THE SCORE BY SONUSCORE
KK-ACCESS REVIEW
The Score from Sonuscore has been released for some time now, and has received a couple of updates along the way, it’s now on version 1.2, so we thought it was time to take a look.
WHAT’S THE SCORE?
The Score works in a similar way to The Orchestra Complete (which we reviewed back in 2021). the main Kontakt NKI presets are, Ensembles,Singles & Leads, the Ensemble presets can be thought of as multi part instrumentations, with pre-recorded midi based sequences loaded up into the ten possible instrument slots.
The Ensemble presets which sonuscore refer to as ‘Stories’ are defined by their genre & mood, and as the library title suggests, can be a valuable aid when scoring compositions for theme based projects, whether they be for film, game, or other such media.
sonuscore’s cleverly scripted Kontakt engine will automatically follow your own choice of note and chord progressions, using the loaded instruments, these then provide the user with full instrumentation and orchestration for what is being played.
Keyswitches assigned from C1 to G1 will enable the triggering of song sections, which can be engaged at any appropriate time of your choosing, this then enables the unique structure of your own compositions.
TECH SPECS
The Score requires Kontakt version 7.7.1 or higher, either full or free Kontakt Player edition, and is compatible with all versions of Komplete Kontrol as a host.
19.5GB of disk space is required for installation.
there are three master Kontakt NKI preset files for the main categories, Ensemble, singles, & Leads.
These are further supported with 380 NKSN Kontakt snapshot presets, collectively reflecting the three main categories.
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
The Score is downloaded using the Best Service installer, which is reasonably accessible with some use of OCR (Optical Character Recognition), I managed to deal with this without sighted help, here on Windows using the NVDA screen reader.
The second part of the installation process simply requires the pasting of the provided Native Instruments serial key into Native Access, and confirmation of the location path.
Komplete Kontrol will auto scan and add The Score to the factory browser when a KK instance is loaded, either as the standalone application or directly as a plug-in within your DAW.
FULL KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN EDIT NKS PARAMETER MAPPINGS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE END OF THIS REVIEW FOLLOWING THE MEDIA LINKS
ACCESSIBILITY
I need to be entirely upfront and clear from the outset, there are a lot of features in The Score that are not going to be accessible for us as screen reader users.
I should emphasise that this is not down to Sonuscore per se, but another of those limitations that both Kontakt & Komplete Kontrol impose upon us through the nature of KSP scripting, and the underlying coding language they are built upon.
The Chord Studio, Melody Studio, Dynamic Mixer, & Adaptive Customizer, are all features that are graphical in nature, not entirely automatable, and require user interaction with a traditional mouse within their graphical user interface.
Having delivered the bad news, you may justifiably be asking ‘exactly what we can do’ with The Score?
Whilst it is certainly dismaying to learn that these major components are out of reach, it’s still possible to obtain useful and inspiring results from the library.
It’s also worth mentioning that you do get a very comprehensive instrument collection consisting of 160 different instruments that cover orchestral, synth, world, drums, rock, pop, keys, percussion and numerous other genres, including some nicely implemented legato presets, all of which load very quickly, making The Score a good compositional sketching toolbox, whose instrument qualities belie it’s modest 19.5GB data footprint.
ENSEMBLE PRESETS
There are 153 Ensemble presets covering a range of musical genres, orchestral themes are well represented, giving a retrospective deserved nod of recognition to Sonuscore’s other library ‘The Orchestra Complete’.
There are plenty of other styles, including hybrid, ambient, rock, pop, etc, with associated mood variations, that potentially cover everything from drama, action, fantasy, Documentary,soap, romantic comedy, science Fiction, Mystery, and others inbetween.
These extensive moods & genres are not reflected within the Komplete Kontrol browser tagging though, so listening to the pre-hear audio is the only quick way to judge the style of the preset, along with the ‘Story’ name.
Some of the Ensemble Story presets are also duplicated, to allow for the inclusion of different time signatures such as 3/4, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, everything else will be in good old 4/4.
