Spitfire Audio - Abbey Road 2 [REVIEW]

hello everybody today we're taking a look at abby road 2 from spitfire audio it's a solo string quintet and there's lots to say about it interesting uh library and because it's sort of crushed genre it's not just kind of i am an orchestral library or i'm a popular it's kind of it's quite hard initially to work out where to fit it and so we're going to be writing little bits of music little short bits of music to try and see how it feels you know uh we'll put it in the sitting room we'll put it in the kitchen we'll put it in the garden no that'll be really silly thing to do anyway um there's this is it this is what it looks like oh my goodness it's all white yes i mean from all the time a lot of people said oh i'm not so keen on the spitfire interface it's a bit dark okay pick the bones out of that then it's very light um what strikes you okay the first time i loaded this up uh i i i loaded this up ensemble short and i went oh that's interesting [Music] a lot of things hit you straight away when you do that the first thing is it's really quite close and focused but there's something warm and round and beautifully produced about that sound the sound [Music] is just [Music] lovely and then you read all the stuff about oh it comes from studio two at um abbey road the that's why it's called iconic and and they're using all this old gear and these old mics and the rest of it um now i i enjoy all the uh historical references and all the rest of it but i think most people buying a library are going to be buying it for the music they're going to make in the future not the music not recreating the music from the past so it has to stand on its own two feet but without any shadow of doubt all that kind of cool analogy gear just contributes to that warm [Music] would you get whoa like that listen okay enough enough enough guy enough look um so the sound is really uh striking and after the first 10 minutes of going quiet plummy that's amazing it then start dawns on okay but it is quite quite tight quite focused this is not my first solo string library and this solo string quartet is going to do everything it's not it's um they have you know other libraries and other manufacturers have other string libraries which are more traditional this is not traditional this is a new sound there's a lot of sounds in here which you won't hear in many places um this is the ensemble thing the other thing to note is it's only a small number but it's i mean tucked away at the top there okay look uh this ensemble patch is two gigabytes it's not small it's a big boy and if you're gonna run it at full chat it is indeed going to occupy quite a lot of memory one other thing i would say is um because i've had a i've had a play with this for a while here you need to make sure you go into the spitfire audio app and click do you see that one optimize do yourself a favor hit that button optimize because i'm not quite sure what it does i suspect it does something like index the database or something but the load time uh if you don't do that you could go look if you if you hit the optimize button you can load one of these huge patches have a sip of cup of tea put it down you're in business if you don't hit the optimize button you've probably got time to make a cup of tea or even fly to salon and pick salon it's not cold salon anymore is it sri lanka and pick the tea yourself ah what well they talk about celante why why it's so off-topic come on concentrate there's a lot to get through here because there's a lot to talk about okay so these shorts are the shorts are really world-class you know look this imagine [Music] you know in an action sequence or something with some big percussions and synths [Music] bit longer sounds absolutely lovely [Music] mercado breathes at you doesn't it [Music] okay very nice thank you there is a couple of things about the interface which i'm going to point out before we go any further um you get the choice of these things here there's a very subtle little button there you click that and you can decide which of all these techniques uh you want to include in that particular little preset so it's quite cool um mic positions uh if you're on the pro version there are i don't know well i say enormous number there are a lot of them and that accounts for the fact that it is 270 gigabytes of data how many times could all the literature in the world ever written fit into that it's massive and you can faff about till the cows come home with these mixes i mean i've ultimately ended up going you know i said yeah they're all really nice and the rest of it um but i quite like the the initial mix oh yes it does this thing it won't let you mix certain things which are not supposed to go together so it it's quite it's a bit mary poppins if you don't if you're not careful you are not allowed that microphone with that microphone there is a way of turning off this [Music] so using the microphones you can make it a bit less focused a little bit more ambient but it's but it's never going to be anything like uh the other solar string library which is very ambient you know but whether you need that or not don't know it works for me i mean it's useful but ninety percent of the time uh i mean also just these load the the size of these i mean every time you open another mic position you double the uh you know you massively increase the