Interview Playlist: Son Thomsen of Sonokinetic

Grosso is the best instrument we have produced to date. Period.

With Grosso, Sonokinetic BV is changing the paradigm for orchestral phrase-based instruments… again! Before our Minimal library, the level of control, whilst retaining the authentic sound that live recordings bring to the party, was unheard of. We have gotten so much positive feedback on Minimal that a ‘sequel’ was unavoidable. Mere sequels is not what we do though at Sonokinetic, so if you look at what Grosso brings to the table, you will see an evolved entity that is a homo-sapiens to Minimal’s homo-erectus. 
We have conceived this instrument from the ground up, using parts of the Minimal engine and reimagining many other things to accommodate for the added flexibility Grosso brings to the table. The main difference, apart from the obviously upbeat nature of the recorded material and the addition of a choir part and a taiko and non-melodic percussion section, is that we split out the orchestral sections into more parts. Strings and choir are split in low - mid - high, woodwinds and brass into low and high, percussion into taiko and more traditional orchestral percussion. All of these elements have been carefully composed to work well with all of the others, resulting in millions of possible combinations of sounds.
The nature and sheer amount of this raw material, and the added flexibility we needed to offer to you in an intuitive way, led us to a completely new interface style, and it made us split up the instrument into different Kontakt .nki’s. Don’t worry though, we have laid out the keyswitches in a way that still makes it possible to play this instrument ‘Minimal-style’ with the whole orchestra on one midi channel.
Grosso is a 12/8 feel library, and we have configured the engine to work in both 4/4 and 12/8 time signatures within your DAW. Though the instrument was conceived with trailer and action styles in mind, the finished product is capable of so much more, limited only by your imagination.
Check out our demo section to hear some of the compositions made by the incredibly talented composers in our beta team, inspired by Grosso. In fact, much of the early feedback we got from these guys included the word ‘inspirational’ as much as the word ‘exceptional’. If there’s ever an instrument that can help you get out of a funk when you need it most, it’s this one. We have even included a randomiser button to provide you with different pattern combinations at the click of a button.
To top off the collection we have added a ‘transition builder’ instrument that is aimed at gluing parts together, and building up towards climaxes. It includes brass and woodwind crescendo chords, and recognises different chord types, like diminished, augmented and dominant 7th. Chords are constructed on the spot from a collection of recorded intervals. This builder instrument also contains percussion and taiko fills, and a fully playable multisampled taiko ensemble patch, both as an ensemble and individual drums. Please look at the video to see its capabilities in action.

We, at Sonokinetic BV, are very proud to introduce GROSSO to you, and can’t wait to hear the amazing things you, our valued customer base, will produce with it.

Sonokinetic has established a name as one of the best value & quality sample producers and with this product we’d like to underline that statement. We stick with our unbeatable pricing module and high quality sampling.

We wish you the best inspiration and creativity


Grosso Demo - Light And Shade - By Reuben Cornell

https://sonokinetic.net/products/classical/sotto?ref=sottosoundcloudsascha
Orchestral sampled instrument for delicate moments and deafening silence. 
We have covered a lot of ground in our orchestral series already; there’s the scary Tutti, the uplifting Vivace, the understated Minimal, the driving Grosso and the majestic Capriccio. We’ve always had a yearning to capture something more delicate, and now we’ve done it… presenting “Sotto”.
As a composer there are certain musical rules that you have to obey, and one of them is that there always has to be contrast. A loud passage will not sound really loud unless it’s contrasted by a softer counterpart, and a climax cannot arrive without a journey to get you there. 
We have always been fascinated by the sound of a majestic orchestra hitting the brake pedal and laying down soft beds and patterns, and that is what we’ve achieved with this library.
Anyone who has ever attempted to capture a live orchestra will be able to tell you that very quiet playing is a tricky thing to record. The softer you try to go, the closer you get to the breakpoint between sound and no sound. The starts of phrases in brass and woodwinds become increasingly hard to align for the players, resulting in beautiful imperfection. The balance of sound to mechanical noise tips slightly in favour of the mechanical noise, but to us it all sounds very much alive.
There are a lot of beautiful beds with different playing techniques, like sul tasto, sul ponticello and harmonics for strings, frullato for woods and different mutes for brass. For Sotto we further expanded our voice leading concept to get even smoother transitions between chords. The combinations of different phrases and sections sound absolutely stunning, with a very warm and rich timbre. We’re so excited to add this product to our range as it stands proud alone and also complements other Sonokinetic orchestral products. 
To add intimacy we have included a breath slider for woodwinds and brass that will add ‘air’ to the phrases, further blurring the line between sound and no sound, and musical sound versus human sound. We really wanted this to be a living breathing instrument that can add life to your compositions and feel we have succeeded in doing just that. We hope you agree.
We, at Sonokinetic BV, are very proud to introduce Sotto to you and can’t wait to hear the amazing things you, our valued customer base, will produce with it.
Sonokinetic has established a name as one of the best value & quality sample producers and with this product we’d like to underline that statement. We stick with our unbeatable pricing module and high quality sampling.

Sotto Demo -Tides Of Time- By Sascha Knorr

http://www.sonokinetic.net/products/ethnic/sultan-drums/

Without a doubt, touching one of these instruments is magical. There is energy in these drums that will instantly make you move. The individual & ensemble sound instantly teleports you to a Nomadic desert setting, or to the heart of cities on the banks of the Nile or Bosporus.

This is a collection we have been craving for and it completes a palette of Ethnic sounds to seamlessly integrate with our other instruments. Extending the Sonokinetic Ethnic sampling portfolio with a brand new instrument of Middle Eastern Percussion Ensembles “Sultan Drums”
This collection spans a wide variety of Middle Eastern drums and percussion instruments. With a focus on a balanced collection we decided to offer as many performance elements as we could with multi-articulated, round robin, multi-dynamic layered sampled instruments. Each instrument that can be found in 1 of the 10 styles are extensively multi-sampled to provide you with a complete composing tool. There’s much to explore in this collection. Get yourself some inspiration from the top-notch performed percussion ensemble or build your own pallet of playable drums and percussion. 

Sultan Drums ships with a user friendly and dedicated interface. It’s designed to work intuitively and give you quick access to this large collection of samples. As a composer you know what you need and we strive to bring it to you fast. With the philosophy of investing our resources in unique and authentic musical culture, we believe that we managed to create another one-of-a-kind with “Sultan Drums”
All performances are recorded on location in the Middle East with highly schooled, dedicated and talented percussionists. Beating any MIDI performance, a musician will always bring an extra feel to the music that just isn’t possible to recreate with a computer. Therefore Sonokinetic continue to believe in loops of dedicated performance sampling combined with multi-articulated instrument sampling. 
We are very proud to have been working with some of the kindest and professional people in the business on this project. And we would like to dedicate this release to them.

Sticking to our awarded multi-sampling / performance capturing concepts and teaming up with the worlds greatest musicians, recording artist, programmers, designers and scripters we are proud to present to you: 
“Sultan Drums”
We wish you the best inspiration and creativity. 
Stick around… there’s much more to come.

With warm regards,
The Sonokinetic Sultan Drums Production Team

Sultan Drums demo "Baghdad Party" by Dirk Ehlert

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