Albion ONE is a cinematic anthology that gives you everything you need to write amazing sounding epic cinematic music. Albion ONE encompasses an easy to use, but awesome symphonic sized orchestra, thundering cinematic drums, great drama loops and an amazing organic steam synth.

Key Highlights

• AMAZING ENSEMBLES BASED ORCHESTRA
• DARWIN CINEMATIC PERCUSSION
• BRUNEL LOOPS TO MOTIVATE YOUR CUES
• STEPHENSON'S CINEMATIC STEAM SYNTH
• ALL YOU NEED TO MAKE CINEMATIC MUSIC
• SIMPLE TO USE, SOUNDS GREAT OUT OF THE BOX
• CURATED BY AWARD WINNING COMPOSERS
• SOUND DESIGN BY AWARD WINNING PRODUCERS
• THE FINEST PLAYERS IN LONDON
• THE FINEST INSTRUMENTS
• PERFORMING WITH LIFE AND CHARACTER

Overview

Giving every user an instant orchestra under their finger tips, Albion is used the world over by A-listers wanting a quick, inspiring compositional and sketching tool. It is utilised by power users who are short on time and tight on a deadline to render compelling, impact driven masters in an instant. It is used by people who are interested in breaking into the world of TV, Film, and Games music by having the best sounds available in one very affordable package. It is used by people wanting to try their hands at orchestral music regardless of their theoretical understanding and programming chops. Finally it has found its way into the arsenal of many successful hit makers wanting to add a bit of rich British epic into their next hit. Whilst many people jump first to the orchestral content, further investigation reaps an Aladdin's cave of cinematic percussion, dynamic and engaging loops and one-off synth sounds derived from the 100+ epic orchestra!

Background

Spitfire Audio was set up in 2007 by a collective of award winning composers and producers. In 2011 they set about distilling all of the essential tools they used to make modern epic cinematic music into a single product. This was the genesis of Albion Volume 1, a tool kit that took the world by storm and earned itself many awards and plaudits.

Four years may not seem a long time, but in the fast moving world of Spitfire Audio it is an age. With over 60 products released in this period alone including 8 new strings libraries and a panoply of orchestral recordings in the shape of the epic BML series, Spitfire have gained a lot of experience! So they decided to return to the original Albion Volume 1 concept and see how it stood up. With heavy hearts Spitfire decided it was time to go back into the studio and put their beloved Albion Volume 1 out to pasture. They felt the experience gained, and the feedback garnered from thousands of users could present a product far superior to the original ‘legacy’ version, a product that would continue and deserve to be the most popular product Spitfire has ever sold.

Quite simply Spitfire wanted to make Albion better, bigger, fatter, brighter, tighter with more articulations, more sounds, more loops with more control, more features and functions.

Features

Spitfire has carefully studied what made Albion ‘Legacy’ so popular, have returned to the hall at Air Studios and have painstakingly recreated and enhanced the objectives of the original. As with Albion Volume 1 there is at the centre a large epic orchestra, but this time the orchestra size has been enhanced to 109 players with many more articulations, control of vibrato and new features including stylised legato articulations by Andy Blaney and an awesome strings ’runs’ section. The Darwin Percussion has been carefully re-recorded with many additional sections (and a couple of old favourites). The Brunel dynamic loops section has this time been designed by Spitfire’s award winning team from new recordings made with percussion favourite Paul Clarvis and a lot of treats he uses on many A-list films including “Skyfall” and "Spectre". The Stephenson’s Steam Synth takes epic and awesome to whole new level of tweakability with both this and the loops presented in Spitfire's much applauded eDNA engine. There are also few exceptions of ‘special’ moments from the original ‘legacy’ Albion that they felt they couldn’t better, so they have retained those in ONE, you know who you are!

SECTIONS

This large orchestra was recorded via priceless ribbon and valve mics via Neve Monserrat pre amps, the largest 88R Neve console in the world and onto pristine 2” tape before being converted with the top-of-their-class Prism AD converters at 96k. The orchestra is presented in carefully orchestrated sections, sometimes in unison across the entire orchestral range sometimes in high low and middle sections. Alongside many 'work horse' long and short articulations are expertly prepared legato patches; a menu of effects and a huge selection of string runs. There are four mic positions (close, tree, outriggers & ambient) to load and mix to suit the type of music you’re writing and the scale you want to achieve. Spitfire also provides a popular “ostinatum” designer that allows you to instantly create exciting, tense or action packed rhythmic passages.

Also gathered in the hall are some of the largest drums in London from hi sticks to low taikos and toms, some recorded in sections, some solo with some awesome blockbuster style hyped percussion thrown in for good measure.

100s of raw and warped loops from original recordings made on a dry stage featuring percussion heavy hitter Paul Clarvis playing a collection of unrecognisable relics. These are designed to be sculpted into your tracks with the unique crossfadable dynamic functionality with up to three dynamic layers per instrument and many of the loops designed for 8th, 16th and 12th style meters. All of these loops lock to your host tempo and can naturally follow even the most “rubato” of passages.

Spitfire has taken this new orchestral material and, using morphing experience garnered from the first 4 Albions and the applauded eDNA Earth range, has created a generous library of cinematic, widescreen and dynamic pads, drones, atmospheres, effects and tools. As these all are warped from organic material many music makers and producers find even the most ‘synth’ of presets to mix more easily with your orchestral arrangements. These are all presented in the much lauded eDNA engine which just begs to be tweaked and fiddled with.

Guis

THE OVERVIEW PANEL

Gives you a quick and easy way to access, view and load the different articulations, mic mixes and essential controller functions which you can then re-assign to suit your workflow.

GENERAL CONTROLS PANEL

A deeper but still simple UI panel that allows you to tweak the general settings. How many round robins you would like and how you would like them to behave. How would you like memory to be organised alongside pitch options and how velocity works.

THE OSTINATUM

Quite simply a little inspiration machine. Not quite an arpegiattor, not quite a sequencer. This intuitive device allows you to build up complex patterns that react to your playing to achieve wild systems results tantalising Zimmeresque tension beds or cheeky multi-tonguing effects!

eDNA ENGINE

Over the last seven years Spitfire - in partnership with Blake Robinson - have been creating some of the most intuitive and ingenious scripts, simple to use GUIs and attractive front ends. A year ago, we wiped the script clean and set about creating a monster of a new script engine. This we call eDNA. Two sets of sounds can be used in conjunction with the eDNA engine to quickly, dramatically and awesomely create a new audio experience for the next generation of music makers.

KICKSTART ENGINE

Kickstart is a Kontakt interface dedicated to percussive instruments and libraries. It allows Spitfire libraries to provide an organised collection of percussive instruments with a quick and easy way of accessing their various playing styles and techniques in a single patch.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

This library is a free "Kontakt 5 Player" Library and requires NO FURTHER PURCHASES to operate to its full potential.

Operating system requirements:

MAC:
OS X 10.8 and above is required to run the latest version of Kontakt 5.

PC:
Windows 7 (latest Service Pack, 32/64 Bit).

FOOTPRINT:
53.3GB disk space required. 106.6GB disk space required during install.