The Best Piano Plugin? Native Instruments Claire Overview, Presets & Beatmaking

Native Instruments recently dropped the piano library Claire , which is built on the same engine as Noire. Noire is currently my go- to piano library, so I’m coming into this with high expectations for Claire.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links but is not sponsored.The Claire plugin was provided to me free of charge, however Native Instruments does not have any say in what I can and cannot say in this review. 

Starting off with playing some sounds, I like what I’m hearing so far. I’m going to lay down a pattern and flip through presets while having the MIDI to get a better sense of what this plugin can offer. 

The presets sound fire as I’m going through them, and Claire also has a Particle engine which adds more depth to the sounds. Skipping through the presets, there’s a beautiful selection of sounds- some sounding luxurious and others offering more of a pad sound. The variety offered is pretty solid. 

The good thing about Claire is you have a large array of sounds to choose from, so you can really dial in and find that piano sound you’re looking for. The presets are a great way to start your projects, but there’s lots of ways to customize it as well. On the main page you get your basic manual controls including reverb, delay, color and dynamics.

You get your microphone controls at the bottom of the main page. These allow you to bring the microphone close and get a more forward sound. Or get more of the room tones from bringing the microphone further away. You can blend these as well. 

Moving over to the Piano tab, this is where things get more granular with the controls. You can control the noises, the strings, the keys clicking in, pedal noises. You can control pretty much every minute detail involved in crafting your sound.

Over on the Effect tab, you have even more options to customize it. There’s options to modify EQ, transients, compression, saturation, style and total ambience of the sound.

Then there’s my favorite tweaking station- the Particles Tab. This is where you can customize textures and effects. The particles tab also has its own long list of presets if you’re not sure where to start or if you’re looking for some inspiration. 

Next there’s the Space Tab to control your reverb and delays, and the Settings tab which allows you to tweak your hardware. 

So that’s Claire. It offers a great selection of piano sounds with a lot of presets and controls to help you craft your unique sound. If you’re looking for a solid piano library-  this is a great choice and you will not be disappointed. If you already have a plethora of other piano plugins, you don’t necessarily need to add this one in, unless you heard something that gave you that creative spark. Make sure you check out the video for a walkthrough of Claire and check out the beat I ended up making with it. Check out my session with Claire here.

And if you end up getting Claire and make some heat- let me know!