Abbey Road One - Orchestral Foundations

The iconic sound of cinema

Enter the room most composers can only dream of: Studio One at Abbey Road. Unparalleled and exclusive access to the world's most celebrated recording location for movie music — from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, to Harry Potter and Avengers: Endgame — it doesn't get more iconic.

In Spitfire's first collaboration with Abbey Road Studios, they recorded a complete 90–piece symphonic orchestra the same way your favourite composer would: unmistakable acoustics, exceptional players, award-winning sound engineers and priceless microphones. Strings, brass and woodwinds are grouped into ensembles for instant playability, completed by an exciting cinematic percussion section, all housed in our award-winning dedicated plug-in.

Capturing an icon

There is magic in the air at Abbey Road Studios – the essence of countless incredible film scores that have been recorded there. While Abbey Road is best known for legendary recordings by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Kanye West, Florence + The Machine and many others, Abbey Road Studio One has been at the forefront of film music for decades – providing the emotion, mood and magic for many of the most successful films ever made.

This unique room has played host to numerous notable film scores, spanning Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark (John Williams), Hollow Man (Jerry Goldsmith), and Aliens (James Horner), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Howard Shore), several Harry Potter scores, King Arthur (Hans Zimmer), and Gravity (Steven Price) through to more recent game and films releases such as the multi-award-winning The Shape of Water (Alexandre Desplat), Black Panther (Ludwig Göransson), 1917 (Thomas Newman), Avengers: Endgame (Alan Silvestri), Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Gordy Haab & Stephen Barton), Uncharted 3 (Greg Edmonson), Halo 4 (Neil Davidge), and Final Fantasy XV (Yoko Shimomura).

The film scoring orchestra

At Spitfire Audio, their approach is to always record sample libraries in the same way that film scores are recorded, and this release is no exception. Abbey Road One puts the same first-call musicians used on globally-successful movies at your fingertips – a 90-piece symphonic orchestra playing priceless instruments, all recorded by multi GRAMMY Award-winning engineer Simon Rhodes (Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter) and the legendary Abbey Road equipment.

Perfect for writing orchestral film, TV and game scores, Abbey Road One gives you all four sections of the orchestra in a single library – strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion — capturing the key set of orchestral sounds that composers use the most.

The library comprises strings (16, 14, 12, 10, 8), brass (four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, two bass trombones, one contrabass trombone, one tuba, and one contrabass tuba); and woodwinds (piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, one cor anglais, two clarinets, one bass clarinet, two bassoons, and one contrabass bassoon); and percussion, performed by three players on a stunning selection of instruments.

Organised into ensembles (combinations of instruments), Abbey Road One springs out of the box, pre-orchestrated – helping you sketch your musical ideas quickly and easily. You do not need to understand the detailed inner workings of the orchestra to create stunning compositions.

The strings are split into Low and High, brass into Low, and horns, trumpets and woodwind into Low and High. There is a stunning and unique selection of percussion, as well as a stirring full symphonic orchestral patch – all recorded together in the room at the same time. All these patches are intuitive to use and instantly effective, helping you just let your creativity flow.

Explore Abbey Road's legendary microphone cupboard to customise your sound, with up to 10 individual mics and 2 mix signals, giving you creative control to find the sound you are looking for. Discover rare and unique mics, including a pair of RM1B microphones combined with classic ribbons, recorded through the vintage TG Desk (TG12345 MK3) to form that vintage scoring stage sound, and stunning professional mixes from four-time GRAMMY Award-winning sound engineer Simon Rhodes (Avatar, Hugo, Harry Potter) giving you a cinematic level of quality – instantly.

Film Scoring Selections

Abbey Road One: Orchestral Foundations is the first in a series of film scoring selections recorded in Studio One. These follow up titles are smaller, more focused libraries inspired by classic films – offering pre-orchestrated instrument themes. Each Selections library is focussed on accomplishing certain performance elements of orchestral movie music brilliantly - from heroic brass themes, or sparkling woodwind runs, to emotional violin love scenes with a legato patch created using our new recording techniques - you can pick to create your own tailored palette. They work seamlessly alongside Orchestral Foundations as well as on their own.

Beautifully orchestrated and incredibly detailed sounds designed for a specific performance purpose, including a variety of patches, incorporating legato transitions and other articulations. Our very easy-to-use performance legato patches are created with newly developed recording techniques creating wonderfully realistic performances.

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