Spitfire Audio / Trevor Horn's "Jupiter"

[Lawrence]

Whenever the seminal moment in your music history happens, your heart will always lie there.

I was 26 in 1980, had just gotten off the road and moved to NYC. My influences were hard wired. BEATLES, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, straight ahead jazz, Steely Dan, Hendrix, Zeppelin, a few progs like ELP, King Crimson, Yes etc.

The Eighties largely left me cold but I don’t judge. I had some singles I loved from Thompson Twins, Simple Minds, I melted to “I’ll Stop the World”. Tears for Fears sounded great to me.I loved Peter Gabriel’s “So.” “Red Rain” still give me chills.

I was in disco bands for a few years and hated the genre but the recent Donna Summer doc really stunned me, the BeeGees one too. Some great songs and recordings, and Donna Summer could REALLY REALLY sing. The Moroder tracks were genius too.

I guess you can reconsider things after some time goes by. There’s definitely somewhat of an 80s craze going on in NYC, at least by cover bands and piano bars.

[Geoff Grace]

“Songs In The Key Of Life” or “Innervisions” contain to my mind, some of the best-sounding music ever put on tape.

No doubt. And let's add Fulfillingness’ First Finale to that list.

The '70s were R&B/Soul/Funk at its zenith, as far as I'm concerned. Album-oriented music was great then too. I'd choose Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers over any other Rolling Stones albums. Jazz fusion and progressive rock opened new universes to me. I'll take the best of the '70s over any other decade.

On the other hand, a large percentage of '70s pop music turned me off. Songs like "The Candy Man" by Sammy Davis Jr., "Sing" by The Carpenters, and "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks bothered me more than any '80s hit I can think of. And did we really need a disco version of Beethoven's music?

In short, I think of the '70s as the most wide ranging decade for quality. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times (for music, IMHO).

My influences were hard wired. BEATLES, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, straight ahead jazz, Steely Dan, Hendrix, Zeppelin, a few progs like ELP, King Crimson, Yes etc.

All great. These days, I keep coming back to Aja, Sgt. Pepper, Fragile, and assorted Joni Mitchell songs; but I have stuff by all of those artists.

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

Sorry for the derailing here, but on the subject of great 1980s recordings of drums…



Anf thanks for indulging me <3

Neil Peart was great! The only reason I didn't mention him (or Terry Bozzio, for that matter) is that they didn't have a lot of hits, at least in the US. Maybe two apiece?

I loved Peter Gabriel’s “So.” “Red Rain” still give me chills.

Great album. I keep coming back to "Don't Give Up."

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

I feel obliged to throw Thomas Dolby's name into the mix. If you're only familiar with his one hit, do yourself a favor and listen to some of his other work.

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

Whenever the seminal moment in your music history happens, your heart will always lie there.

What an excellent summary. I read that the older we get, the more we gravitate to what we were into at 14. Apparently that's the most common age for our influences to go deepest, when everything was new and mattered so much. Almost all the artists you mentioned Larry (excuse the snip) leave me forever cold. The Beatles I admire and fascinate me, and there's a few songs I really do like, but because they weren't formative they don't emotionally grab me.

I was still heavily into music in the 90s, but I don't have as much love of the era partly because there was no wild technological change and partly because - I guess - I was older. But I was reflecting on how many good songs there were then that managed to transcend age barriers so well, genuinely loved by teens and olds alike. Two that came to mind from 1997 are Paula Cole's "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone" and Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn", both of which are outstanding lyrically as well. I think by the mid 00s my interest was fading, and it started getting harder to find nuggets that get through - bands like Mew and New Young Pony Club found me eventually.

(Speaking of lyrics, Trevor Horn is also a lyricist, and is sometimes purely employed as such. He did the English translation of T.a.t.u's All The Things She Said for example - the music and production was already in place).

[Guy Rowland]

I feel obliged to throw Thomas Dolby's name into the mix. If you're only familiar with his one hit, do yourself a favor and listen to some of his other work.

Oh my this thread is pushing my buttons Geoff. I adore Thomas. He did so much more than people know him for - produced Foreigner's Waiting For A Girl Like You when very young, Prefab Sprout's great era, played keys with David Bowie at Live Aid, and his solo albums are treasure troves. He could even use the DX7 bass on Dissidents and make it sound great in context - such a fabulous bass line. One of my all time favourite songs is Screen Kiss on The Flat Earth (and again, a great and often funny lyricist). He went into tech for a while during the dotcom boom. I thoroughly recommend his book The Speed Of Sound.

