a free, sample-based virtual instrument. It can be used as a standalone application or as a plugin in VST, VST3, AU, and AAX formats for compatible DAW software on PC and Mac.
This software is based on IK Multimedia’s SampleTank 4, a virtual instrument. The free edition of this software can be used permanently with no time limit.
Why We Love It For Producing Trap Music
This is a fantastic free option if you’re producing on a budget. But the free options only scratch the surface of what you can get going with this because the developer company offers a ton of extra features and freebies that you can load up instantly and start manipulating with this plugin.
Our favored free version patches are the Berlin Grand Piano, Steel String F guitar, Classic Tonewheel Organ, Live Strings ensemble, and the Sigma Centauri Pad synthesizer. These patches patch that can be layered, blended, and custom-mapped to different sections of your keyboard or controller.
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