Spitfire Abbey Road One - Is it THAT good? [REVIEW]

hello everybody and a warm welcome to the famous abbey road in london and look i'm about to cross the zebra crossing made famous by the beatles all those years ago and over there is abbey road studios a studio that has drawn the likes of john williams and many many others to record iconic film scores here but what is it about these amazing studios that brings people from literally all over the world to create such an incredible sound the answer is if you put world-class musicians in a world-class room like abbey road studio one you get an unbelievable sound you get something slightly magical incredible things happen what a shame it is you might say to yourself that you can't say package up that wonderful sound put it on the hard drive and take it home to your studio well now you can now what i'm talking about is spitfire audio's new library called abbey road one now spitfire is traditionally associated very much with air lindhurst but this time they've cut loose and they've recorded a brand spanking new sample library in the iconic studio one at abbey road now i was lucky enough to have this a couple of weeks early and i got the link one evening and i set it to download and i got up in the morning and i made a cup of tea and i said hello to the dogs and i walked across the lawn and went into my shed oh good it has downloaded that's great news so then i loaded up the first patch and i played a note and it sounded great and i played another note and it still sounded great so when i first sat down here i really liked what i heard as soon as i played the note so then i loaded another sound and another sound and i played more and more and my cup of tea got stone cold and i didn't get up for an hour until i'd written a little piece of music and that's really what you're looking for in a new library you're looking for something to inspire you to sit down and write and keep writing and to bring out something in you that wasn't there before and that's what i found this library did sorry guy i interrupted you yes guy you did interrupt but what we're going to do now is we're driving all the way home from abbey road going into the shed so i can show you why i think this is one of the most inspiring libraries i've played in a very long time which way's home oh up here turn left right okay really up here okay oh lord [Music] right ladies and gentlemen now is the moment you've been waiting for we actually sort of dig in and have a look at the library itself and here it is in all its glory it comes up in that sort of familiar um dark um spitfire audio livery and when you first load it up um the first thing you're going to get um is there we go and it is it's a very nice sound so you've got everything in there you've got strings woodwing brass the whole machine now the most important thing with this library is the um the sound of the room and if you just play a short note you get to hear it that's what i'm talking about what you're getting there is this sound of the it's not sort of an enormous sort of artificial reverb hawley thing it's a really nice space you can almost imagine yourself sitting in there amongst the orchestra no i can't either but but the the sound itself isn't that nice now do you see here look um where it says uh these boys here these bad boys here short swell you're gonna be hearing a lot of that i promise you um on everybody's stuff medium swell that is a very wonderful sound a long swell so what i thought we'd do um because i'm sure um paul and christian people will give you the walk through and show you all the sounds and all respect um we're just gonna do what i normally do to sort of write a piece of music um and as i was explaining before um this is you know on the morning i got i thought i sat down and okay yeah let's just give this go and then here you go let's load up the hybrid wins because i think that's where we started last time i was playing with this [Music] okay look we're just gonna go for this turn on the click guys [Music] it's done well does it oh guy come on you can do better than that just let me tell you what let's uh i haven't even you know i haven't even chosen a temp or anything we just kind of just launched in i just pushed play um i'm going to i'm feeling particularly 100 beats a minute today do i look 100 beats a minute i've got 100 beats a minute look yeah that's me that's that's how i roll okay so uh too many buttons okay let's get this going so that's not 100 beats a minute that's not beats a minute at all that's i've stopped beats a minute um what's going on here stop let's go oh no okay hands up all those who spotted my deliberate mistake if you look just in the tiny detail down here i've gone for one beat a minute and good old cubase tried very hard to give me one beat a minute and if i'd waited 60 seconds rather than being impatient i would have had another beat oh well [Music] what i'm doing there is i'm just going to try tried and tested uh chord progression c minor to a flat minor um it's a sort of kind of [Music] so you know for those of you looking for the top so you go c c minor um triad then you slip the root note down a semitone and the fifth up a semitone and you get first inversion of um a flat minor there my job is done no no no it's not guy you have so much more to do okay now as you know the uh or you may not know um spitfire's player is a sort of monitor so you you get one instrument but that one instrument has all the articulations in it that's the way they normally roll so let's just add tell you what i'm going to do this one by one rather than a load and loads at the same time um so what are we going to go for next um we're going to should we load up some high strings yep i'm going to load up some high strings and go look some uh um or are we just going to go with the trams just give that a go to start with somewhere in the forest the princess was walking alone okay yeah the princess can walk alone all day long like that as far as i'm concerned um right i'll tell you what i am going to start labeling these things because i can see um a moment when i'm going to get confused that moment could come at any time so that's strings high right