amount of memory uses and that's it's already using quite a lot uh this is quite interesting um this is they call it the arranger the idea is with an ensemble patch which is basically a mashup of uh starting down here we have the double bass going through cello going onto vial uh into the second violin and then finally up to first violin and they kind of you you put the whole thing together so [Music] homogenous sound of the string section whoop across your uh keyboard now enter the arranger what rather than just have uh where's the button go on turn off there deciding exactly where they start and finish like that you've got this and you can mess with it you can design your own patches so it cross-fades don't let me go on to mark harter that's probably a better one to illustrate this now the other thing which comes with this is you do sometimes get some slightly strange stereo placement for obvious reasons because the you know at the lowest velocity it's including some double bass and at the top one it's including more you see what i mean so it's sort of and it's not that distracting but it is also it's a really good piece of technology and i would imagine this is going to work even better with um orchestral sections where there's slightly less focus on position because this is oh i'm a first violin i am exactly there i am a cello i'm exactly there and because it's so dry and focused this ensemble thing can sometimes wobble about a bit i don't know why that a bit i mean it's just you you understand what i'm saying you do let me know what i'm saying in the comments because i don't uh no i do i do i do it do were um prone to saying right um keep focused guys keep focus keep your focus okay so we've done the mic position when i'm running right and as usual you've got the reverb tightness i mean all kinds of other bits and pieces you can control up there and um things you can assign to the mob wheel and lots of other little bits and pieces but broadly speaking this is you know what you see as much yeah now in this uh you get violin one two uh viola cello and bass as you'd expect um the legatos go on then guy and i always try the viola because i think it's the last thing they look at and if the viola is good the rest are going to be good that's my theory it doesn't always hold up so this is the professional version which means you get both slurred legato and porter portamento [Music] performance legato swaps between them [Music] now um this is feels to me like brand new technology this doesn't feel the same as some of the others i've played before it's really [Music] it's very very nice um there is a little bit of latency um so because obviously there's an awful lot of thinking going on in there what did he play next uh quick let's get that you know so there's a lot of that going on um so it does take um [Music] so you may need to do some twiddling around afterwards to tighten the timing up but that is really really good so there's two at least two pieces of new technology going on in here the legato and the crossfadey thing both of which is pretty uh impressive um downsides okay um when i first started playing this um i was blown away by the sound i thought absolutely great i really love the legato personally i'm not absolutely sold on the first violin sound um now there's a reason why this first violin sounds like this and i think and i'll come to this uh in due course um when we do a little bit of a am i loading this that's it yep uh it's loading it's going wizzy wizzy wizzy 500 megabytes there we go [Applause] i think compared to some of the others to me it feels a bit thin and it's almost center vibrato do you see them also [Music] there are one or two really small artifacts you get when you go through the dynamic layers but frankly anybody noticing that in an arrangement uh is gonna it doesn't bother me it really doesn't bother me it's just if there are times when i find myself reaching for a fifth gear going bit more mate bit more i think i'm no i think i'm all right here thanks hmm okay um but as we'll okay so let us now move into the bit where i actually start using this rather than just chatting about it and you'll see what i mean when you use it where it's supposed to be used in a pop arrangement type thing it fits in just fine i'm now going to close this project off and open up my other one and then you'll see exactly what i mean and it's and this is something which perplexed me a little bit to start with because it's designed very much um somewhere in the documentation it compares uh spitfire's solo other solo strings library with this one and it says you know possible use of the other one is sort of orchestral and cinematic and it says for this one is pop okay but then i was a bit baffled because on the website all with all the demos i've heard so far have been like string quartet or string quintet i haven't heard anything in context i thought that's strange because um it'd be nice to hear how that went so that's what we're going to do okay now at this point and it's nothing to do with the sound i'm opening the box because i take out the sunglasses of doubt in order to illustrate uh how how it works in the context of a pop track i had to come up with a pop track you are now about to find out why i'm a film composer oh it's not that bad but it's you know no it took about 10 minutes and uh sorry just knock out a bit of a chord