sound DUST Cloud Cello [KONTAKT]

Cloud Cello is the big brother (or sister, if you like) of the Cloud Viola. She's a deeply multisampled hybrid Kontakt sample library created from a ordinary 17th century classical stringed instrument, but played and recorded in an extra-ordinary way.

Cloud Cello opens up new orchestral-ish, cinematic tones and textures that sound both familiar and alien....in a good way.

There are also 38 free Cloud Cello patches for Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2 included with the Kontakt version.

How?
So, you take an unsuspecting cello, remove all the strings except one and place it in a stand. Instead of a conventional bow, use something with a bit more texture and bite - in this case, a ball of coarse garden string sounded best. Stringing a standard bow with garden twine doesnt work, you'd need an impossible 10 metre bow to play a smooth note (I know it's impossible because I tried to make one!).

After many experiments and cups of coffee, a retractable dog lead, an elaborate pulley system and a classic vintage fishing reel came to the rescue. This system can hold long lengths of string under tension and be drawn evenly over the cello string to produce a usable tone.

Next step is to rig up some suitable mics. A contact mic near the bridge gave good body, and a large diaphragm condenser near the string picked up the 'grist'. Then using a capo for accurate tuning, thousands of passes were recorded to get enough samples for 5 x round robins per note plus conventionally bowed accents and col legno notes for extra flavour.

The final step is to form the Clouds by pushing each note 100% wet through a bespoke swirly setting on my Strymon Big Sky reverb pedal, and then do the same thing all over again with a different setting for 200% wetness.

What's inside?

• Two instrument variations - solo & ensemble versions.
• 2GB of 24bit samples (uncompressed).
• 50 themed instrument presets (.nki's) each with modwheel patch morphing for variation.
• 38 extra patches for Omnisphere 2 using Cloud Cello samples.
• Three octave keyrange - C1 to C4
• Seven deeply sampled articulations through eight 'oscillators'.
• Accented bow: short bowed note with conventional bow. 5 x round robin per note. Two mic positions- valve condensor and contact mic.
• Col legno: Latin for 'gently thwacked with the back of the bow'. 5 x round robin per note. Two mic positions- valve condensor and contact mic.
• Twine: bowed with 5 meters of green garden string. 5 x round robin per note, minimum 20 seconds per sample. Two mic positions- valve condensor and contact mic. Hard-wired to CC11 for expression pedal or midi controllers.
• Dark Cloud: Twine recorded 100% wet reverbed through Strymon Big Sky hardware reverb. Playback through Kontakt grain oscillator.
• Pale Cloud: the Dark Cloud recorded 100% wet reverbed through Strymon Big Sky hardware reverb unit, so basically 200% wet!
• Sub Bass: (ensemble only) Moog voyger sine bass.
• Effects per oscillator: tremolo, vibrato, saturation, pitch selection, pan, lowpass filter, high pass filter, reverb and delay.
• Master output effects: low pass filter, highpass filter, rotor effect, delay, cabinet modelling and EQ.
• Master unison control for up to eight voices per note.
• Velocity to volume amount control.
• Aftertouch to pitchbend amount control.
• Aftertouch to filter light/dark control.
• Advanced architecture with automatable midi control of everything on the interface.
• 74 specially created convolution reverb impulses recorded from real spaces, expensive hardware, and some less obvious sources including a Roland Space Echo, Strymon Big Sky and the stage of Glyndebourne Opera House.
• Built in instruction manual in RTFM tab.

FULL version of Kontakt 4 or above needed.

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