Sonora Cinematic Harmonic Bloom

Bloom is all about extracting harmonics and chaotic waveforms based on noise... but fortunately, it's a lot better than that sounds

Nowadays, software developers really have to think outside the box to come up with something new. More importantly, it also needs to be something sufficiently different to what’s bundled with our DAWs to tempt us to part with our cash. Sonora Cinematic has been out of that box for a while, most famously coming up with the Dronar range of weird and wonderful atmosphere instruments. That, and other titles like Magnetism, are ideal for cinematic and atmospheric tension, and Harmonic Bloom (for Kontakt Player) is too, although it’s probably the most emotive of their titles thus far. The initial description makes mention of the likes of harmonic theory, noise sources and sonic extraction and you’d be forgiven for initially scratching your head. You might even ask whether the developers have gone too far in their pursuit for something new. In fact, though, the theory is quite easy.

Make some noise

You get two layers of sounds to play with as sources: Noise and Main. Blend these together first (see box for more on the source samples and instruments), then mess with the harmonics, add some choice effects and then some modulation. It’s essentially a sample-based synth with some added harmonic twists on top.