Claire Bundle

Native Instruments' Claire Bundle combines two complementary piano instruments built on the Noire engine: Claire, a traditional concert grand piano, and Claire: Avant, an experimental preparation-based variant. The bundle addresses two distinct compositional territories without redundancy, making it a practical choice for producers working across genres.

Claire samples a Italian concert grand with meticulous detail across close and room microphone positions. The dual mic setup proves valuable for context-dependent mixing, enabling anything from intimate ballad textures to roomy orchestral contexts. The interface prioritizes hands-on sound shaping through color, tonal shift, depth, and richness controls, alongside mechanical and pedal noise integration. This approach respects the acoustic source rather than obscuring it.

Claire: Avant departs entirely from tradition. Recorded with lid-off and unconventional techniques, it captures brushed textures, flageolet harmonics, muted strings, and mallet strikes across nine articulations. The extended velocity zones and round robins provide realistic performance variation, essential for avoiding the synthetic quality that plagues prepared piano libraries.

The Particles engine, shared across both instruments, adds procedural harmonic layers and evolving textures that respond to your playing. This represents the bundle's most interesting technical feature, though its effectiveness depends on restraint in application.

For orchestral and cinematic work, Claire handles traditional roles capably. For experimental composition and film scoring requiring unconventional piano sounds, Avant delivers genuine sonic territory. The bundle's value lies in this separation of concerns: one piano for classical roles, one for everything else. It's a well-considered pairing that justifies bundle pricing.