COLOURS – STRING SEPTET BY SONOKINETIC
KK-ACCESS REVIEW
This recent release from SonoKinetic achieves the ambitious goal of managing to successfully combine both Tonal and Atonal musical phrases from a septet of string players into a cleverly scripted yet extremely intuitive to use Komplete Kontrol interface.
The seven superbly recorded instruments, consisting of 2 Violins, 2 Viola, 2 Celli, and 1 Bass, with multiple microphone options allow the strings to be customised between a close and more intimate sound, through to the much larger spacious and grandeur ambience of the original recording location.
Colours Strings Septet is Perfectly placed to appeal to film, game, & media composition, with the unusual balance between tonal & tonal aptly lending itself to the horror, thriller, & supernatural scoring genre.
TECH SPECS
The library runs in Kontakt 7.10 or higher, either the full or free Kontakt Player editions, and is compatible with all versions of Komplete Kontrol, hosting the specified Kontakt version.
Colours String Septet requires 5.6GB for installation, with more than 6.000 samples recorded at 44.1KHZ, 24BIT, using NCW format lossless compression.
There is one single master Kontakt NKI preset file, with no other presets or snapshots being required for operation.
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
download and installation can be achieved by using either the SonoKinetic software manager, or directly through Native Access using the post purchase serial number.
Once installed, Komplete Kontrol will scan and add Colours String Septet to your factory browser.
FULL KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN EDIT NKS PARAMETER MAPPINGS ARE PROVIDED AT THE END OF THIS REVIEW FOLLOWING THE MEDIA LINKS
ACCESSIBILITY
As with the vast majority of SonoKinetic products, a good deal of thought has quite clearly gone into making the interface entirely accessible for blind & visually impaired users.
The Kontakt scripting manages to simplify and make intuitive what could otherwise have been a difficult user interface to make accessible through NKS.
Their unique audio phrase playback system remains a pivotal part of allowing users to select and pick phrases, whilst multi functional controls enable us to select and assign up to three phrases of our own choice to each of the possible play keys.
COLOURS STRING SEPTET – THE ENGINE
Many readers may already be familiar with the concept behind SonoKinetic products, and also the methodology involved in using the phrases.
The principles here remain the same, an area of your keyboard is designated to having user selectable pre-recorded phrases assigned to individual keys, whilst lower octaves act as keyswitches for the user to play their own chords, major, minor, and inversions, which control the pitch playback of the phrases.
Although simplistic when described, the scripting requirements are undoubtedly complex, as would have been all of the orchestral score pre-planning, recording, sample editing, and post production coding involved in the whole project.
I think we should occasionally take a moment to consider the vast amount of work that goes into the entire process of rendering down the development of a sample library such as this, given that the final realisation of the project ends up into just a few gigabytes of data, that we as individuals are able to instantly access direct from our hard drives!
With String Septet, SonoKinetic have stripped away the non applicable elements such as the key harmonics, and introduced features that are thus far unique to this release.
There are up to twelve possible assignable phrase play keys, only seven of which are initially populated in the single master NKI preset, this is done in order to conserve some RAM.
Each of these twelve keys may subsequently have up to three separate sample phrases assigned to them, making a total yield of 36 phrases possible in a single instance, and you can of course play multiple keys at once if you so wish.
For me, the aforementioned intuitive part of the user interaction, really comes into play when assigning and selecting your own phrases.
Picture in your mind a triangle, with the bottom left corner representing left, the top of the triangle corner being top, and yes, you are way ahead of me, the bottom right corner is,right 🙂
By first choosing left, top, or right, you can go to the phrase picker, which is categorised into definitive sections, and then audition which phrase you wish to use, finally, rotating the ‘set’ control will then lock your chosen phrase into that particular corner.
Continue and do this recursively for all three corners, of all twelve keys and you will quickly have yourself a personally mapped set of musical cues, which could be extremely useful and impressive to have on hand when perhaps sitting with your director during a spotting session for a film score.
There are also some further additional useful options available on a per corner/phrase basis, such as offsetting the play length or start position, phrase movement, and a phrase randomiser, for when you require a little extra inspiration.
