by Sound Dust
Viola × green garden twine ÷ √ (granular oscillator³ × reverb) = CLOUD VIOLA²
Cloud viola contains 1 Kontakt .nki instrument with 60 snapshots amd 3GB of content (compressed)
$56.00
CLOUD VIOLA² is a deeply multi sampled hybrid Kontakt instrument that takes a humble 17th century classical stringed instrument and lovingly shoves it into the modern world.
CLOUD VIOLA² uses unlikely playing techniques and sampling magic to create new tones and textures. From cinematic pads to strange leads she is perfect as a standalone signature instrument or for adding interesting texture to a ‘proper’ orchestra. Using midi controllers and DAW automation she can be played with organic expressiveness and genuine emotion.
CLOUD VIOLA² is completely in her comfort zone in cutting-edge electronica, epic trailer massiveness, quirky sound design and delicate contemporary classical.
A Cloud Viola happens when you ditch the conventional viola bow and look for something else to stimulate the strings.
After much experimentation I discovered that a ball of course green garden string sounded ‘best’, but stringing a standard bow with garden twine doesn’t work, you’d need an impossible 10-metre bow to play a smooth note (I know it’s impossible because I tried). After many experiments a retractable dog lead came to the rescue. It can hold long lengths of twine under tension and when fixed to one end of the studio it can allow the twine to be drawn evenly over the viola string.
Another week perfecting the art of dogbowing and recording hundreds and hundreds of dogbowed, accented and col legno notes it was all starting to make sense and fortunately sounding pretty good too. The final step was to push 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 different settings for 200% wetness.
Voila the Cloud Viola !
Accent Bow: bowed with a real bow, five round robins per note – recorded with large diaphragm valve condenser mic
Grain Bow: bowed with a real bow, five round robins per note – played through granular oscillator with XY pad control of playback speed and grain size
Palm Mute: plucked and muted with palm of the hand – AKG C414 large diaphragm condenser mic- five round robins per note with up to 22 levels of velocity per note
Grain Legno: Latin for ‘gently thwacked with the back of the bow’, five round robins per note – played through granular oscillator with XY pad control of playback speed and grain size
Black Twine Bow: bowed with five meters of coarse green garden string, five round robins per note – AKG C414 large diaphragm condenser mic
White Twine Bow: bowed with five meters of coarse green garden string, five round robins per note – recorded AKG C411 contact mic
Grain Cloud: Black Twine Bow recorded 100% wet through Strymon Big Sky hardware reverb – played through granular oscillator with XY pad control of playback speed and grain size
White Cloud: six selectable multi-sampled and heavily processed viola sample sets – cloud, sad cloud, bit cloud, vox cloud, jitter cloud, pain cloud
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