How to resolve AdBlock issue? Spitfire Audio APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY
Sound-specialising British music technology company Spitfire Audio activates The Black Weekend - with THE TON, BLACK WEEKEND CORE, and BLACK WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL promoting savings of up to 75% as exclusive bundles alongside other discounted deals (including 40% on selected libraries), as well as announcing APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY as a one-of-a-kind library (capturing strings, brass, woodwind, and percussion resampled through 200 custom-controlled cassette players) available for free to anyone spending £249.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$299.00 USD/ €299.00 EUR or more during The Black Weekend sale itself before being offered for purchase individually thereafter at £199.00 GBP/$249.00 USD/€249.00 EUR - running from November 24-30…
The thrust of The Black Weekend sale is centred around three exclusive bundles each offering up to a 75% saving over individually purchasing their included libraries: THE TON - comprising FRAGILE STRING EVOLUTIONS, delicate and haunting, evolving chamber strings; SPITFIRE STUDIO BRASS, the second section of Spitfire Audio’s STUDIO range of orchestral libraries; and ABBEY ROAD ONE: SPARKLING WOODWINDS, the iconic sound of cinema captured as a stunningly orchestrated woodwind section, performed by London’s leading session players - weighs in at a reasonable £99.00 GBP/$99.00 USD/€99.00 EUR. Advancing a little further at £249.00 GBP/$299.00 USD/€299.00 EUR to also include the one-of-a-kind APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY library for free, BLACK WEEKEND CORE comprises ALTERNATIVE SOLO STRINGS, innovative solo strings from four of London’s finest players; AMBIENT GUITARS, distorted soundscapes for cinematic scoring; and ORCHESTRAL SWARM, the tidal orchestra. Onwards and upwards to £499.00 GBP /$549.00 USD/€549.00 EUR - albeit also including APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY for free, BLACK WEEKEND PROFESSIONAL places BT PHOBOS, the polyconvolution synthesiser from the musical mind of renowned composer and electronic music pioneer BT, with ORBIS, the world synthesiser; SPITFIRE SYMPHONIC STRINGS EVOLUTIONS, beautiful, instantly-playable string textures; HAUSCHKA COMPOSER TOOLKIT, unique, inspiring sounds from Oscar-nominated, world-renowned composer and soundsmith Volker Bertelmann (a.k.a. Hauschka); and WOODWIND EVOLUTIONS, soaring, evolving woodwinds.
Continuing The Black Weekend online engagement, Spitfire Audio will also host a Composer Clash on its YouTube Channel on Friday, November 25 at 5pm GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), when viewers can watch Spitfire Audio’s in-house composers clash for the crown with just 30 minutes to compose a 30-second track; voting is open to the public, who will decide who the winner is, and those tuning in live will also have the opportunity to win over £10,000.00 GBP worth of Spitfire Audio libraries during the YouTube premiere.
But best of all, arguably, is the fact that The Black Weekend also sees Spitfire Audio announcing availability of APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY as a one-of-a-kind library capturing strings, brass, woodwind, and percussion resampled through 200 custom-controlled cassette players, and available for free to anyone spending £249.00 GBP/$299.00 USD/€299.00 EUR or more during The Black Weekend sale itself before being offered for purchase individually thereafter at £199.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$249.00 USD/€249.00 EUR. It is perfectly positioned for any APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY user to effectively go from intimate solo players to a full symphony orchestra in an instant - and all in the same virtual instrument! Some might say that is musical madness, but Spitfire Audio in-house composer Oliver Patrice Weder has this to say: “It’s unlike anything you’ve ever heard or played, and, as the name suggests, it’s a full-sized orchestra, but it's not played by real players, it’s played by cassettes. We’ve done close-up recordings of real players onto cassettes, then we bought 200 [Sony] Walkmans and arranged them in Assumption Studios in Glasgow as you would arrange a real orchestra. We then hooked them up, controlled them via a custom-built controller, and recorded a D.I. signal as well as a signal which was sent back into the room via speakers. So this is where our concept of the ‘Aperture’ comes into play.”
Put it this way: with tones that offer modern and beautiful tape warmth through to the charming, warbling, worn-out sound of old cassettes, as well as an ‘Aperture’ fader that spans from section leaders to small orchestral sections, all the way through to becoming full symphonic in size, APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY is a library that not only takes productions on a journey through time, but also space. Since Spitfire Audio has harnessed the power of a symphonic orchestra, going back to the early days of tape sampling by taking inspiration from the distinctive sound world of the Mellotron - an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in England back in 1963, played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan that pulls it across a playback head so that as the key is released the tape is retracted by a spring to its initial position, while different portions of the tape can be played to access different sounds - and then blowing that out of proportion by capturing and resampling strings, brass, woodwind, and percussion through those 200 custom-controlled cassette players with over 800 tapes of organic orchestral material, it is hardly surprising that Oliver Patrice Weder is musically moved to end on a high note, succinctly stating, “Pretty cool and fun to play with.” Well, there is no need to say more when APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY’s seven presets, 50 techniques, two signals, and eight - ‘Aperture’, ‘Expression’, LPF (Low Pass Filter), TIGHTNESS, RELEASE, REVERB, NOISE, and PORTAMENTO - controls clearly speak so well for themselves.
The 23.28 GB download-sized APERTURE CASSETTE SYMPHONY library is initially available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible, NKS (NATIVE KONTROL STANDARD)-ready plug-in that loads directly into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for free to anyone spending £249.00 GBP/ $299.00 USD/€299.00 EUR or more during Spitfire Audio’s The Black Weekend sale running from November 24-30 before being individually offered for purchase thereafter at a RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of £199.00 GBP/$249.00 USD/€249.00 EUR. Spitfire Audio’s namesake Spitfire Audio application allows anyone to buy now and download anytime, and is available for free.