Spitfire Audio’s Thematic Horns promises to bring the sound of the big screen to your DAW
“Instant cinema – from the moment you open the first patch.”
Spitfire Audio has announced the latest addition to its Abbey Road One: Film Scoring Selections sample library series, Thematic Horns.
Promising “the iconic sound of cinema”, the library consists of an “agile” eight-piece horn section recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio One; the same studio used to record the iconic scores of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Avengers: Endgame and much more.
The recording was led by multi-Grammy Award-winning engineer Simon Rhodes (Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter), making extensive use of Abbey Road’s microphone cabinet and legendary outboard gear to emulate the detail, emotion and richness of a fully-fledged cinematic horn section.
A wide selection of musical articulations characterises the library, including two different legatos: ‘performance’ and ‘lyrical’.
The ‘performance’ legato, according to Spitfire Audio, is “designed to be the more acrobatic and instantly playable legato […], with accented attacks at the front of sustains. Allowing for fast runs across every dynamic, this is very much the ‘plug in and play’ of the two legatos.”
The ‘lyrical’ legato patch, meanwhile, “offers a more measured and deliberate alternative, with a softer entry, perfect for slower lyrical lines.” Spitfire stresses that such variation in performance is vital to using the horns as a compositional tool, promising a dynamic and wide-ranging palette with the library.
Spitfire Audio said in a press release, “from the wistful main theme of Braveheart to the thunderous horn section used in The Batman original theme, as well as countless other themes spanning the entire history of cinema, the horn has proven itself to be the irreplaceable heart of orchestral scoring. Horns play myriad roles, from chorale accompaniment to strings, through to punchy main themes that transcend anything the rest of the orchestra has to offer.”
Abbey Road One: Film Scoring Selections Thematic Horns is available now in VST2, VST3, AU, AAX and NKS-compatible formats for macOS and Windows, retailing at £49 / €49 / $49. For more information, visit spitfireaudio.com.
