Cloud Viola2 by Sound Dust Review
Cloud Viola2 is a library documenting what happens when Sound Dust is experimenting with different stimulation to generate the tone and sounds on a viola string. “The DNA of a viola, but not a viola anymore” as Pendle Poucher describes it.
Sound Dust is the brainchild of Pendle Poucher, a Brighton UK based composer, sound designer and lover of funny noises. We covered Sound Dust before in articles like our FRICTION (DIVA presets) by Sound Dust Review.
Pendle has written, produced and performed soundtracks for every significant UK TV station and much more all over the world. Pendle worked for ten years as sound designer and composer for award-winning theatre company DreamThinkSpeak devising amongst others a 32 channel soundtrack for their radical reworking of Hamlet “The Rest is Silence” in 2012.
Installation
After purchase, you can download the library, unpack it and do a batch re-save in Kontakt. It requires the full version (you need to buy it) of Kontakt 5.6.8 by Native Instruments or above
Sound
Cloud Viola2 has unique sounding standalone signature instruments and includes textures that go very well with a score to support a conventional orchestra.
When you watch the video above you may think yourself: Ok, I buy a garden string, and as I want to do something special I get a blue one and do it myself. It is not that easy, Pendle has the experience, and you can hear that in the captured sounds and as well see it in the interface he created in Kontakt. The take away is buying a garden line and experiment – for the best sounds possible to purchase this library. Or get both and have fun.
Using a green garden line Pendle did grow a library that includes 60 snapshots, comes with 3GB of 24bit samples of content over a three-octave key range (G2 to A5).
Articulations
- 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 – 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 – recorded with large diaphragm valve condenser mic
- White Twine Bow: bowed with five meters of rough 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
If you do own Cloud Viola1, you can get a discount for Cloud Viola2. To answer your question as a Cloud Viola 1 owner, this is a new instrument that brings a bit more vibe and sounds to your toolbox.
I do have several of Sound Dust’s unique libraries, my experience has been positive, and it is the same with this library. Sound Dust libraries are exceptional. The cloud instruments are all in their rights unique, the Cloud Viola2 is in line with the quality you expect from this boutique company.
User interface & Usability
There are very few developers that found a very usable Interface that supports the composer when working with a library. Sound Dust has joined that team for several years and can demonstrate with their designed interface how easy it can be to work with a library. You are up to speed and hit the ground running quickly when you first get in touch with the cloud instruments that all share the same UI idea.
Rating: Five out of five stars
Cloud Viola2 fits very well with avant-garde music, and any score to picture for a trailer or featured films. Also, a sound designer who is looking for new sources will find in this library a massive source of tone and inspiration. As shown in the video at the top of this article Pendle went the extra mile to produce sounds from a Viola.
Cloud Viola2 is a great sounding instrument and comes with surpassing patches and snapshots. As you never compose in isolation and need to pull in other libraries from the leading developers, you will be happy how well this library fits in with libraries from 8Dio, Orchestral Tools, Spitfire Audio and with libraries that are produced by boutique companies. If you like that Scandinavian vibe or just need some spices to enhance your score, you find with Cloud Viola2 a phenomenal and amazingly inspirational library.