[Lawrence]

I was still heavily into music in the 90s,

The 90’s rekindled my love of electric guitars and bravura, semi-cynical rock. Nirvana were rocks gods for me, much along the lines of Zeppelin but with more Beatle-influenced writing. Same with Oasis. The rest was just a Blur

[My name is Nobody]

Spitfire audio has nothing much more going on that I personally am interested in.

And yeah, Horn being one of the more exceptional producers is clear in pop musical history.
Whilst still enjoying mainly Propaganda’s music and the various strange but at times interesting remixes of their songs give a glimps into the components of these intricate pieces, I also cannot oversee the not so well known (?) greed for money that he and his wife at the time were part of. Franky goes to Hollywood and Propaganda mainly were cut a deal in the smaller letters of their contracts that ment they never saw a dime for their music. Only after taking their cases to court could some of it be changed. But they surely will have less affinitive memories with him and his team then others might…..

[GR Baumann]

I read that the older we get, the more we gravitate to what we were into at 14. Apparently that's the most common age for our influences to go deepest, when everything was new and mattered so much.

What a thread, what a wealth of knowledge!

Affirmative Guy, at 62 now, I am back to classics and Zappa. Most of the tracks mentioned here of course ring a bell, with tender 14, for me it was the third year into heavy duty classical training, hence very little time. My steadily growing LP collection started with Wendy Carlos Switch on Bach at the age of nine, and with 16 consisted of a shit load of Deutsche Grammophon LPs, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, Wagner ( Operas complete), Brahms, Stravinsky, Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Debussy, you name it. Around that time I stumbled across Zappa and was hooked, from there I went backwards, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and so on. Of course, stuff like Genesis ( I loved the old ones a lot) Floyd, Jazz like Miles Davis and Klaus Doldinger, and some more exotic stuff from my drug testing time like Holger Czukay, or Brain ticket.

So grab a spliff and listen to THAT.



Another name comes to mind that I might just "throw into the mix" here too, Alan Parson.

[doctoremmet]

Sorry, off to listen to some Czukay and CAN. See you all next year!

[GR Baumann]

mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

Flashback from my home town, I remember my parents reacting to THAT, but I spare you. Jake Liebezeit was "The Maschine", by far the tightest drummer around at that time.

[The Saxer]

Trevor Horn is such an innovative producer that he probably wouldn't use a plugin like this.

[Geoff Grace]

I feel obliged to throw Thomas Dolby's name into the mix. If you're only familiar with his one hit, do yourself a favor and listen to some of his other work.

Oh my this thread is pushing my buttons Geoff. I adore Thomas. He did so much more than people know him for - produced Foreigner's Waiting For A Girl Like You when very young, Prefab Sprout's great era, played keys with David Bowie at Live Aid, and his solo albums are treasure troves. He could even use the DX7 bass on Dissidents and make it sound great in context - such a fabulous bass line. One of my all time favourite songs is Screen Kiss on The Flat Earth (and again, a great and often funny lyricist). He went into tech for a while during the dotcom boom. I thoroughly recommend his book The Speed Of Sound.

Thanks for sharing that, Guy. I was aware of some of it but not all. I think Dolby would have been 21 or 22 when working with Foreigner, which I agree is very young to be in the producer’s chair with a top band. That would have preceded his hit as a solo artist. I remember following his Headspace/Beatnik with interest in the ’90s. Dolby was always ahead of his time.

“Screen Kiss” is one of my favorite Dolby tunes as well. “I Live In A Suitcase” also really appealed to me, because I had recently spent years gigging mostly on the road. He and I both moved to LA at roughly the same time, so I identified with his lyrics about living there as an outsider. Years earlier, when I was on the road, I’ll never forget listening to “One Of Our Submarines” as I drove to the next city (perhaps it was Denver?) through clouds on mountainous roads at night. The song provided a beautiful, eerie soundtrack. I also used to sing his “White City” with the band I was in at the time. Other favorites include “My Brain Is Like A Sieve,” “Beauty Of A Dream,” “I Love You Goodbye,” “Cruel,” “Hyperactive!” “Budapest By Blimp,” and of course, “She Blinded Me With Science.”

I read that the older we get, the more we gravitate to what we were into at 14. Apparently that's the most common age for our influences to go deepest, when everything was new and mattered so much.

