Ever since releasing Verticale, the quadruple-felted upright piano, with Sonora Cinematic, I’ve developed an interest in… felt.

In fact, recently I was in a recording session and I stopped the engineer from pressing down the practice pedal just to get a bunch of colourful fabrics out of my bag and say:“No wait! I’ve got my favorite felt sheet with me!”

I’m sure he thought I was crazy (except he loved it and I donated the sheet to the studio…. I have a lot more for backup anyway).

While we can certainly agree that felt piano has been overused, I still have a deep love for its intimate quality, and felt can do so much more.

After years of recording I came to the conclusion that felt is an amazing tool in the sound recordist’s arsenal.

With the already mentioned Verticale we pushed this concept to the limit: the quest was to find out how much felt you can add and still be able to hear a pitch.

I love that piano, I think it has such an interesting sound.

But this is not all that felt can do: it can alter the timbre of any percussive instrument, tame unwanted resonances or work as a mute.

It can even be a utilitarian tool, preventing your gear from slipping or it can help to isolate sounds when recording foley.

You can certainly buy felt online but if you have a craft shop in your area (here in the UK I’ve became an unlikely customer of Hobbycraft) go in there and look for different thicknesses, as well as different ways to stack sheets together.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about bringing the idea of the felted piano to guitar… I’ve tried a number of mutes (this is a cool little device) and considered getting a guitar with a rubber bridge… but nothing was quite right, until I swapped things around: rather than muting the guitar, I could “mute” the pick.

With felt of course. I made my own felted pick but then found some great ones available on the market, and they’re very inexpensive. From really soft (that have a great sound but makes playing very hard), like this one:

To more rigid ones, like this one:

These are typically aimed at ukulele players and are more in general for instruments with nylon strings… but it sounds great on electric!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you’re having a great summer!

A couple of heads up:

• at Sonora Cinematic we’re having a big Summer Sale with discounts up to 50%. Make sure you check out our deals at sonoracinematic.com
• I’ll be taking a short break from the Sound Design Diaries and there won’t be an August issue. I’ll see you in September with a special guest!

Happy noise making.

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02 July 2025

• Tagged:
• Music

• Next: Sound Design Diaries #10: Back to the Absolute Basics