Horns In The Abbey

Building on Abbey Road One: Orchestral Foundations — a 90-piece symphonic orchestral release representing the sound-specialising British music technology company’s primary partnership with world-famous Abbey Road Studios — Spitfire Audio has announced the availability of Abbey Road One: Thematic Horns.

This creatively captures the vivid and intense sound of an eight-piece horn section which finds itself essential to successful orchestral scoring. It was performed and recorded with the unmistakable acoustics of its Studio One namesake by eight exceptional players and an award-winning sound engineer using priceless microphones for facilitating quick and easy film score creation. As a fully-fledged, standalone library, housed in an award-winning, intuitive plug-in it is designed for composers by composers and loads directly into all major DAWs without the need for any additional software.

The horn has proved itself to be the irreplaceable heart of orchestral scoring, and features front and centre in James Horner’s forlorn main theme of Braveheart, and the thunderous horn section in Danny Elfman’s original theme to Batman. Horns play myriad roles, from chorale and string accompaniment, through to punchy main themes. Thematic Horns is the ninth Abbey Road One: Film Scoring Selections series sample library to be released by Spitfire Audio which includes its inaugural Orchestral Foundations.

With two distinctly different legatos, this cinematic pack adds more flavour to the Film Scoring Selections series. The Performance Legato patch is designed to be instantly playable, performed with accented attacks at the front of the sustains. Since it allows for fast runs across every dynamic, it is very much the ‘plug in and play’ of the two. The Lyrical Legato patch provides a more measured and deliberate alternative, with a softer entry. This is suited to slower, lyrical lines. Outside of those patches, Thematic Horns has an array of other articulations, namely Long, Long Sforzando, Staccatissimo, Staccato, Tenuto, and Marcato.

Thematic Horns puts the same first-call players performing on globally successful movies at everyone’s fingertips, and were recorded by Grammy Award-winning engineer Simon Rhodes (Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter). Thematic Horns has Mix 1 and Mix 2, which makes use of Abbey Road Studios’ much-lauded microphones and features Vintage 1, Vintage 2, Pop Close, Pop Room, Close, Tree 1, Tree 2, Ambient, Outriggers, and Spill selections. Audibly, Thematic Horns users are effectively entering Abbey Road Studios’ Studio One. Studio One is considered to be one of the finest acoustic spaces in the world, and has an incredible history of having iconic scores (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Avengers: Endgame) recorded there.

“As with the scores of John Williams, Alan Silvestri, and Jerry Goldsmith, the sound of eight players really packing a punch in Abbey Road [Studio] One is really something to behold,” says Spitfire Audio co-founder Paul Thomson. He added “This section is also capable of the very gentle and lyrical stuff as well. It sounds superb — just great out of the box. It’s very easy to play as another fantastic selection from the Abbey Road One: Film Scoring Selections.”

Abbey Road One: Thematic Horns is available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible, NKS-ready plug-in that loads directly into a DAW.
RRP £49.00 GBP (inc. VAT), US$49.00, EU49.00 EUR (inc. VAT).