That makes sense for most people, but I wonder how well it applies to those of us who love music so much that we make a career out of it. Certainly for me, while I include music from age 14 among the pieces I love dearly, I wouldn’t single that year out. Perhaps another factor for me is that music seemed to matter most to the world in the ’60s (before I was 14), when screaming fans would drown out The Beatles' performances and music was a rallying cry for social change. The music of that time has a meaningful, emotional power for me that music from when I was 14 lacked. And of course, I’ve already mentioned how much I love a lot of ’80s music; and I’m still happily engaging with new music today.

Even so, when I think about the general public’s interest in music, age 14 seems like a good sweet spot. I clearly remember when I was in elementary school that my friends thought it was strange that I wouldn’t join them for football until after I had practiced piano for at least an hour; but as we entered our teens, they started to see me as a “cool” musician and would value my opinions on the bands of the day.

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

My steadily growing LP collection started with Wendy Carlos Switch on Bach at the age of nine, and with 16 consisted of a shit load of Deutsche Grammophon LPs, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mahler, Wagner ( Operas complete), Brahms, Stravinsky, Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Debussy, you name it.

My first exposure to “serious music” was Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which I used as a soundtrack while playing with toy dinosaurs, when I was a small child. It still remains my favorite symphonic work. My first LP was Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, which my parents gave me when I was about six. (I wasn’t as much of a highbrow as that sounds, though. I admittedly bought all of The Monkees albums, for example, when I was a child.) I played a lot of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. while I was growing up; but I didn’t learn to fully appreciate Brahms, Ravel, and Debussy until I was a music major. Brahms is still my favorite pre-20th century composer today. He also is an inspiration for having done much of his best work at an advanced age.

Around that time I stumbled across Zappa and was hooked, from there I went backwards, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, and so on. Of course, stuff like Genesis ( I loved the old ones a lot) Floyd, Jazz like Miles Davis and Klaus Doldinger, and some more exotic stuff from my drug testing time like Holger Czukay, or Brain ticket.

I got to see Zappa in concert while Terry Bozzio was his drummer and Ruth Underwood played xylophone, vibes, etc. for him. Great performance! My first rock concert ever was Genesis touring The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I love that album!

My favorite progressive rock band, however, remains Gentle Giant. I saw them on their The Power And The Glory and Free Hand tours. They all played multiple instruments, were advanced in their use of rhythm and counterpoint, and not afraid of dissonance.

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

Trevor Horn is such an innovative producer that he probably wouldn't use a plugin like this.

Good point! Ideally, one would want to adopt his approach more than his specific sound.

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

Geoff, a great list of Dolby tracks - you gotta get his book! He's wonderful company.

Trevor Horn is such an innovative producer that he probably wouldn't use a plugin like this.

Good point! Ideally, one would want to adopt his approach more than his specific sound.

This is surely true of all the greats who made sample products!

This is interesting to me though - Trevor Horn wasn't a button-pusher. He says as much in his book - his engineers did all the twiddling, he claims to not know how to use much of the tech which is ironic given his public persona of a sonic scientist (much like Thomas Dolby, funnily enough, who I'm sure DOES know what every button does). He did, however, have a great understanding of what pieces of tech could and couldn't do, and had an incredible aural vision (as it were).

I've been quietly beavering away on a little project where I've been searching for a lot of sounds in the Omnisphere ecosystem. I think the mood tag is just wonderful. With synthesis this complex and 100s of GB of soundsources, it's the best way I can imagine of finding sounds, however flawed some of the categorisations might be. I usually pick a broad category and or / type, then go for the moods (either just Spectrasonics stuff or including third party with everything Omnitagged). Nearly always I find something and run away with it within seconds of searching.

And here (somewhat loosely and pompously) I feel a little bit Trevor Horn. It's like saying to a synthesis guru "find me something that evokes longing and is just a bit purple" and they actually know what I mean and somehow create it in seconds. I don't feel at all bad that my relatively rudimentary knowledge of synthesis is not up to the task in the same way.

On that score, I see the Spitfire library has a useful little collection of attributes. But next to the Spectrasonics colossus, it feels inevitably wanting.

[GR Baumann]

Brahms is still my favorite pre-20th century composer today.

I enjoy reading this thread so much! Thanks for sharing.

Stravinsky, in particular the Bernstein recordings, which together with his Mahler interpretations are unsurpassed excellency to date in my world, was very influential on my first more serious musical explorations. Over the years I observed how under-appreciated female composers and conductors still are, it is not as bad as 50 years ago, and there is a light on the horizon, film music has helped a lot I think, but still there is a long way to go.

Take Nadia Boulanger for example, everyone knows her stories, right?

If you'd ask around now, how many do you know in you peer group that are aware about her sister, Lili Boulanger?

