Sonuscore The Pulse

With just a few MIDI chords as input, Sonuscore’s Ensemble Instrument engine provides instant orchestration from up to 10 individual sounds.

Sonuscore orchestrate modern electronic music production.

If your personal music production ventures into the worlds of film, TV or video game scoring, then Sonuscore’s virtual instruments will undoubtedly be familiar to you. Their latest release — and the subject of this review — is The Pulse. Sonuscore describe this as a “creative powerhouse for modern electronic music” so, is this a further product aimed primarily at media composers or is it something for contemporary electronic music‑makers? The answer is ‘perhaps both’. Let’s explore...

Follow That

It’s possible to think of The Pulse as a follow‑up or companion to The Score. For me, The Score was a personal highlight release for 2024 (see SOS February 2024), and a big reason for that was the brilliant ‘Ensemble’ performance engine. This allows you to sketch out a full musical cue from The Score’s underlying sound set using just your choice of chords, a few keyswitches and some suitable tweaking of the mod wheel.

The Score’s sound set is focused on conventional orchestral sounds with a compact section of synth, ‘band’, world and other sounds to provide some more contemporary flavours. The Pulse takes the same Ensemble Instrument performance engine (there are some differences; more on this in a minute) and populates it with a much more contemporary sound set consisting of drums (acoustic, electronic and hybrid), various synth‑based sound groups and a miscellaneous selection of keyboards, guitars and orchestral sounds. Clearly, on paper at least, it’s a sound set you could create EDM or modern pop with but, equally, it would suit modern scoring work.

Like The Score, The Pulse is delivered with three different Kontakt‑based front ends. As mentioned, the Ensemble Instrument engine — essentially a 10‑instrument sequencer‑based performance engine — is very similar to that found within The Score (although minus The Score’s Chord Studio feature). I described this in the February 2024 issue so, in what follows, I’ll not repeat all the details here. Yes, the engine itself is both powerful and feature‑rich, but the supplied Session presets — organised into Ensemble, Cinematic and Modern Genre categories — provide a very easy access point when you first dip your toes into The Pulse’s potentially deep waters.

The Pulse’s two other engines — Drum Kits and Singles — do pretty much what you might expect. The Drum Kits UI lets you use a nine‑pad drum kit (with plenty of presets included, although you can also build your own), while the Singles UI lets you load single instrument sounds. Both of these are compact, easy to use, and include a range of sound‑shaping options and effects....