okay so so far so good but you see what i mean about this kind of it all just comes out sounding great and all and very coherent as well um what are we gonna have now um i could go for some low strings i suppose that might be a nice idea um let's have a look at what we get i mean what you get in the basic uh straight out of the box uh library is this you get longs consortino so there is consortium tremolondo [Music] come on guy [Music] oh with a with a snap on the end you're probably hearing as much key sound when i'm with these quiet sounds i apologize um i do my best but we're trying to do this in a kind of schmoozy live kind of way type thing recording that's live so it's a bit fun anyway um look let's um get into some low what are we gonna go with we're gonna go consortino let's put some consordini in here and see what happens [Music] we're getting constantino or just without i think i quite like without okay let's just do that oh stupid there's one little button how often in your life does one little button get in the way and in this case it was that little button there now it was listening to the input and it shouldn't have been and i'm sorry because i'm an idiot two three four [Music] okay that sounds all right um which have um some what else we're going to stick in here okay so this is low strings and we're going to try some of these percussive things next i think do you feel a bit percussive yeah i feel a bit because of as well actually um okay let's just get into this and there's another aspect of this library we need to look at okay percussion let's just load what do we get with normal oh i see look so we get soft boom are you ready for some soft boom oh my lord that makes the neighbors jump verdi drums that's nice yeah oh it's all quiet that's base and snare together it's quite interesting that'll be very good some of this stuff will be really really good for uh action and stuff like that let's let's go for some tuned metals i think there's some tuned metals in here somewhere uh tuned yeah oh that's nice now i tell you what um let me tell you one of the things we should have look at is this guy can i just interrupt you again for a minute tell me a little bit about these multiple mic positions because um it's a big deal isn't it bathrobe man stop interrupting okay i'm quite capable of talking about the mic positions myself right and there are plenty of them and that's one of the reasons why it's such a large download because look you get all these different mics mix one mix two and then from a vintage one vintage two um you've got so many ambience out spill just loads and loads different closes and trees and all the rest of it so with this that's the normal mix um let's try loading up um as ever if you use um the let's put a close mic in see what that sounds like you get a bit more edge to it let's turn off the basic mix there that's very close you wouldn't get that with the stuff done at air you wouldn't get that kind of [Music] what happens if we add in a bit of tree oh yes bit of room [Music] not bad okay um not bad he says it's all right i know it's a it's a fairly traditional sort of safe piece of music but you know you're more interested in the library so look you're getting a lot of bang for your buck here um and let's just block our way into that now i think at the end of this opening section we're going to go into something bigger and more dramatic and then we're going to play with the brass okay so what are we going to do first we're going to put in another track and we're going to add one of those you know those things from the orchestra let's have a long one or swell medium i'm gonna go swell medium okay so let's run it normally you have to work work out how long the swell lasts [Music] you wait all that time when i play the wrong note it's just like waiting for a bus for six hours and then falling over and then missing it and then have to wait for a bus again so it needs to be the a-flat it's down here not see sees where we're going to not where we're coming from and with these kind of swells we want where we're going coming from not where we're going to right now we can mess with exactly where it is because actually the easiest way of doing this is this you push a little button and render it as audio you push another little button and you do the that thingy and then you can see where you want it [Music] okay bit loud what hang on somebody said are you surprised it's loud because you just normalized it you get uh you're absolutely right okay so let's see so that's orchestra swell swell audio okay so far so good so and this is straight out the box with that look you can see why i just sat down and went oh and started playing away and coming up with stuff and it was just you know this is what you want when they talk about this being a sketch pad which is sort of what it is um it's a very effective sketchpad and it means that sketchpad to me means something which is inspiring but also quick so and i if you're a keyboard player and you can improvise on keeper and that's your way of writing then having these ensemble patches is great and then you can go back and you can add more stuff with it hi guy bathroom band again um so as an ensemble library there is a limit to how far it can go you're going to need at some point um a traditional library with you know individual instruments which of the libraries out there at the moment do you think this would combine best with bathrobe man um what libraries would it go well with um actually because you're absolutely right because the ensembles you want to say bathroom man was absolutely right what am i talking about um the you want to blend it with something which has a similar acoustic and i would go with the bbc symphony orchestra core if you because there aren't ensembles i don't think in the in the uh in the symphony orchestra and there are just ensembles in every road so put the two together and you get the best of the ensembles in uh abbey road and you get the best of the individual instruments in that slightly more confined acoustic environment that you get from uh bbc symphony orchestra so win-win you know be really great um right what was i doing i was going to do something