Cinesamples 50% sale

[Yan Filiatrault]

Now through the end of March, save a whopping 50% off all products and bundles from Cinesamples!

We recently dropped the price of many products, so this sale is on the new, lower prices. Some key highlights:

- CineStrings Core 2.0 update (was $529, now $399 and on sale for $199.50 -- and the update is free to existing owners!)

- Industry Brass Core, our new flagship orchestral brass library from the Newman Scoring Stage at Fox Studios, on sale for $199.50

- Artist Series: Apocalyptica, our brand-new collaboration library with the renowned Finnish symphonic metal group, on sale for $124.50

https://store.cinesamples.com/sale

[PavlovsCat]

The Tina Guo Cello sounds great, but it sounds like it has a lot of reverb baked in, which isn''t what I'm after. I'd love to hear from anyone who has me if this is correct. I would want to use it in rock and acoustic rock (kind of folk rock-ish) productions and I'm not sure if it would fit well in those situations. But I'd be very interested in hearing from those who have it and what they think. 

[Amicus717]

I have the Tina Guo series, and I like them a lot. The overall vibe of the original library is pretty dramatic and intense, with pronounced legato transitions. Tina Guo 2 is a more agile library with a lot of articulations, including shorts.

As for how dry: they do come with default parameters that are pretty schmaltzy, and there isn't a ton of user-configurable elements, at least in terms of mix or mic settings. Basically, you have two mixes - Tim's Mix and Raw Mix - and some limited reverb settings that you can adjust or turn off (plus the usual Legato controls, etc)

I don't know how dry you want things to be, but I did three really fast and dirty recordings and linked them below. All these are done with the in-library reverb effects turned off, and using the "Raw Mix"  (as opposed to the curated "Tim's Mix" that is the default). There are no effects applied in my DAW:

Tina Guo original library Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-1-dry

Tina Guo 2 Arco Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-dry

Tina Guo 2 Spiccato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-spiccato-dry-test

Hope this helps. 

Rob

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Amicus717

[PavlovsCat]

19 minutes ago, Amicus717 said:

I have the Tina Guo series, and I like them a lot. The overall vibe of the original library is pretty dramatic and intense, with pronounced legato transitions. Tina Gua 2 is a more agile library with a lot of articulations, including shorts.

As for how dry: they do come with default parameters that are pretty schmaltzy, and there isn't a ton of user-configurable elements, at least in terms of mix or mic settings. Basically, you have two mixes - Tim's Mix and Raw Mix - and some limited reverb settings that you can adjust or turn off (plus the usual Legato controls, etc)

I don't know how dry you want things to be, but I did three really fast and dirty recordings and linked them below. All these are done with the in-library reverb effects turned off, and using the "Raw Mix"  (as opposed to the curated "Tim's Mix" that is the default). There are no effects applied in my DAW:

Tina Guo original library Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-1-dry

Tina Guo 2 Arco Legato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-dry

Tina Guo 2 Spiccato - https://soundcloud.com/amicusaudio/tina-guo-2-spiccato-dry-test

Hope this helps. 

Rob

 

Wow, thanks! This is extremely helpful and was very kind of you, it helps A LOT. I really appreciate it.

From listening to the dry patches, that does sound completely usable for my tastes. So this was really useful for me. 

If you could help me understand the differences between Tina Guo 1 and 2. I am looking for a dry solo cello and would like to have a legato sustain patch AND a sustain patch I could play polyphonically. What would I be missing out on if I only bought Vol 2?  Clearly, Vol 2 has a lot of additional articulations. When I listen to the demos at the dev's site, it also seems to have a nice legato sustain patch that is used on a very slow part that is what I would expect would be Vol 1's forte. Maybe it's just me, but Cinesamples doesn't really make comparing these two as easy as it could be and phrases like "more agile" might be meaningful if you're using the library, but to someone just researching, it's a bit of an imprecise term.   

Thanks much, 
Peter

 

[Fleer]

I looooooooove the Tina Guo bundle. But also their Piano in Blue (now for Kontakt Player). The new CineStrings 2.0 and Apocalyptica are marvelous as well. Great dev. 

[Amicus717]

53 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

 Maybe it's just me, but Cinesamples doesn't really make comparing these two as easy as it could be and phrases like "more agile" might be meaningful if you're using the library, but to someone just researching, it's a bit of an imprecise term.   

 

Tina Guo 1 has a very emotional vibrato and, to my ears, a laggier legato transition. If you're doing a faster passage, it drags and blurs a bit.

Tina Guo 2 has minimal vibrato and the legato transitions are faster. It's more nimble to play for faster passages.

[PavlovsCat]

23 minutes ago, Fleer said:

I looooooooove the Tina Guo bundle. But also their Piano in Blue (now for Kontakt Player). The new CineStrings 2.0 and Apocalyptica are marvelous as well. Great dev. 

Probably because I am in love Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" album, the demos of Piano in Blue are AMAZING to my ears because it really captures that sound which I find pure magic. and I've thought of buying that library for a long time but have been limiting my purchases lately. But one of the things that always gave me pause is that I primarily have been recording rock songs and I was wondering if you could speak to how Piano in Blue sounds in a rock context.