MICROPHONE POSITIONS
Colours String Septet can offer users up to four microphone positions, which can be employed singularly or in mixed combinations to create the preferred perspective for your project.
Close, Decca, Wide, & Balcony are the choices, and there is an intelligent purging system that automatically removes unneeded samples when a microphone is turned off, saving you valuable system RAM.
PHRASES
The selectable phrases can be filtered directly via NKS, an provide you with categories such as Low End, Dynamic, Rhythmic, Atonal, Risers, Pad, & Melodic, or you can choose to search through all categories at once, again all of these phrases will give you audio playback as you scroll through them, just like the pre-hear feature we know and love from Komplete Kontrol itself.
There are plenty of COL LEGNO, SUL PONTICELLO, Tremolo, and other suitable articulation ingredients so vital in conjuring up those creepy, scary, suspenseful, thrill riding cinematic cues, hopefully providing buckets of popcorn assisted uneasy textures, and icy spine tingles to your audience!
Upon a little reflection, it might have been a useful addition to have included a collection of stabs or hits within Colours, just as a way of finally concluding a Riser, or Crescendo.
I totally get that this is a phrase loop based product, however a static one shot end hit might have been a useful sound companion as a way to end a sequence after building your own series of tension phrases.
I have put together below a rough demo, just as an example of how one might use Colours String Septet to score a short cue for a horror film, here I have punctuated the end of the two included risers (one at the start & another at the finale),using a hit from another excellent and very accessible SonoKinetic product, Ibrido Cinematica:
Do checkout the media links at the end of the review to find more examples of Colours String Septet in action.
CONCLUSION
Colours String Septet may be perceived by some as having somewhat of a niche appeal,and if you really only ever write more mainstream songs, then this is understandable.
If however you do create music for film, game, or various media projects, then this is a useful tool to have in your sound palette to add some darker shades and tensions to your work.
The Juxtaposition between being able to harness both tonal & atonal sound works particularly well, and ability to tune suspenseful builds within your project alleviates the possibility of the end result from sounding like you have simply dropped a scary string phrase from a sample pack into your DAW project and just hoped for the best.
As always I really cannot fault the clever and thoughtful scripting from SonoKinetic, their ability to adapt a tricky interface into something that blind & visually impaired users can readily use should be both acknowledged and applauded.
Colours – String Septet by SonoKinetic can be purchased directly from their website for 149.90 euros
Colours – String Septet Product Page:
Colours String Septet – Product Walkthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9B7KDnA1ag
Colours String Septet – Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTkYiLvUWlU
Colours – String Septet – User Manual:
https://www.sonokinetic.net/manual/colours/Colours_String_Septet_Reference_Manual.pdf
KOMPLETE KONTROL PLUG-IN NKS PARAMETER MAPPINGS
Page One – Navigate, Modify
Knob 1 – Preset: Selectable from 1 to 12 (C to B)
Knob 2 – Corner: Left, Top, Right
Knob 3 – Category: All, Low End, Dynamic, Rhythmic, Atonal, Risers, Pad, Melodic
Knob 4 – Phrase Selector
Knob 5 – Phrase Variation
Knob 6 – Modify
Knob 7 – Motion
Knob 8 – Set: locks the phrase choice
Page Two – Movement, Randomise
Knob 1 – Phrase Length
Knob 2 – Movement Type: All, Move 1, Move 2
Knob 3 – Movement: Left, Top, Right
Knob 4 – Unallocated
Knob 5 – Randomise: Right
Knob 6 – Randomise Top
Knob 7 – Randomise: Left
Knob 8 – Unallocated
Page Three – Microphone Mix, Preset 1 Level
Knob 1 – Close Microphone
Knob 2 – Decca Microphone
Knob 3 – Wide Microphone
Knob 4 – Balcony Microphone
Knob 5 – Preset Indicator, On/Off
Knob 6 – Level Preset 1 Left
Knob 7 – Preset 1 Level Top
Knob 8 – Preset 1 Level Right
Page Four to Nine – Preset Levels for Preset 2 to 12
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access.com
13th December 2024
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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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