Tina Guo enjoys a reputation as a modern cellist with significant experience in non-classical music genres. For example, her résumé includes working with everyone from Hans Zimmer to Carrie Underwood to the Foo Fighters. She also has her own metal band!
The Crow Hill Company recently released Tina Guo Storm Cello, a plugin with a unique sonic approach. A robust effects engine lets you transform the cello from a chamber music staple to something more appropriate for rock. As with other Crow Hill plugins, the sound is simply top-shelf!
Tina Guo Storm Cello Features
- Tina Guo Cello Performance Featuring 19 Different Orchestral Techniques
- 23 Experimental Textures with a 9 Layer Sound Design Mixer
- Nearly 100 GB of High-Quality Sampled Audio
- Robust Effects Collection with EQ, Delay, Reverb, and Granular Synth
- Supports macOS (Big Sur through Sonoma) and Windows 10 and 11
- Plugin Formats: AU, VST3, VST, AAX
- Available from The Crow Hill Company for $237
Tina Guo Storm Cello is a great addition to the plugin library for musos working in nearly all genres. It offers great sonics that go beyond the orchestral or chamber music world. Read further to learn more about this top-notch cello plugin.
Exploring the Tina Guo Storm Cello Interface
If you’re familiar with Crow Hill’s other releases, expect to feel right at home with Storm Cello’s user interface. The Front Panel serves as the plugin’s central point of navigation. A bar at the top of the screen provides preset management as well as tuning and volume sliders.
Just below the preset controls lie buttons used for accessing Storm Cello’s three panes: Main, Effects, and Texture. The Main panel provides a set of intuitive knobs and buttons to tweak the sound and performance aspects of the cello. The Timbre knob manages the dynamics of the cello sonics. Additionally, the Signal knob lets you balance the DI and mic-modeled sound sources.
The Speed dropdown supports some of the intriguing time-based performance techniques, useful for rock or electronic music use cases for cello. Yeah! We’ll dive into those later. The Form knob and dropdown also offer a unique capability to blend the original Tina Guo recorded performance with the transformed signal. These two controls especially hint at the power of Storm Cello to create sounds beyond the world of chamber music.
Storm Cello provides a Deep Effects Engine and Interesting Sonic Textures
The Effects panel provides access to Storm Cello’s robust FX engine, featuring EQ, delay, reverb, and an interesting granular synth. For example, we used the Grains effect to give the cello a sense of rhythm and propulsion. Check out this slab of chamber music we crafted to demo the capabilities of this great effect.
Speaking of rhythm, the Gate Stepper effectively serves as a 16-step sequencer, also adding to the flexibility of Storm Cello. Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne would have loved something like this when bootstrapping the Electric Light Orchestra. It also highlights the fact that this plugin is perfect for adding cello to psychedelic rock, prog, and electronic music projects.
The Texture panel provides a mixer letting you control the level of multiple cello techniques. This feature also adds to the sonic flexibility of Storm Cello. In particular, sound designers will have a field day with the mixer’s functionality.
Killer Cello Sound Performed by Tina Guo
Tina Guo Storm Cello simply sounds stunning. Once again, Crow Hill’s techniques and approach for recording chamber and orchestral music inform the quality of their plugins. The wide array of different performance techniques also matters.
Check out this other piece of music, and the almost grunge-like cello providing a powerful bass line. The lead cello part also highlights the quality of the natural sustain in the sampled performance. Note that the only reverb and other effects on this track are within Storm Cello.
As noted earlier, the effects engine, Gate Stepper, and Texture panel provide deep control over the sound. Each lets you take the cello out of the chamber and put it squarely onto a rock or experimental music stage. Expect to channel Roy Wood, Hugh McDowell, or Tina Guo herself more than Yo-Yo Ma or Jacqueline du Pré.
In the end, Crow Hill has another winner on their hand with Tina Guo Storm Cello. Great sound, an intuitive interface, and powerful sonic sculpting possibilities abound. This plugin is also suitable for rock, prog, or experimental musicians looking to expand their sonic palette. Thus, we give it our highest recommendation!