Sonuscore The Orchestra Complete 4

The playable range for each preset/instrument is marked in blue on the keyboard. Animated Orchestra presets, “optimised to sound best in the two octaves around middle C”, according to Sonuscore, are marked in green.

Easy and quick orchestral arrangements are very much the order of the day as Sonuscore’s The Orchestra Complete reaches its fourth incarnation.

When it comes to orchestral sample libraries we can safely say that we are well and truly spoilt for choice. There’s a flavour of virtual orchestra out there for everyone, from full‑sized ensembles recorded in the world’s best rooms, to individual instruments captured intimately; physically modelled instruments, for those who value performance above all, and pre‑recorded orchestral phrases for those whose ideas exceed their ability to put them down.

Sonuscore’s flagship The Orchestra Complete series has been a steady presence in this crowded playing field, and, with its latest version, aims to provide even more tools to make orchestral composition faster and more flexible.

Overview

For the newcomers in the room, here’s a quick primer on what The Orchestra Complete (TOC) is all about: an 80‑player orchestral library powered by the Ensemble Engine that makes use of arpeggiators, velocity envelopes and instrument layering to help quickly sketch out musical ideas or craft complex orchestral arrangements.

While TOC allows you to generate an entire arrangement from playing just a single note or chord, it’s worth noting that there are no pre‑recorded phrases in the library, thus ensuring that you have full control of your arrangement at all times. It is this flexibility that makes the orchestra well suited to established composers who might appreciate the speed of an arrangement generated with minimal manual programming, while also wanting control over individual patterns and sounds.

Use the Arpeggiator (Arp) and Sequence Customizer (Seq) together to create rhythmic patterns and customise the pitch of each step within a sequence.

SOS carried an excellent in‑depth review of TOC’s ancestor The Orchestra, which you might want to check out to get up to speed if you haven’t used it before. In this review, we’ll focus on what’s new and exciting and how it all plays together.

The Sound & The Fury

The fourth edition of TOC runs in Native Instruments’ Kontakt or Kontakt Player (versions 7.10.7 or higher) and, in its 27.6GB package, contains The Orchestra (the foundation of it all), subsequent expansions Strings Of Winter, Woods Of The Wild, Horns Of Hell and the newest — and equally dramatically named — Forces Of Fury, which, as the name suggests, is designed for writing power‑packed action cues; the more dramatic, the better. With over 150 new presets, expanded articulations, and new single instruments, ‘cinematic’ is the keyword here and to that end, Forces Of Fury brings with it a brand new collection of full string ensembles, and massive percussion samples recorded in London (somewhere unspecified).

So what does Forces Of Fury add to the existing library? It offers an immediately bigger sound (what is often referred to as ‘epic’ in movie circles), and has an in‑your‑face quality that is characteristic of contemporary blockbusters. The core Orchestra pack also has big strings, but they somehow feel stately. Forces Of Fury, on the other hand, is buzzing with energy. These are the strings you bring out for the epic battles, dizzying action sequences and breathless chases. They’re the young guns, first on the field, ready to fire things up. And while Sonuscore have reached for the heights, sonically, the usability of...