Review: Sotto from Sonokinetic

Sonokinetic continues to evolve their fantastic line of innovative orchestral phrase libraries. With Sotto, the developers focus on the delicate and breathy sounds of the orchestra. The library is a great sounding sample set with lots of controls that media composers are sure to get a lot of use out of.

Jump to the Videos of Sotto

Jump to the Videos of Sotto

Check out all SLR Reviews and News of Sonokinetic Libraries

Review: Sotto from Sonokinetic

Sonokinetic continues innovation of the orchestral phrase library with Sotto. This time focusing on the delicate arrangements for the modern cinematic orchestra. After a slew of “epic” orchestral libraries hitting the market over the last year, it is nice to see a developer who gets that the majority of music many of us composers for media need to create is subtle, orchestral textures.

Sotto is available for €249.90 from Sonokinetic

Thoughts

There so much to say about this library: the wonderful sound of the hall, the addition of the breath control, the carefully selected patterns that fit perfectly into textural scoring. Those have mostly been covered in other reviews or outlined in Sonokinetic Videos. What excites me about Sotto is how this tool can jumpstart a composition, inspire composers and with the ability to see the notation act as an educational tool.

The sample set was created by recording arrangements with a focus on soft orchestral textures that is so often used in underscore. The library was recorded in the same wonderful sounding hall as Sonokinetic‘s other libraries so it will blend nicely and seemlessly for those of us using the new multi-sampled Woodwinds Ensembles library.

Sotto was created by recording arrangements with a focus on soft orchestral textures.

The samples are housed in the same engine as the developer used for Grosso, Capriccio. I recently had a chance to interview Son Thomsen from Sonokinetic and he told me “You can’t just create such a powerful orchestral phrase tool without improving upon each release in the series by asking “how can we do X better”. This time around, with Sotto, the team have added some new functionality to the engine.

Sotto Woodwinds section main interface

The library is a Kontakt player instrument compatible with both the full and free version of Native Instrument’s Kontakt. The main instruments are divided into Brass, Woodwinds and Strings sections with 16 & 24-bit options as well as lite version for each.

The basic concept of playing the library is that you have 3 banks: one for Hi, Medium and Low patterns. Patterns are loaded selected and loaded into the banks. Phrases are played back when the users plays a triad and each phrases has a separate control points for dynamics, x-fade transition etc.

Selecting Phrase Patterns to load into Sottos’ banks

Sonokinetic has improved upon it’s orchestral phrase engine making advancements with each new library and Sotto is no exception. First up is the addition of a breath control.  The breath allows you add a little more air to the woodwind and brass libraries. I found this really added to the intimacy you can get out of the performances.

Woodwinds and Brass sections have breath control on the far right of each bank

Another innovation to the engine is a new voice leading functionality which will provide smoother transitions for one pattern to the next.

New Voice Leading functionality

What inspires me about Soto and the other instruments in this series (Grosso, Capriccio etc) is how this library hints at the technology serving as an arranger.

HIGHLIGHT: ability to see score for each of the patterns

The highlights for me with the library are many. This includes the ability to see the notation for each of the phrases and darg-and-drop it into my daw. As with the other libraries Sonokinetic has put out using this engine, the patterns are mainly shown with graphic representations. I understand the idea of making the graphic images represent the music and I think many users will enjoy this interface. But for someone like myself who has arranging experience I would have liked to see an option to view the loaded patters as score reductions rather than graphics.

This library does what it sets out to do wonderfully. The only CON I think I must mention is that this interface does take a bit of time to learn and master. Those users who are already use the Sonokinetic phrase libraries will have little trouble learning the new functionality.

As with all of our reviews be sure to check out the official demos and videos below to make sure the instrument is right for your needs.

If you want to learn more about the developer’s other libraries, you can check out a list of all SLR Reviews and News for Sonokinetic Libraries here.

Facts

Downloads as 32GB and contain over 30,000 samples which are delivered in 44.1kHz. The library is a Kontakt player instrument compatible with both the full and free version of Native Instrument’s Kontakt. The main instruments are divided into Brass, Woodwinds and Strings sections with 16 & 24-bit options as well as lite version for each.

Sotto is available for €249.90 from Sonokinetic

Demos of Sotto

Videos of Official Videos Of Sotto