TIFF 2020: Composing with Spitfire Audio

I’m not a composer, but I’ve always been fascinated by music and sound. My grandfather worked in radio, so I guess it runs in the family. I grew up taking piano lessons as a kid, and actually first learned how to edit by editing audio. I always enjoyed the sound design process, and a few years ago even dabbled with composing some original music for a documentary I edited. For the past couple of years I’ve been doing the sound design work for our TIFF animated creative, but this year wanted to try out a few new tools and techniques.

Enter Spitfire Audio. For those not familiar, Spitfire is a company that produces truly outstanding sample libraries for composers. Using their state of the art technology, highly skilled musicians, and some of the most iconic recording spaces in the world, the result are samples that allow you to produce truly outstanding music.

I was somewhat aware of their products, but it wasn’t until I spoke with Matt Morton about his Apollo 11 score that I realized just how outstanding their samples were (I was convinced he had hired session musicians for his score, and it turns out that he was using Spitfire). But what really brought them to my attention was when one of my favourite musicians, Ólafur Arnalds, started releasing sample packs in partnership with them.

One pack in particular, Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions, had the exact sonic tones that I had in mind for the sound design this year and since their annual sale happened to coincide with when I was working on musical sketches I decided to simply bite the bullet and buy it and start playing around.

The Evolution Grid interface

One of the great things about the Spitfire libraries is how intuitive they’ve made them, even for non-composers like myself. They’ve also put together really great video walkthroughs that help get users up to speed. With just a couple of clicks I was able to set-up the right sort of sound that I was after and lay down a bed of audio that I was quite happy with.

But that wasn’t the only Spitfire library that I made use of this year. Spitfire also has a collection of free libraries they call LABS. These are less complex, more user friendly sample packs, released for free for budding musicians such as myself. But make no mistake, just because there’s less knobs to turn and buttons to press doesn’t mean the quality is any less, or the selection limited. There’s a wide range of instruments here, including some truly experimental ones that create beautiful and unique tones.

The LABS interface: less complex, but still produces incredible sounds.

Using a combination of the Chamber Evolutions, a few of the different LABS instruments, and some stock Logic instruments I was able to create a soundscape that served perfectly as a musical bed for our festival creative animation. After laying in some final sound effects using Final Cut Pro X this was the end result:

I also would later re-use/remix elements from that original musical bed, as well as a few added elements from LABS to create a musical bed for our Land Acknowledgement video that was screened before each digital screening of the festival.

I’ve been absolutely blown away by the stuff Spitfire Audio is creating. Their library is vast and varied, and they are working with some truly brilliant musicians (in addition to Ólafur Arnalds, they also have produced sample packs with composers such as Hans Zimmer, Chad Smith, BT, Hauschka, and many others). The quality of product you get for the price is outstanding, and their plugins are so intuitive that you can get up and running within minutes and even a mere hobbyist like me can produce truly incredible results. They’re a wonderful tool to have in your tool belt; even for someone like me who predominantly is only working as an editor and occasional sound designer. They even offer a 30% discount for students and teachers.

I cannot recommend them highly enough!