Spitfire Audio Albion Torrent Fulll
Cortney Voegele
As the UK economy continues to wobble and factories close left, right and centre, it's good to see a home-grown company succeed by selling products based squarely on British expertise. I refer to Spitfire Audio, purveyors of high-quality orchestral samples since 2008. Having set out their stall by granting licenses to use their libraries on a by-invitation basis, founders Christian Henson and Paul Thomson adopted a more conventional approach with their first commercial release, Spitfire Percussion. This was followed by harp, harpsichord, grand piano and solo strings titles, and the jewel in Spitfire's crown: the 39GB Albion orchestral collection. (Read the SOS review of Albion at /sos/oct11/articles/spitfire-audio-albion.htm.)
Albion II is exclusively for Kontakt 5, which runs stand-alone and as a plug-in on Mac and Windows computers. (See the System Requirements box for more details.) A free Kontakt Player is included with the library.
As in Albion 1, violins and violas are combined in 'high strings' patches, while 'low strings' patches bring together cellos and double basses. Rather than sampling each instrument type separately and combining them at the programming stage, the producers recorded them together, orchestrating their parts so that (for example) the violins gradually take over from the violas going up the range. This has been done so deftly that you don't notice transitions between instruments as you move up and down their range. Mixed ensembles are the order of the day: there are no solo instruments, and no dedicated second violins, violas or cellos patches. Also absent is the octave doubling used extensively in the original library: all Albion 2's instrumental samples are in unison, which is no bad thing, in my book.
Section sizes (14 violins, four violas, four cellos and three basses) are smaller than Albion I's 20/seven/six/four line-up. The new numbers correspond to those I tend to use on pop sessions, so I know from first-hand experience the lush, expansive sound an ensemble of this size can produce. The 'Strings Longs Full' multi bears that out, combining high and low strings in an instantly playable, elegant and stately timbre with a luxuriant texture you can almost reach out and touch. The immediate impression is that of larger-scale symphonic strings, rather than a chamber-sized group. I've heard a few tasty string samples in my time, but I must say this combination of top players and a world-class room is irresistible.
Returning to more familiar styles, the strings' staccatissimos are a treat, delivering a bright, brisk attack across their full six-octave-plus range and showing off the Lyndhurst Hall acoustic to great effect. The idea is not to blow your head off with power, but to provide a fairly light, 'brushed' bowing to keep rhythmic passages zipping along. This is an area in which smaller section sizes are a clear advantage, as the reduced numbers make it easier to produce a more focused, less 'spread' attack. The same is true of the brilliant pizzicatos, which, to my ears, work better for rhythmic ostinatos than their counterparts in Albion 1, and also sound great playing melodies and chordal accents.
One of Albions 2's four mic positions features a set of ambient mics placed high up in Air Lyndhurst's gallery, capturing a reverberant room sound you can route to the rear speakers of a surround mix.
Via a nifty bit of programming magic, Albion 2's free 1.1 update extends the high strings' legato range to cover the entire violin register, while the low string legatos currently span only the bottom two octaves of the cello. There are no viola or double-bass legatos, but, frankly, in the case of the basses you're unlikely to miss this articulation: their magnificently sonorous long notes flow together convincingly without the help of legato scripting, providing a tremendous foundation to the string sections. If you've never used true legato samples before, this would be a good place to start: the high violins have a magnificent regal sweep, and the four cellos deliver expressive, emotive melody lines with immense nobility. Inspirational for composers and impressive for listeners, these articulations will bring your arrangement to life.
Both the legatos and straight sustains have a 'half section' option, where one player from each desk remains tacet. The half-sections' somewhat purer, clearer tone adds definition to melody lines and will work well in conjunction with solo woodwinds. You can also use the half sections for true two-part divisi writing, satisfying the academic argument that two notes played by a sampled ensemble should not double the instrument count! The difference in sound between the full and half sections is less dramatic than you might suppose, which means that you can switch between them in mid-flow without disturbing the atmosphere.
Where Albion 1 offers the staple orchestral brass fare of trumpets, trombones, French horns and tuba, Albion 2 goes for a less classical alternative by providing an ensemble of two euphoniums and two French horns. Although well known to British ears as a brass band and military band instrument, the euphonium rarely finds its way into sample libraries, or, for that matter, film scores. The unison pair included here combines beautifully with the horns to create a warm, rounded tone. Containing no blaring sforzandos or Judgement-Day blasts, this perennially mellow timbre is ideally suited to soft chord pads, but its legato performances' loud dynamic is bright and robust enough to carry a lead line in a full orchestral arrangement. My only criticism is that the legato patch omits the low and high extremes of the ensemble's near-three-octave range, which may put a brake on your melodic excursions.