progression bit of guitar bit of butt drums bit of bass it's not a work of genius um but it's good it's certainly good enough to allow us to go hmm okay what's go very very careful with my tea oh you want an omission okay the other day i moved a keyboard it pulled a cable which was behind the t the t went over and an entire mug of rosie rosie lady t went inside my keyboard nightmare and you've warned me you marvin of texas have mentioned i'll get a bit nervous when i see him with his teacup next to the keyboard so now i had to go to the big studio and nick this keyboard which is two keyboards blimey hey good thing i had it um and the other one's gonna go off and be fixed and i will not uh be a stupid person like that again right okay so look here here ladies and gentlemen is the little batting truck i was talking about [Music] c g b flat f [Music] shout out to synapse audio for obsession it's wonderful [Music] okay so i thought okay it's got that kind of indie vibe um so let's uh let's just indie vibe along with it and see how it fits in so i'm going to start by putting a cello line in [Music] we're going to do some longs in the first half and then we're going to do some shorts after that [Music] okay like that is a bottom line yeah obviously guy okay so we go [Music] oh maybe the click would help then i know where we are what does it start on oh yeah oh guy it's the world's simplest chord progression and you within one bar you forgot what it is what is it c g b flat [Music] ah what i'm sorry i'm melting down come on come on come on you can do this [Music] [Music] okay right uh now we're going to put uh something which is going to go if i'm starting on the third maybe i'll start on this thing and walk up underneath it see if i can do this in real time [Music] [Music] okay um now adding a viola line where is the viola gonna go in this epic epic arrangement that which sounds so marvelous okay so we got the we got us [Music] all right let me just go into my viola person make sure everything's turning me out something a bit quiet okay just turn you up a bit so hang on i've got the so yeah i'm just trying to work this out now uh so it's going uh [Music] oh just play guy [Music] that worked [Music] okay well it sounds right for an improvised bit of string okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] you see these shorts really do earn their keep don't they [Music] okay [Music] now now you start to see why this works so whilst it is quite bitey um and quite edgy um but it really cuts through in a mix like that and sounds the business sounds of business and you can see how the longs start to feel more uh the legato which i was not convinced about the violin sound actually fits perfectly well in with a little arrangement like this so that is one approach but there's loads of other good stuff going on in here um let me try a completely different approach okay what we're going to do is right okay um let me get let me get my old friend upset okay i would put another obsession in uh oh put another episode in yeah why not okay uh signups audio obsession um because what we're going to do is we would what i was the other i mean i can't see often using this library just by itself to be solo strings and nothing else going on so what's interesting is how it all fits together [Music] [Music] if you want something a little bit more textural as if i said [Music] okay that'll do [Music] right we put this down first [Music] okay now we're gonna let's take the bases long bases ah this is good this is good you see this long flantando thing here [Music] a little bit more reverb biggie [Music] now spitfire's signature sound is flauntando i would wouldn't mind betting before spitfire started doing flauntando patches all the time the average session player playing music live wouldn't have seen the word flautando very often and as soon as people start using the patch hand it off to the orchestrator the orchestrator sees the patch called flat and he puts flat and on the score jeremy have you noticed how we've been asked to play sort of flattando all the time recently i wonder why because paul and christian have made these patches and everybody loves them and now they want real players to play it too i bet that happens i bet bet you that happens right this is double bass flantano long [Music] that is a very nice sound [Music] now let's put it in with the take the click off [Music] do that again it was a bit it's the way it's almost a performance in every node [Music] all right it's really nice go down there [Music] let's go come on let's add some cello see how that goes don't want to go to cellar i want a long cello not a legato cello oh you're supposed to be i'll real okay we'll load up along there come on you can do it long saw pond [Music] long sultasto [Music] still pond is still ponticello which is right down the end of the string so it's a slightly more brittle sound sultasto is over the fingerboard and that's a slightly more round sound long harmonics they're nice too [Music] there is still a slight problem with the tremolo measured trems um which is a bug um i don't think i mean i i've had a beta version of this but i have a feeling it's still there at the moment but i'm sure they'll fix it that the measure trends are out of tune with the rest of the patch oh ongoing gorgeousness [Music] oh i love that [Music] look um there's a lot of the