This is what I mean, and just listen to this, somewhere in-between Stravinsky and Debussy at times, this way I would start describing it.

I had a Brahms period too, but the older I got, the more I gravitated towards Schubert's Piano works, and of course, performed by Alfred Brendel.

Best
Georg

P.S.
Shhh. Don't tell anyone, you know what I watched last week for 4 days on TV, and I tell you, I would go there in a heart beat, the greatest open air Metal Festival in Europe "Wacken", and guess who played there very adorable live on stage this year, Uriah Heep.

Since April now I live close to a place where every year they have the so called "Zappanale", next year I plan to visit.

[Geoff Grace]

I was unaware of Lili Boulanger. I think you gave an apt description of her music, at least it fits D'un soir triste. I'll have to revisit Schubert's piano works. Thanks, Georg!

And thanks, Guy, for the recommendation of The Speed Of Sound. It sounds like a great read!

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

Back on topic, Spitfire has circulated some prerelease betas to YouTubers; so it’s now possible to hear a few more patches before the prerelease price goes away:





Edit: I've now watched the videos above, and they reinforce my opinion voiced on page one (and quoted below) that this is mostly a cinematic library rather than a pop one. (Of course, that's to be expected from Spitfire Audio but not from Trevor Horn.) The Sample Library Review video gives occasional glimpses of how some of the patches could be used in a pop context, but The Sampleist one is just about cinematic use. Everything is consistently wet, which arguably makes sense for symphonic instruments but isn't crucial for synths. In a pop context, the first thing I do is turn off reverb and delay and then add my own when mixing, if necessary. As a result, I think this library would require regular patch modification to use it as a pop production toolkit; and if that's the case, I'd just as soon start with the products I already own.

The impression I get from watching Homay’s video is that this is more of a Spitfire product than a Trevor Horn library. There is a bank of “raw” Trevor Horn samples, but the majority of patches seems to be Spitfire using that source material their own way. Not surprisingly, Spitfire’s take (including Homay’s playing style) sounds more cinematic than pop. The Spitfire patches I heard sound pretty redundant to other Spitfire libraries; and I’m content with what I already have from them in that style, so I’m not really interested in more.

I hope that eventually someone will showcase the Trevor Horn source material. If I think I can make good use of it, I may buy the library anyway. I've enjoyed a lot of Trevor Horn's work over the years, so I'm still very interested in hearing his contribution to this product.

Best,

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

I'd like to add that I've also appreciated this thread. Even if I feel disappointed by what I've heard of this library, this forum is consistently a source of enjoyment.

Best,

Geoff

[GR Baumann]

[Kohima]

Trevor Horn is such an innovative producer that he probably wouldn't use a plugin like this.

I wouldn't use it either. Side note: Anyone else find these SA videos of using the latest library a drag?

[doctoremmet]

Trevor Horn is such an innovative producer that he probably wouldn't use a plugin like this.

I wouldn't use it either. Side note: Anyone else find these SA videos of using the latest library a drag?

Yes, I do.

[Guy Rowland]

This was such a fun thread.

If anyone still wants to be swayed by Trevor Horn's alleged Jupiter, it's currently on sale for £54.

I was saying to someone the other day that the first half of the 70s is probably my least favourite era since the 50s. I seem to find a lot more I like either side of it. Stevie Wonder and Kraftwerk are pretty much my only exceptions. All that big hair, vaguely druggy guitars, folk rock, glam... can't stand any of it, there's an aesthetic that makes my skin crawl. Punk and disco thankfully blew it all to kingdom come in 1976/1977. It does mean I have a terrible black hole in my knowledge in music quizzes.

Anyway, despite all this I'm still not getting Jupiter.

[wst3]

It has been quite a while since Spitfire released anything that grabbed me and said "buy me!"

I could be maturing I suppose (hope not), or my tastes may be changing, but there haven't been any instant buys.

There are three on my wish list right now, libraries I'd buy if I had cash lying around, libraries that very well could be great. But just not yet.

Jupiter is on that list. I am a fan, and it would be fun to get a glimpse behind the curtain. Some of those sounds I could use.

Of course Resonate remains on the list. The sounds are interesting, and well captured, just not sure how I would use them, so it stays on the list for now.

And then there is ARO Foundations - I have all the rest, I like them a lot, I use them frequently, and I probably would benefit from the last piece of the collection, but I already have too many orchestral libraries. (is that possible?).

Anyway, I'd thank you all not to mention Spitfire sales when I'm in the room