Each preset also helpfully includes it’s suggested BPM tempo in the name, so you know when it will sound at it’s best.
The GUI controls do have an option to double or half time each of the slot phrase playback times, however this is a feature that again is not part of NKS or the automatable Kontakt parameters at the moment.
It is also unfortunate that via NKS we are unable to swap the instruments within the 10 instrument slots, as this would have considerably extended the range of the preset content further beyond those instruments already pre-loaded into the factory presets.
The NKS mapping for the Ensemble presets offer, Volume minimum & Maximum, Pan, Reverb Send Level, Attack & Release for each of the instruments, and also basic Compressor and Reverb controls which are applied globally across all 10 of the instrument slots.
If you are running Komplete Kontrol version 3, then it is also possible to invoke the parameter list within your DAW, and also find automatable parameters for Solo & Mute, for each of the 10 instrument slots, so if you do wish to eliminate a particular instrument from the loaded 'story' then aside from volume, then this is a possible automatable option.
The Keyswitches which I referred to in the introduction, provide us with some useful musical variations for any of the loaded Ensemble presets, allowing you to break your composition into more defined sections, culminating on the G1 key, which throws in a convenient way to end your composition with a synchronised final ending on the nearest beat of your choice.
Realistically in practice, it’s going to be best to use The Score with a 61 key keyboard, anything smaller will mean you will need to do some octave shifting to gain access to everything, although on my mobile setup I sometimes plug in a tiny little Akai LPK25 keyboard, just to access keyswitches in conjunction with an M32 Komplete Kontrol keyboard when travelling.
The modwheel can be put to good creative use when in the process of forging your composition, as rather than simple volume or expression assignment, it gradually introduces multiple instruments which make up the loaded sequence, the lower setting being minimal, and maximum featuring all slots.
An example of The Score demonstrating the keyswitching between sections within a composition
THE SCORE – TAKING THE LEAD
The Leads presets collectively provide 227 presets, which feature both single instruments, as well as dual combinations.
There is plenty of content to find appealing here, with lots of orchestral sounds, drum kits, cymbals, snares, guitars, pianos (both electric & acoustic, a choir preset with some great morphing vowels, ambient & atmospheric material, as well as some nice world music instruments, such as Celtic Harp, Balalaika & Bouzouki, covering a broad spectrum of music possibilities to explore.
There are no keyswitch articulation options available for the Lead instruments, however individual articulations such as ~Staccato, Plucked, sustains, Legato, & mercato, can be found for the appropriate orchestral content.
The NKS implementation for the Leads & Singles here is admittedly quite limited, with Attack, Release, Compressor & Reverb all being confined to a single page.
However upon reflection, given the wide range of instruments included within The Score, this seems to be a fair compromise, as creating individual bespoke NKS templates that cover every nuance of each instrument would have been quite an insurmountable task.
THE SCORE ON THE DAW!
The Score like many libraries, also includes drag & drop functionality, here it relates to the midi content, enabling more advanced editing of patterns and sequences within a DAW environment.
As we know, drag & drop is not something that can be achieved easily with a screen reader, being a visual mouse driven process.
There are not currently any reliable alternatives that I am aware of, but I guess it would be useful if the midi data for each preset were available in accompanying folders, as standard midi files, which could then be imported into a DAW, to supplement the sequences built into the presets.
Much of the extended content utilises the Kontakt NKA array file format, mostly for loading and saving of edited preset patterns, however these are not a file format that is currently recognised or loadable directly from the main Kontakt file browser, and access is otherwise only via the GUI.
ACCESSING THE SCORE
As blind users the workflow will in general be a case of loading up an Ensemble preset that most closely resembles your project needs, and then working out your chord progressions.
In this regard The Score is really quite accomplished, and makes it perfectly feasible to quickly construct a sequence to fit a given timeline for a project.
Essentially, The Score can help you here by taking the mental graft and often time consuming elements out of the composition process, by automatically tracking what you play, and adding in the extra instrumentation and harmonies.