flattandos are really really good uh a lot of these longs are really really good but the flattened in particular because it is like this whole it isn't just mmm it's sort of i'm gonna tell you a story all in one note why did i put an accent on unnecessary i'm gonna tell you a story all in one note it begins at the beginning and then it develops a little bit and then we have a little little conscience and i'm not sure if i'm going to keep going and then i keep going then there's a little moment of victory then i release and then i'm done there you go that's how flat under goes um now um what else is there too i was i was messing with the is this a bit of is this what i was messing with uh it is what i was messing i was just playing with the shorts [Music] hi sounds nice that's you know that's a film school [Music] i was having quite some fun with this because this is uh there's a slight minimalist thing going on in here because you've got a seven beat phrase against a four beat phrase or three beat phase currently they're three beat phrases and so they kind of they do that rhythmic displacement thing anyway look so what do we think about this um if there's so much which is different about this library um that it caused me quite a lot of head scratching um because in one hand going wow that's not something i've heard before and then you go oh how am i gonna use this so it is it doesn't just you don't just take it out out at the box and just start writing string quartet music with it because that's sort of not really what it's for there's loads of libraries which do this this is different you know it the whole sound is informed by the history of where it comes from this whole studio two abbey road thing which is where the beatles and lots of other people recorded including me i recorded a news theme in studio two in abbey road in the 1990s it's a really nice studio and you do sit there going hmm john paul george ringer they're all here but i know be that as it may um the library itself is a very modern contemporary sound it's very close and focused completely the opposite to what spitfire are best known for it as i think i've hopefully shown this evening this morning this afternoon whenever you're watching this um it's extremely good um at combining with other things and if you put it into a pop arrangement even though my backing track was amongst the best pieces of music you're gonna hear this month um you can see how the uh the strings sort of fit in there and it's kind of oh yeah that's nice and smooth yeah i like that um and little things like you know just combining it with that synth you can hear that sort of textural thing going on and you know this little you know blinky plonky thing we've been doing here it's sort of got a very contemporary feel to it it's not like a normal uh off-the-shelf uh big deep um you know passionate vibrato and all the rest of it um there's lots of interesting new technology going on in here the legatos are really interesting and i think if this is the start of where they're going with this then this is very encouraging um the ensemble arranger is quite cool and i'm looking forward to seeing that and some of their other stuff as well that'll be a laugh and the thing i mean look there's so much which is new in this there are some the odd rough edge around you know there are some rough edges and i can imagine something as innovative as this during trying to produce it probably entirely during lockdown that was mildly challenging oh you poor people um and so you know getting anything but the thing about spitfire is and the one of the things i respect them for more than anything else is they are relentless in pursuing the dream so if it's you know if this stuff which didn't work first time around they just keep at it until they can sort of do their next best thing look i hope that's helped um there's two versions there's the core version i can't remember how much it is to be honest and the pro version the pro version you get all the mic positions and you get the portato legato you don't get that portato legato on the core version um now it's obviously an you know sort of upselling thing so you want the portal so you get the i'm not sure whether you need all the mic positions to be honest i mean having faffed around with them quite a lot i didn't really feel i was getting anything better than the mix um so it's really down to you you know it pays your money it takes your choice look that's all i've got for you for today we're going to be back with more interesting and exciting stuff very soon but thank you for company thank you very much indeed for the review copy spitfire uh it's been interesting and no really really interesting so look uh have a good time and look after yourselves stay safe and i'll see you very soon bye

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 10,698

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, michelmore, thinkspace education, Music Education, Spitfire Audio, Sample Library Review, Spitfire Audio Abbey Road 2, Abbey Road 2 Review, Cubase 11, Spitfire Audio Review, Chamber Strings, sample library review, solo strings, solo string samples, solo string library, native instruments kontakt, film scoring, film music, abbey road one, orchestral foundations, music composition

Id: hHoVJ7pQkwM

Length: 36min 26sec (2186 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021