If my budget allowed for it and my playing wasn't so poor, this library would be an instant buy. There's no other piano library I want more than this one, it has such an epic tone! Note the demo from Greg Schlaepfer (Orange Tree Samples) on the landing page for Piano in Blue. Greg is a superb pianist and bassist. 

https://store.cinesamples.com/products/piano-in-blue 

[PavlovsCat]

Just now, Amicus717 said:

Tina Guo 1 has a very emotional vibrato and, to my ears, a laggier legato transition. If you're doing a faster passage, it drags and blurs a bit.

Tina Guo 2 has minimal vibrato and the legato transitions are faster. It's more nimble to play for faster passages.

Thank you so much and sorry, I promise this will be my last question. I do rock music and want to use the cello for folk rock - ish arrangements largely centered around piano.  I'm mostly going to use it for slower, emotional parts (think of Eleanor Rigby or Damien Rice for the kind of simple arrangements I enjoy). Do you think Vol 2 would work for me if I could only choose one of the libraries or do you think Vol 1 is the much better fit?

Of course, I'm interested in Vol 2 because of the additional articulations. 

[Fleer]

4 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Probably because I am in love Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" album, the demos of Piano in Blue are AMAZING to my ears because it really captures that sound which I find pure magic. and I've thought of buying that library for a long time but have been limiting my purchases lately. But one of the things that always gave me pause is that I primarily have been recording rock songs and I was wondering if you could speak to how Piano in Blue sounds in a rock context.

If my budget allowed for it and my playing wasn't so poor, this library would be an instant buy. There's no other piano library I want more than this one, it has such an epic tone! Note the demo from Greg Schlaepfer (Orange Tree Samples) on the landing page for Piano in Blue. Greg is a superb pianist and bassist. 

https://store.cinesamples.com/products/piano-in-blue 

It’s a wonderful piano, but I primarily got it for the Glenn Gould (Goldberg Variations) link. So not for rock. I guess I’d rather opt for an upright Yamaha to play rock, maybe like VI Labs’ Modern U or Pianoteq’s U4. 

[PavlovsCat]

Just now, Fleer said:

It’s a wonderful piano, but I primarily got it for the Glenn Gould (Goldberg Variations) link. So not for rock. I guess I’d rather opt for an upright Yamaha to play rock, maybe like VI Labs’ Modern U or Pianoteq’s U4. 

Thanks. That is what I thought. Of course, I'm still going drool over Piano in Blue, and I'm pretty sure that I'll eventually pick it up and play it  and think -- there's no way I'm good enough of a pianist to be playing this! 

[Amicus717]

10 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Thank you so much and sorry, I promise this will be my last question. I do rock music and want to use the cello for folk rock - ish arrangements largely centered around piano.  I'm mostly going to use it for slower, emotional parts (think of Eleanor Rigby or Damien Rice for the kind of simple arrangements I enjoy). Do you think Vol 2 would work for me if I could only choose one of the libraries or do you think Vol 1 is the much better fit?

Of course, I'm interested in Vol 2 because of the additional articulations. 

I tend to stay away from making hard recommendations for stuff -- it is such a subjective thing, and someone's "greatest-library-ever!" is someone else's "unuseable-mess-of-a-library". For further reading on this issue, see: VI Control - pretty much every Sample Talk thread ever made. 

However, if I were doing an Eleanor Rigby cover, then I'd fire up Tina Gua 2.

But that's just my two cents (actually, I'm Canadian, so that would be 1.5 cents). I honestly don't know if that will work for you, but it would be the library I'd start out with.

 

Edited March 23, 2023 by Amicus717

[PavlovsCat]

1 minute ago, Amicus717 said:

I tend to stay away from making hard recommendations for stuff -- it is such a subject thing, and someone's "greatest-library-ever!" is someone else's "unuseable-mess-of-a-library". For further reading on this issue, see: VI Control - pretty much every Sample Talk thread ever made. 

However, if I were doing an Eleanor Rigby cover, then I'd fire up Tina Gua 2.

But that's just my two cents (actually, I'm Canadian, so that would be 1.5 cents). I honestly don't know if that will work for you, but it would the library I'd start out with.

 

Thanks again! And you're a fine representative of your wonderful country!

[Craig Fowler]

22 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Thanks. That is what I thought. Of course, I'm still going drool over Piano in Blue, and I'm pretty sure that I'll eventually pick it up and play it  and think -- there's no way I'm good enough of a pianist to be playing this! 

Fleer is right about Modern U being ideal for what you want. Given your 'vintage' tastes, though, I don't think Piano in Blue would be out of place in 60s rock sort of stuff or anything that's on the rawer side. It's one of my absolute favourite virtual instruments and I'd hate to be without it - I have objectively 'better' virtual pianos, but nothing that sounds or feels like PiB.

[PavlovsCat]

How could I have forgotten.  A friend used Piano in Blue many years ago and recorded this impromptu version of Carole King's "Natural Woman."  It sounded great for this tune, IMO.