it was going to be really good and important and i forgot because i was chatting like a brainless twaddle back to my little piece such as it is um right we're gonna i quite like the slightly loose timing of that so i'm gonna keep it the same and there we go is that does that continue straight on [Music] okay let's let's go in there and sort that out there i need to try all that needs to go one beat earlier uh what's going on here oh this is the stuff you don't want to watch on a youtube video you don't want to watch something you want to go watching people faff about with midi editing is the kind of thing which will drive you again yeah maybe i'm going to go and watch that cat video afternoon all don't do that this is where uh you need to go undo undo undo i do i do just undo and okay let's turn that down a bit like that's too loud is that still operative turn it down a lot see i'm not using any reverb and i really don't i don't want to because i know what i was going to do i was going to add a little should we add a little temp roll or something in here how do you feel about timbrels i rather like them you know i mean yeah i like tim roles so let's uh let's see what goes on when i come into timpani hits do we have a tip roll in here or not we might not actually no this is good [Music] okay what am i doing hang on hang on am i causing chaos that is my traditional role in life um here we go let's get up ah that's why right i think i might have changed something else unwittingly unwittingly so we've got ensembles percussion ensemble whoa okay drum ensemble look okay [Music] okay so you've got a drum percussion on someone in there which kills an awful lot of birds with one stone so to speak and i suspect with the tuned uh we get just individual hits oh but nice ones very nice ones actually again you see i don't feel the urge to to start faffing because i really like the sound [Music] so we just do it a different way okay now um okay so this is gonna be timp um okay so can we question if we've been going c minor in a uh whatever it is [Music] do we change key how about going to e flat minor [Music] and maybe i hand over the duties of um this is a a possible plan and rather than keeping that woodwind thing going um i'm going to get up um the all right come on is this let's go to some spigarto [Music] okay i'm going to do some step time input here which friends of the channel oh you're not a friend of the channel not a subscriber well you should be because it's fun hello it's bathrobe man here again um have you subscribed i just if you like this kind of review or you know how-to thing just click the button we'd be honored to have you along for the ride sorry back back to guy from there right we're gonna have um we're gonna go for some turn off the triplets um we're going for 16th notes [Music] and it goes from um e flat minor if we follow the same process drop one drop the root of semitone and raise the fifth semitone we end up in b minor okay so then i'm going to now continue with my little um so while that goes up to that b there so then i can go no guy wrong note okay take out the last two okay take out that one too so when we're gonna go [Music] [Music] is [Music] that ain't bad and we can that one goes but that that kind of little run is going to help give this next section okay so we're going to go for [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] plays the whole thing and plays the wrong note at the very last note because he's not with it okay let's go back and change that last note thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you i give you the last note yes okay let's get rid of the front of this drag it back now we're going to go into this now um actually what i've done now is these this changes uh chord too often so can i just the quick and dirty way is just to duplicate the first one so it's gonna go like this [Applause] okay now we're gonna bring in a big [Music] heroic okay that's all right um what i could do is for the second one i could whack it up not add a top octave this might sound terrible uh but this is the point it's a sketch pad so i can do what i like and then i'm going to [Music] that sounds rough okay i quite like that um now um [Music] um so we've got a bit of that going on um we're now going to add some of the are we going to go back to the low strings first [Music] she'll have just one run with that and see if it works uh i'm gonna go for uh merge there we go do a mergy thing and then i'm just gonna take over from there so we're gonna come in on a big e flat minor chord which is going to be one of these [Music] and then afterwards i'll go through and put in the [Music] okay this is too much too much too much too many nodes [Music] let's give that a go see if that works [Music] or play if you like guys [Music] okay although it's not the best thing in the world sorry it's me here again um yeah i'm going to like that idea very much when i hear it in the future that's a good one isn't it no it's all right it's all right you know it's not it's not terrible terrible by any means but i hope you're getting the gist of how quick this whole thing is and how it actually starts to sound pretty good pretty quickly um let's put in uh we haven't really played with the brass yet so let's give the old brass come on boys back from the pub go on settle down at the back brass players what can i tell you [Music] that is gorgeous [Music] aficionados or brass libraries will notice that when you push the mod wheel forward one of the great tests of a brass library is how smoothly it transitions between dynamic ranges because the brass sounds so much bigger and brighter at forte and fortissimo than it does in mezzo piano and trying to get that tonal textural change has tripped up lots of library producers in the past and it used to be and sounded a bit grungy but now [Music] can't spot the join pretty good [Music] [Music] that was all right really given it was just made up and i hadn't thought where i was going what do you think yeah yeah i do you know i have absolutely zero idea of how long i've been going but this is what happened before and you just start writing and you sort of just kind of blue and blue it bounces along