The Crow Hill Company kicks up storming sample instrument in close collaboration with virtuoso namesake as TINA GUO - STORM CELLO
EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of TINA GUO - STORM CELLO — closely collaborating with virtuoso cellist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, and entrepreneur Tina Guo, one of the most recorded solo cellists of all time in film, TV, and game soundtracks, who teamed up with multi-talented composer and producer Steve Mazarro to create her first sample instrument supervised entirely by herself according to the needs of ‘AAA-list’ composers with whom she has worked during the last decade, before turning to the music- making community tools-maker to help them storm over the finish line with what brings to the musical masses the seriously sought-after and undeniably unique sonic capabilities of her electric cello that has graced so many iconic scores in recent times — as of January 29…
As a GRAMMY and BRIT Female Artist of the Year nominee, Tina Guo herself hardly needs much more in the way of introduction. It would perhaps be remiss not to mention recent projects (both on and off the big screen) that include Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2023), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (2024), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), Dune: Part One (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Gran Turismo (2023), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022) — not forgetting, of course, that she co-composed ‘Wonder Woman Main Theme’ with long-time friend and collaborator Hans Zimmer. Duly dedicating his life to creating music and soundscapes using synthesisers together with orchestral sounds, the so-called godfather of orchestral sampling has over 150 big screen credits to his notable name, including a sizeable slice of the biggest blockbusters witnessed worldwide, as well as associated sellout arena tours on the grandest of scales — with none other than Tina Guo joining him onstage.
"You have never heard a sample library like this before. Instant, Cure, Smiths, Cocteau, Lanois, Eno, Edge, Steve Reich vs Pat Metheny under your fingertips. An homage to great British guitar beds from shoe gaze to stinking student union bars in the north of England to the pristine layers of Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. Construct endless layers of interweaved guitar parts that become a highly controllable sonic weapon that goes from elegant to pure filth in no less than a turn of a dial.
Join the minds (and fingers) behind this; Christian Henson and Theo Le Derf on the beginning of your Hive journey. This is the gift we all wanted this Christmas."
Press release follows:
EDINBURGH, UK: The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of FILTH - GUITAR HIVE — heading up its FILTH sub-range of products produced and recorded at the Annex in Edinburgh, Scotland, its self-styled safe house packed with vintage equipment, rarified instruments, synths, processing, and potential, with the main emphasis being on creating more experimental sample projects that think out of the box and are the very antithesis of virtual instruments; in this case, guitar performances on a limited-edition Fender Telecaster by Theo Le Derf, D.I. (Direct Injection) recorded via a pristine Thermionic Culture The Rooster Valve pre-amp with EQ & attitude and mixed through countless processors to give users control over the uncontrollable, ultimately providing what all at the music-making community tools-maker collectively yearn for in the process... utter filth — as of December 18…
Now knowing what FILTH - GUITAR HIVE is positioned as being, best to take a function-highlighting, whistle-stop tour of its clearly considered UI (User Interface) implemented to take that mission statement to the musical masses, filthy or otherwise. On the face of it, the front panel-dominating ‘Obutsu!’ is basically a ‘filth’ dial, allowing users to effortlessly transform their sound with three simultaneous signals — from tasteful and pure D.I. to a crunchy deluxe amplifier, all the way to overdriven feedback and tempo-synced tremolo; SHIMMER is a dual-direction granular pitch shift fed into a massive reverb chamber, creating a cascading, shimmering veil of tone; DRIVE is an unmistakably distorted, crunchy signal, modelled after a tube amp that has been utterly misused; ECHO is a tape-based, multi-tap echo/delay that syncs to the host tempo — an associated speed control determines what subdivision of the beat the repeats play at; and SPLOSH is a suitably reasonable decaying reverb for anyone’s roomy needs.
TCHC announces availability of SMALL STRING GESTURES as toolkit to dial up musical personality with intimate interpretative band behind each key
EDINBURGH, UK: having ‘softly’ set out its software stall late last year with a low-key launch of STRING MURMURATIONS that saw decades of award-winning experience in the music tech sector and at the composing coalface distilled into an easy- to-use, intuitive, and comprehensive sample-based virtual instrument plug-in and GUI (Graphical User Interface) introducing the cutting-edge concept of Gestures (whereby an orchestra interpreting its user’s composition and making it into music and art lies behind every key played), music-making community tools-maker The Crow Hill Company is proud to announce availability of SMALL STRING GESTURES as the latest incarnation of that concept — creating a set of tools where individual instruments and the playing style, strengths, and frailties of the intimate interpretative (3, 3, 3, 3) band behind each key are available for the user to dial up the personality of their composition, created from a collection of master recordings that have been mixed and edited into a sample-based virtual instrument plug-in with a GUI and preset browser that are as easy on the eye as they are in use — as of January 26…
An armada of strings can create awe — an epic tidal wave of human emotion, of scale, of wonder. While STRING MURMURATIONS makes it easy and intuitive to make music that sounds human thanks to three distinct palettes of expressions, each designed to feel like the user is collaborating with an orchestra of real musicians, creating endless harmonic possibilities that inspire from the moment a key is touched, sometimes music-makers need it to be intimate, truthful, personal, human — hence The Crow Hill Company creating SMALL STRING GESTURES as a set of tools where individual instruments and the playing style, strengths, and frailties of the instrumentalists involved are available for the user to dial up the personality of their composition. Cue humanity, in other words.
