The Orchestra by Sonuscore Review

The Orchestra is a tool to score full tracks or more often used to sketch your next inspiration. The Orchestra is produced by Sonuscore and distributed by Best Service. Best Service did send a review copy with no strings attached.

Sonuscore was founded in 2012 as a label of production studio Dynamedion created by the same team that founded BOOM Library company. Sonuscore is releasing new libraries with vast experience in orchestral music production, high-end sound quality claims and a cutting-edge approach to perfectly balanced usability, to shape some of the most incredible virtual instruments out there!

Installation

You can download the library from your Best Service user account. The required Kontakt serial number is needed to activate the library can be found there in the Best Service User Area as well.

Sound

The Orchestra includes all sections of an orchestra and allows you to sketch a score quickly. If you look at this library as a tool to draw you next track, you will understand the high value of this library. After sketching the score, you can add other instruments to polish the score further. One missing element to fully deliver on this workflow is the not available MIDI export function.

The Orchestra is a library that adds value to everyone’s composer toolbox. The Orchestra is compared to other libraries not profoundly sampled and does not include the vast variety of articulations that are involved in many different libraries that focus on specific sections of an orchestra.

Included Instrument in their sections are:

• Strings: Violin I, Violin II, Violas, Celli, Basses
• Brass:  4 Horns, 3 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Low Brass (Tuba & Bass Trombone)
• Woodwinds: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Contrabassoon
• Percussion & Harp:  Concert Harp (plucked), Timpani, Tubular, Bells, Suspended Cymbals, Gran Cassa, Snare Drum, Tam Tam, Piatti, Drum Ensemble, Taikos
• Choir: Men and Woman sustain (Ah, Oh),  Staccato (11 syllables)

All Strings, Brass, and Woods come with Staccato, Sustain (Poly), Marcato. Legato is available in those instruments as well except Contrabassoon. The Strings also offer Tremolo and Pizzicato.

The Orchestra has been recorded at the Studio 22, Budapest in a traditional seating position.

Sonuscore created a large phrase engine, instead of pre-recorded phrases. It is all driven by the phrase engine playing the selected instruments. After you find based your rhythm, you can swap out the used arpeggiator, work with any of the more than 150pre-defined preset or change single instruments to get a different tone.  Compared to pre-recorded libraries this is a big bonus.

The presets which there should be with the upcoming release of V1.1 almost 200 offers you a high starting point that you should leverage to find some inspiring ideas. The presets available and grouped by Orchestral Colors, Orchestral Rhythms, and Animated Orchestra are designed by Matthias Wolf, Tilman Sillescu, Steffen Brinkmann.

The Orchestra v1.1 is announced and should become available any day now. The update which will be free for all registered users. Besides a couple of smaller bug fixes, primarily it will include additional content and new features:

• A Glockenspiel has been added to the engine like a traditional single patch.
• 42 new presets and 15 new multis are here to keep you inspired.
• You can now play triplets with our engine.
• The new user preset browser makes it easy for you to save and share your presets.
• In the mixer, you can choose the output of the channel if you run Kontakt as a multi-output plugin.
• On the new settings page, you can change the MIDI CC which controls the dynamic and activate our new humanizer.
• The instrument browser automatically jumps to the right instrument loaded into the slot you want to edit.
• The mute buttons are now automatable.
• Solo and mute buttons are also available on the main page.

User interface & Usability

You can get started without any musical training and produce great sounding results. That speaks to the ease of use of this library. The main missing feature is the possibility to export MIDI. Being able to export MIDI will ramp up the value of the Orchestra engine.

Rating:  Four out of five stars

The Orchestra is a fabulous library for discovering ideas or drafting new tracks. Sonuscore made it so easy, you perform with one finger an excellent sounding automated arrangement of a full orchestra. The captured multi-sampled instruments sound excellent, and the Ensemble Engine bringing musical score creation to a new level of simplicity that is not found elsewhere. What I miss is the possibility to export the MIDI for the created rhythm to easier add other instrument and further use the sketched score.