it's all good you know it's all fun all that kind of thing okay so that's french horns i'm i was feeling as we were going through that were you as well you thought oh shall we put some truffles in here shall we have a bit of trumpet on the top uh because second time around i thought it needed so this is the only exception in this library you do get some individual instrument trumpets and you do get some individual instruments in the percussion [Music] you lovely person i'll be using that all day long that's nice so let's let this run is it getting a bit loud [Music] hey guy you were playing swells you were playing trumpet swells but this is gonna work [Music] so i rather like this now i'm going to add a low woodwind um because we haven't used it yet and i'm determined to use everything okay i know let's go low woodwind what we got in the low woodwards mate we haven't got any low bra well we sort of got low woodwind come and see me um whoa [Music] what i'm going to do arrangement wise [Music] now a lot of the time when you add an object on the top it's not a bad idea to so the whole thing goes woof that you add something else down the bottom as well and so where the trumpet comes in is where the low woodwind is going to come in because that uh ladies and gentlemen you can this one is the trumpet and this one is the low wooden i'm doing a really rubbish job of remembering to label everything sorry about that [Music] here we go where guy is there a b-flat in the chord of b minor there isn't that's why it sounded rubbish well it didn't sound rubbish that's the trouble it all sounds swooshy and good but it's wrong [Music] and here we go now if i was going to be um okay tell you what we haven't shall we just listen to what we've got so far because i think you must be getting bored with this by now [Music] somewhere in the dark forest the princess was running could she find her way home what was that sound behind the tree [Music] the prince was galloping towards them could he get there in time so it is definitely done and it's taken 40 minutes i suppose um i've done just a little tiny bit of sort of balancing out and i just added a little couple of tweaks at the end because i thought the transition from the first part to the second part needed a bit of help so i've dropped in a suspended symbol there and also those nice fast strings i thought we're getting a bit lost so i've doubled them up with some woodwinds and at the end i've got this descending juju thing going on with um the trem strings and that's about it i think oh yeah i've put a couple of little um on the french horns and trumpets i've used those really cool uh swells at the end to give it a little uh i don't know but really this was another five minutes work ten minutes work maximum five minutes work yeah what yeah yeah pick the bones out of that so let's have a little play through and see what you think [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] it's look i'm pretty pleased with that for 40 minutes work i mean it's pretty traditional and almost but nonetheless as a as a a way of working with this library i'm just so impressed it's really gives you that warm feedback that ambience the ambience of the thing is so distinctive and it glues all these instruments together and you have all the articulations you really need there's no legatos in there at the moment but um that might be you know down the road um but i didn't miss them that much to be absolutely honest doing this and it just rewards you for you know for ex for sort of playing and it just kind of it's just you know a very inspiring um library to work with and you know taking on a massive legacy which is uh you know albion one and all that kind of stuff which was you know so many people use for so long this is absolutely great this is a fitting you know next chapter in the in the book so to speak so what you get is all the major uh sections of the orchestra as ensembles high wood winds low wood winds high brass low brass high strings low strings essential articulations you get longs consordinos you get shorts pizzicatos tremolondos things like that also a real feature of the library these swells which are really fantastic and incredibly powerful and just sounds so cohesive as though they're all played in the same room at the same time by the same group of musicians who knew you know just sound you know that that's what makes things sound great yeah great and you know it's at a a really good price it's a excellent because the ambiance is not dissimilar in made available to amber abbey road stewie one you could easily work bbc symphony orchestra into this as well so look i know big double thumbs up from from me goodbye uh sunglasses of doubt goodbye bathrobe man and his weird interjections um so look i hope you enjoyed that go and check the library out i think it's great i'll be back very soon if you like this kind of thing oh that's why you're here right at the end uh i hope you subscribed because then go on it doesn't cost anything go on yeah and um we do of course do uh little courses like how to write music and learn music theory and sample orchestration and things like that and there might just be a trailer for one of those coming up in a minute anyway from me for this evening as it is now see you soon bye-bye just before we go um let me remind you about a really wonderful course that um guy does um bathrobe man's not involved at all um it's this [Music] the sound of the room is one of the most important things when it comes to the sound of the sample library we will be touching on elements of composition and orchestration right the way through this course because it's really important almost everything i'm going to tell you will apply just as well to logic cubase pro tools as it does to studio one fl studio digital performer and all the rest of it you

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 159,502

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, Spitfire Audio, Abbey Road, Abbey Road One, cubase 10.5, Spitfire Audio Abbey Road, Sample Library Review, Orchestral Foundations, Abbey Road Studios

Id: CaO2jtCaV5Q

Length: 41min 28sec (2488 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020