With this in mind, The Crow Hill Company specifically selected a 3, 3, 3, 3 — three Violin 1, three Violin 2, three Violas, and three Cellos — band size that ensured its sampling style brought every individual within that ensemble into beautifully detailed and intimate focus for SMALL STRING GESTURES. This toolset is provided with a different lens and aperture to play through.
The Crow Hill Company collectively likes to keep things moving, so while this latest incarnation of its Gestures concept is very much related to one of those distinct palettes of expression available in STRING MURMURATIONS, it is worth highlighting hysteresis — dictionary-defined as the phenomenon in which the value of a physical property lags behind changes in the effect causing it, such as when magnetic induction lags behind the magnetising force, for instance — in relation to SMALL STRING GESTURES. Getting in on the act of creating sample libraries involves always asking the instrumentalists involved to perform musical material that is incredibly easy to play in order for the end result to always be ‘together’. That is fine for programming or composing simple stuff since that would sound true to real life, but it becomes harder, however, for players to remain totally locked to each other’s tuning or timekeeping when playing more difficult passages. Pure sound becomes more problematic as a result — reduced fundamental meaning more character, which is why a lot of sample-based music used in films, games, and TV sounds ‘characterless’. Clearly the samples involved therein lack hysteresis as they were easy to play, yet playing something difficult with them does not sound natural, real, or human. Indeed, it is fair to say that what makes musicians ‘hysterical’ is speed — faster playing means looser playing that is less in time and also less in tune; reach — the wider the gap between the notes, the further they have to reach, resulting in less perfectly in tune playing; and pitch — the higher a player plays, the harder it becomes as it involves more intense accuracy from string players performing on fretless instruments.
It is for this reason that The Crow Hill Company decided to get its players to perform the hard stuff — not compositions, but mere fragments, which is why anyone working with SMALL STRING GESTURES will not feel like they are playing phrases; instead it is rather like having a string band under their fingertips. For Gestures are the very real sound of reach and performance. But by not giving the musicians behind SMALL STRING GESTURES simple stuff to play prevented them from getting bored. Better still, SMALL STRING GESTURES users are accessing the sound that musicians make when they are smiling... hysterically!
It is also fair to say, therefore, that the effect of hysteresis on a large string section — including that which was involved in the creation of STRING MURMURATIONS, for instance — is a silky, blurry sound. An audible example of this might be the fast string runs in John Williams’ ‘Hedwig’s Theme’ from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — ditto the closing bars of ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’ from Holst’s The Planets suite. Saying that, though, there are times when music-makers do not need awe, epic, and huge scale in pursuit of their compositional craft, but instead seek something more intimate, more personal, more human. The theory that led to SMALL STRING GESTURES revolved around if The Crow Hill Company could get a string band small enough then the impact of hysteresis would not be a musical blurring, but rather an exposure of each player involved in its creation — their own style of bowing and vibrato, their own fragilities to help the user’s audience connect more with the human nature of their music.
Making that happen meant designing SMALL STRING GESTURES to make its users approach composing and making music from a totally new angle, one where it feels like there are musicians at their fingertips — not samples. SMALL STRING GESTURES is a collection of master recordings — made by world-class producers and engineers at Glasgow’s Clockwork Studios, a new custom-designed scoring stage for the UK comprising of a large hall for full orchestra (up to 80 players) with a balanced and focused sound ideal for modern orchestral recording, as well as a smaller dry space in Studio B (up to 15 players), with the world-class Scottish Session Orchestra playing some of the finest instruments through the finest microphones and mic pre-amps — that have been mixed and edited into a sample-based virtual instrument plug-in with a GUI and a preset browser that are as easy on the eye as they are in use. Ultimately, it works within anyone’s favourite DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) with 25 presets — presented as six Gestures, four Longs, 10 Presets, and five Bonus — and additional hand-crafted Selects designed by The Crow Hill Company team. There are three mix-ready stereo signals — namely, CLOSE, WIDE, and AMBIENT, as well as unique REVERB controls and a granular effects processor.
Duly designed by professional composers with the sonic connoisseur in mind, The Crow Hill Company’s collective conclusion certainly rings true, stating, “We’re a small team and have worked hard to make everything as intuitive as possible.” Put it this way: with SMALL STRING GESTURES it is perfectly possible to make music that sounds intimate, truthful, personal, human! Hysteresis, of course, comes into play here, albeit with the desired effect — exposure of each player involved in its creation.
Clearly, then, big messages come in small packages when it comes to working with the diminutive-sized SMALL STRING GESTURES as another easy-to-use and intuitive virtual instrument plug-in from The Crow Hill Company, one which is also easy on the wallet for those wishing to step into this new world of gesture-based sampling.
SMALL STRING GESTURES is available to purchase — as an AAX-, AU-, VST-, and VST3-format-compatible sample-based virtual instrument plug-in comprising 8 GB of uncompressed material (compressed losslessly to 4.4 GB) that loads directly into a DAW — for £49.00 GBP (including VAT) directly from The Crow Hill Company here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/small-string-gestures
SMALL STRING GESTURES is available for free until February 29, 2024 when purchasing STRING MURMURATIONS for £199.00 GBP (including VAT) directly from The Crow Hill Company here: https://thecrowhillcompany.com/string-murmurations/ (Note that SMALL STRING GESTURES is also available for free to existing owners of STRING MURMURATIONS until February 29, 2024.)
Watch The Crow Hill Company founder and composer Christian Henson’s must-see SMALL STRING GESTURES walkthrough video here: [video up top]