As we found previously with The orchestra Complete, it is possible to mute certain instruments or melodic content, and instead choose to use the all singing all dancing Ensembles as firm foundations for our compositions.
This can work by manually adding back our preferred alternatives as single instruments and melodies on their own tracks.
As a flagship product, The Score may be a considered purchase, and as such I would highly recommend checking out the media links at the review footer to hear some examples of the library in action.
There are also many other good third party YouTube reviews which will aid in the decision making process.
CONCLUSION
The Score represents a progressive evolution of The Orchestra Complete engine, containing a rich and diverse palette of instruments that will enable composers to tackle a wide range of scoring projects.
In an age where no, low, and semi pro film, game & media commissions all too often work on tight deadlines and even tighter budgets , The Score can potentially offer composers a pitching opportunity, either for quality mock-ups, or even final masters, depending upon the circumstances.
As blind & visually impaired users, many will agree that out of necessity we are often no strangers to adapting otherwise intended design workflows to suit our own needs, and this I think for most will be the key to successfully using The Score without sighted access to all of it’s bells & whistles.
The Score by Sonuscore can be purchased directly from their website for $399.00
The Score Product Page:
https://www.sonuscore.com/shop/the-score/?trueroas=21332430137&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwv7O0BhDwARIsAC0sjWPMNJgAKYgnGn7JTwe4aUM8dlTQ0lK6tddlW7wmn3IxhVXe4w1cog0aApNoEALw_wcB
The Score – Getting Started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utxsLvMwXis
The Score – Preset Playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAX6PG3f3uY
The Score – 1.2 Update Preset Playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMA-JnE7xgQ
The Score User Manual:
https://www.sonuscore.com/guests/manuals/The_Score_Manual_EN.pdf
KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN EDIT NKS PARAMETER MAPPING
The Score Ensemble Presets
Page One – Slot 1 (first loaded instrument)
Knob 1 – Volume Minimum
Knob 2 – Volume Maximum
Knob 3 – Panning
Knob 4 – Reverb Send Level
Knob 5 – Attack
Knob 6 – Release
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
Page Two to Ten – Slots 2 to 10 (as per slot 1)
Page Eleven – Compressor & Reverb
Knob 1 – Compressor: On/Off
Knob 2 – Threshold
Knob3 – Gain
Knob 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Reverb: Time
Knob 6 – Pre-Delay
Knob 7 – Mix
Knob 8 – Unallocated
The Score Lead Presets
Page One – Slot 1 (first loaded instrument)
Knob 1 – Volume Minimum
Knob 2 – Volume Maximum
Knob 3 – Panning
Knob 4 – Reverb Send Level
Knob 5 – Attack
Knob 6 – Release
Knob 7 & 8 – Unallocated
Page Three – Compressor & Reverb
Knob 1 – Compressor: On/Off
Knob 2 – Threshold
Knob3 – Gain
Knob 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Reverb: Time
Knob 6 – Pre-Delay
Knob 7 – Mix
Knob 8 – Unallocated
The Score Singles Presets
Page One – Envelope, Compressor & Reverb
Knob 1 – Attack
Knob 2 – Release
Knob 3 – Compressor: On/Off
Knob 4 – Threshold
Knob 5 – Gain
Knob 6 – Reverb: Time
Knob 7 – Pre-Delay
Knob 8 – Mix
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access.com
10TH July 2024
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Disclaimer
The author can not accept any responsibility for subsequent purchase decisions made as a result of this review,or Any inaccuracies found therein. All opinions and product functions stated are based solely on information perceived as a blind user whilst using the product and/or gathered from official factual sources such as the developer, web or supplied product manual.
About the Author
Based in Buckinghamshire, England, Chris Ankin has worked as a freelance review writer and contributor with articles published in Sound On Sound, Home & Studio Recording and ST Format Magazines.
He has also successfully worked extensively in and around the music, recording, film Soundtrack scoring, Game & media composition, the creative arts, Charitable trusts,publishing, music streaming and property investments since 1982 whilst continuously and deliberately managing to evade any mainstream recognition under his own name by the use of various pseudonyms.
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