Review: Ethnic Vocal Phrases by Sonuscore

The beautiful thing about the Ethnic Vocal Phrases library is that it can add just the right amount of flavor to a composition that is seeming a little bland.

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Review: Ethnic Vocal Phrases by Sonuscore

Ethnic Vocal Phrases is the latest addition to the family of Sonuscore’s high-quality, user friendly phrase libraries. This library specializes in providing a variety of different voices including Arabic vowel phrases, and phrases inspired by the African, Native American, and Latin languages. Anyone that knows the name Sonuscore knows that they’ve become one of the leading experts on creating high-quality phrase libraries. Part of how they achieved this reputation is by recruiting top-notch talent to aid in the creation of their libraries. With Ethnic Vocal Phrases, they recruited the phenomenal film composer and singer-songwriter, Hayat Selim. This talented woman hails from Cairo, Egypt and is an expert at blending ethnic vocals with the Western orchestration commonly found in film scores to create something truly unique and beautiful.

Ethnic Vocal Phrases sells for €79.99 from Sonuscore

Ethnic Vocal Phrases sells for €79.99 from Sonuscore

Thoughts

The great thing about phrase libraries is that they allow you to create parts that are often difficult to write using the standard articulation sets that come in most libraries. This is especially true of vocal libraries due to the flowing nature of the human voice and how easy it is to lose the organic quality of the vocals. Sonuscore has always done a masterful job of creating phrases that flow really well together and that can be easily arranged to make them your own.
Ethnic Vocal Phrases makes this especially easy by providing you with 15 different phrases that are separated into 5 starting, middle, and ending phrases. Each of these 15 phrases are grouped by themes, 8 main ones and 4 bonus ones, which are also able to be switched on the fly using keyswitches. All of the phrases were recorded in such a way that they can be played in all chromatic keys by using the red tonality keyswitches in conjunction with the parts keyswitches. Sonuscore did a really great job of making the entire library accessible just by using the keyswitches. To make it even more flexible, Sonuscore provided a phrase progress bar with an adjustable icon to alter where the phrase begins playing from. The also made it easy to zero in on the exact starting point by holding the shift key while dragging to make micro-adjustments to the slider. In addition to the starting point option, there is also a speed adjustment knob that allows you to adjust the speed of the phrases anywhere from 50% up to 150% of the normal playback speed. This is a nice feature, but it can be slightly problematic at slower tempo settings. All of these options make it really easy to add that extra layer of emotion to your compositions. Everything about this library screams ease of use. The GUI is laid out very cleanly without a lot of clutter. There’s only two pages on the GUI, one main page and one FX page.

I did feel the FX page could have more options on it because the only effects available are a reverb, a delay, and the EQ settings. The Reverb has 5 different impulse responses, a mix knob, and a pre-delay knob. The Delay features a time adjustment knob, a feedback knob, and a mix knob. It also has the option to sync to the host tempo. The EQ section is your standard EQ featuring just 4 knobs for the low, low/mid, high/mid, and the high frequencies.
My favorite option on this page is a little non-descript button at the bottom labeled Mystique. This button adds experimental impulse responses, some chorus, and a stereo spreader to make things interesting. This option was a really nice touch and is perfect for ambient tracks or if you just want a more haunting sound to the phrases.

I thought this library was a great creative choice for Sonuscore and is a great follow up to their successful Lyrical Vocal Phrases library.

Facts

Ethnic Vocal Phrases requires Kontakt 5.8 and above or the free HALion Sonic SE plugin from Steinberg. It needs at least 5 GB of free hard disc space and the computer should have at least 4 GB of RAM. It is available for Mac’s running OSX 10.11 or higher and for PC’s running Windows 7 or higher.

Ethnic Vocal Phrases sells for €79.99 from Sonuscore

Demos of Ethnic Vocal Phrases by Sonuscore

Videos of Ethnic Vocal Phrases by Sonuscore

Contributor T.M.K. Davis reviews Ethnic Vocal Phrases by Sonuscore
“The beautiful thing about the Ethnic Vocal Phrase library is that it can add just the right amount of flavor to a composition that is seeming a little bland.”