The Crow Hill Company boasts a growing reputation as a purveyor of high-quality plugins based on well-recorded samples. For our first exploration of their product line, we train our eyes and ears on Small String Gestures, a sample instrument leveraging recordings of a 12-piece string section. Crow Hill’s development team inspired passionate takes from the performers, allowing you to take advantage of their work within your own compositions.
Crow Hill Small String Gestures
- Innovative Strings Plugin Providing Control of 12-piece String Section
- Top-Shelf Recordings offer Exceptional Audio Quality
- 8GB of High-Quality String Section Samples
- Leverages Unique Bowing and Vibrato Techniques
- Simple and Intuitive Interface
- Suitable for Soundtrack Work and Esoteric Music Projects
- Mixer Includes Three Mic Locations and Reverb
- Supports Most Popular Plugin Formats
- Available from The Crow Hill Company for £49
If soundtracks and edgy modern classical music projects intrigue you, Small String Gestures must be explored. Its exceptional sound quality and unique performance options inspire your own compositions. Notably, the plugin almost serves as a more focused version of Crow Hill’s String Murmurations. This sample-based plugin is easy to use and adds a measure of class to any music project. Check it out!
Exploring the Small String Gestures UI
The Small String Gestures user interface features a minimalist approach, making it easy to manage in your own projects. The standard menu bar at the top includes patch management functionality while providing control of the overall volume and tuning. Timbre and Expression knobs let you modify the sound of the current sample patch. Use the Shift dropdown to set the scale mode, which affects the key transitions of gestures.
For Small String Gestures, the Crow Hill team recorded the 12-piece string section in an old Glaswegian church. The rest of the app UI lets you tweak this space, including a virtual mixer with separate faders for Close, Wide, and Ambient micing. Finally, the included reverb provides control over the room size, mix signal, and envelope release. Note that not all presets support every control; they become greyed out when disabled.
Crow Hill crafts Exceptional Sound Quality with Inspired Performances
The sonic heart of Small String Gestures resides with the inspired performances of the string section recorded for the samples. This approach leads to exceptional sound quality with unique nuances suitable for chamber and experimental music forms. Holding longer notes, intervals, and chords allows the plugin to summon these subtleties. Like other great synths and sample instruments, it rewards an experimental and exploratory approach.
As noted earlier, the Shift dropdown control sets the scale mode, effectively the note used for transitions when holding long tones. Experiment with this value. Using a key different from the one currently playing might summon those dark and brooding Ivesian chamber soundscapes. Also explore how tweaking the Timbre and Expression knobs modify the sound in real time.
The app’s microphone mixer and reverb settings also provide the string section a tangible sense of space. Chances are strong you won’t need to run Small String Gestures through other effect plugins. Its sound is simply exceptional!
To put Small String Gestures through its paces, I crafted a few quick chamber explorations. A minimal approach worked best, using whole notes and chords allowing the string samples to evolve. The impassioned performances from the original session easily translate to your own compositions.
Check out these videos to get an idea of the sonic possibilities of this Crow Hill plugin. Each track has no additional reverb or any other mastering or compression effects. A Small String Circus 1 and 2 use the same preset, with the second version serving up a slightly edgier expansion of the original idea.
Circus Aviation offers a more pastoral tone using a present with a smaller sonic space. Summoning chamber music inspirations becomes natural with Small String Gestures!
The Crow Hill Company: Boutique Samples for Composers and Musicians
Small String Gestures highlights the overall quality of The Crow Hill Company’s sample libraries. Excellent recordings and impassioned performances from the chamber group inspire your own classical and experimental compositions. The simple, intuitive user interface never gets in the way. At $49, any composer, producer, or musician needs to explore adding it to their plugin library.
Additionally, most of Crow Hill’s products focus on modern classical or chamber music, we also explored the excellent String Murmurations, effectively the mothership of Small String Gestures. Their free Vaults sample player program, similar to the original Spitfire Audio Labs, also highlights the company’s wide range of sampling approaches and sonic possibilities. Vaults’ recently-released upright piano plugin, Vertical Piano, only adds to this variety. Needless to say, The Crow Hill Company deserves your attention!
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