If the inclusion of euphoniums evokes cosy, Hovis-ad-style images of bygone days, Albion 2's other brass entry goes much further into the past. At some point in the 15th century, somebody fitted a slide mechanism to a trumpet (possibly as a joke?), and the instrument we now know as the trombone was born. Except it wasn't called that: the new-fangled slide-trumpet acquired the name 'sackbut', which may or may not be derived from the Spanish sacar (to draw or pull) and bucha (a tube or pipe). As is their wont, the English produced their own risible spelling variations, one of the more stupid of which was 'shagbolt'. Happily, common sense prevailed, and the name 'sackbut' is now firmly lodged in the musicological vocabulary.
To help stand out from the crowd, Spitfire Audio made the bold decision to include a sackbut ensemble (which sounds to me like two players) in Albion 2. While this archaic trombone duo shares some of the euphonium/horn combo's mellow tendencies, it can also emit a stirring, brassy racket, as evidenced by its loud marcato short notes. Its plump-sounding staccatissimos would work well for a fanfare signalling the arrival of Henry VIII at his royal court; however, the instruments' main strength lies in playing sumptuous brass pads, thereby providing an interesting alternative to conventional horns and trombones.
The sackbuts' usefulness in this field is compromised by some dodgy tuning: the long note of D above Middle C is the worst offender, with one player starting his note flat of the other. Impossible to rectify in post-production, this sample should really have been re-recorded (although I do understand that historic instruments can be difficult to play in tune). Fortunately, anyone with rudimentary Kontakt programming chops can delete the sample in question from the patch and fill the gap by stretching the play zones of the neighbouring notes. Once I'd done that, these instruments with the ugly name rewarded me with some very sweet music.
It's woodwind Jim, but not as we know it. Rather than following convention and adding auxiliary orchestral instruments such as alto flute or contrabass clarinet to their previous library's standard woodwind line-up, Spitfire again went for the unpredictable in Albion 2 and opted for two-player recorder ensembles, recorded in high and low versions. As the makers point out, the fact that most of us played recorder in our youth gives this sound an immediate nostalgic familiarity, and the low recorder duo's sweet, wooden-flute tone certainly has a charming innocence and purity. The low duo's sustains are lovely for chordal work, and you can add expression to legato melodies by pushing up the mod wheel to introduce vibrato on louder notes.
Included in the original Albion library is a collection of drily-recorded, lightweight rhythm patterns intended to provide composers with some instant rhythmic impetus that won't dominate the overall sound picture. Albion 2 intensifies this approach with a new collection of loops that one can only describe as slightly mad. Inspired by the pre-recorded musical rhythm tracks built into the original split-keyboard Mellotrons, the producers hired a seven-piece acoustic band and instructed them to play a selection of short loops that evoke the spirit of our glorious (and not so glorious) musical past. In honour of the clunky tape-loop technology of the old instrument, the collection is called Byron Tapes.
The loops feature various drum kit patterns dating back to the swinging '60s and beyond: a 12/8 slow blues in a choice of sticks or brushes, a scuffling, not particularly well-played dance-band beat, a bossa nova complete with Latin percussion, a fast '10-to-10' swing beat with bongos (a nice one, that) and some 1970s Headhunters-style funk grooves. With the addition of guitar, acoustic piano and upright bass, we move into classic Mel O'Tron accompaniment territory with loops which include a re-take of Johnny Kidd's 'Shakin' All Over' guitar lick, a 'Blueberry Hill'-style slow shuffle, a spirited rockabilly/skiffle riff, a dash of 1960s party music, a bit of ska, and so on. It's all good fun and though the tempo-sync'ed patterns sometimes don't loop very well, this tongue-in-cheek romp through the styles of yesteryear should serve at least to acquaint younger users with some of the weird musical motor habits of their grandparents, even if some of them are desperately corny. I'm not sure where the 'Byron' bit comes in, but if these styles aren't exactly Byronic, they're certainly ironic, and maybe even iconic... in a cheesy kind of way.
b37509886e