All The Colors of The Orchestra – Sounds and Presets
Plus Pads for Cherry Audio's Chroma and a Kontakt Synth from Ocean Swift
5,0 / 5,0 | 
The Orchestra: Colors aims to make scoring easier and more intuitive, and Electric Keys Reeds Duo wants to be your go-to Wurli library.
Sounds and Presets
The Orchestra: Colors for HALion by SonuScore/Steinberg
A lot of us would love to be Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, Thomas Newman, Danny Elfman or James Horner but the fact of the matter is, we’re not. It takes an inordinate amount of skill, sprinkled with some good fortune and bound together by enormous effort to be as good as those guys.
So when tools come along that can alleviate some of that missing magic, we ought to be snapping them up and using them to our advantage! How does the saying go? “If you can’t beat ’em, cheat!” Just kidding, but you get what I mean. The Orchestra: Colors by SonuScore is one of those tools.
Running inside of Steinberg’s HALion, it provides a dizzying palette of pre-orchestrated orchestral sounds that will make composing your masterpiece that much easier. There’s 168 presets that cover brass, woodwind, strings, percussion, keys and more.
It includes combinations of instruments to suit different moods. Plus, there are also single articulations for sustain, tremolo, pizzicato and marcato. There are even male and female choir sounds for that extra spine-tingling effect. Check out the video below!
Getting orchestral voicings within your composition can take years of practice and study, but SonuScore’s The Orchestra: Colors aims to make that infinitely easier to do with its simple interface that betrays the complexity that lies beneath
If orchestral scores are your thing, this is an absolutely essential tool for those of us who lack years of dedicated practice and experience or simply need swift results. Buy The Orchestra: Colors from the Steinberg website here with a limited-time 20% discount for just £99.20.
Porphyra Hybrid for Kontakt by Ocean Swift
Ocean Swift is fast becoming a part of the furniture here, purely on merit, I might add. This week, I bring you their updated Porphyra Hybrid instrument for Kontakt. Using both samples and wavetables, its hybrid engine allows you to craft huge, evolving sounds.
Now at version 1.2, Porphyra Hybrid contains 500+ samples and 285 wavetables that can be layered and combined to come up with huge washes of pads, enhanced by a range of useful effects as well as Monark filters.
The central control allows you to balance your layers so it is almost impossible to not make something that sounds organic, epic and full of life. It’s also fully supportive of Native Instrument’s NKS2 format and offers a fully integrated experience when used with NI’s MK.3 Kontrol keyboards.
That also means that it supports polyphonic aftertouch for even more expression. It will work with Kontakt’s free Player, too, so everyone can use this incredibly deep sound-sculpting tool. Pick up Porphyra 1.2 direct from Ocean Swift here for just €99.00
Chroma Pads for Cherry Audio Rhodes Chroma by Vicious Antelope
Cherry Audio’s Chroma plugin recently became the Cherry Audio Rhodes Chroma, getting the approval of Rhodes Music themselves! It’s a brilliant recreation of a flawed but much loved classic. Now Vicious Antelope have released a new bank of sounds for it.
Chroma Pads is a pack of 30 synth pad patches inspired by vintage synths of yore. VA claims to have drawn inspiration from 70s prog-rock bands and so what we have here is a small but useful collection of dark atmospheres with lots of movement.
You will need to be running version 1.0.9 or higher of the Cherry Audio Rhodes Chroma plugin to use these sounds. You can buy and download Chroma Pads directly from the Vicious Antelope website here for just €5!
Electric Keys Reeds Duo for Kontakt by Galaxy Instruments/Native Instruments
Electric pianos come in different shapes and sizes, using different methods to mimic their larger cousins. One such attempt was by a company called Wurlitzer and although the advertising blurb does not explicitly mention that brand, it is clear where Electric Keys Reeds Duo has drawn its inspiration.
Jade is their take on the 200/206 range, whilst Ivory is an homage to the lesser known but often preferred 140. Each instrument is around 2Gb in size and works on both the paid and free versions of Kontakt.
They also support NKS and will have all their controls helpfully mapped to NI’s Mk.3 Kontrol keyboards. But be in no doubt, this pair will give you all the classic Wurli sounds you will like ever need in a compact and affordable package.
Each of the pianos is complemented by customisable effects chains that draw from pedals featured in NI’s Guitar Rig Pro, so you can add more grit, bite or softness to your performances. You can buy the Electric Keys Reeds Duo from the Native Instruments website here for £129.
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One response to “All The Colors of The Orchestra – Sounds and Presets”
DarkSkyAudio’s free Socora LITE (for Kontakt) has just been updated as well.