Abbey Road Studios — home to The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and countless others — has released The Big Nessie, a free multi-instrument library for Kontakt Player, in collaboration with fashion house Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.
Yes, it's an unusual pairing, but the result is genuinely usable.
Background
The instrument grew from Loverboy's latest collection ("Prepared Piano"), which explores the relationship between music and fashion. A prepared piano — where objects are placed on or between strings to alter the sound — was used as the primary sound source.
Abbey Road recorded and processed these prepared piano textures, then packaged them as a full Kontakt instrument with Charles Jeffrey's signature cartoon-monster interface (complete with a Loch Ness monster aesthetic).
What's inside
The keyboard is split into five sections:
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Loops | Rhythmic prepared piano textures |
| Drums | Percussive hits (including a shoe-to-piano technique) |
| Bass | Low-end prepared piano tones |
| Synth | Processed, electronic-feeling material |
| Sound FX | Experimental, abstract textures |
Onboard effects (8 total)
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Scowl | Reverb |
| Chomp | Bitcrusher |
| Spit | Saturation |
| Pulse | Brightness |
| Fang | Distortion |
| Scale | Spreader |
| Curl | Low-Pass Filter |
| Lure | Tremolo |
You can craft everything from ambient chill beats to grungy, distorted rhythms — and a fair amount of weirdness in between.
Compatibility
Requires the free Kontakt Player (available from Native Instruments).
Download
👉 Get The Big Nessie free at abbeyroad.com — Kontakt Player required.