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Nordic Sound with Albion V Tundra and Alternative Solo Strings

Gh0stwrit3r · February 18, 2021

The misses and I were trapped in Trapped the last couple of weeks. Watching the second season of this Netflix Original every evening. A dark crime plot in the Icelandic North with raw and real life characters. And of course, with that – for me at least – typical Nordic sound. Which I have tried to re-create in this walkthrough video with two beautiful Spitfire Audio Libraries: Albion Tundra and Alternative Solo Strings.

Don’t forget to hit that like button if you appreciate this video. Also sub to my channel for my music and videos about how to write orchestral music for film.

Timestamps of the video

  • 00:00​ – Introduction
  • 01:21​ – Individual patches walkthrough (sections and settings)
  • 06:26​ – Audition 8 layers together (how does it sound together?)
  • 07:28​ – Audition with layer per layer activation
  • 09:33​ – Ending

Re-discovering two beautiful libraries

I have these two libraries in my possession for quite some time now. I fell in love with their sound instantly, but somehow I haven’t used them a lot. And that needed to change!

So inspired by the sound of Trapped I kinda re-discovered them. And started to experiment a bit with the different sections and patches of these libraries. Lots of fun as a result. And a beautiful sound if I may say so.

So let’s have a closer look at one of the layer projects I made last week.

Nordic Sound with eight layers

I have used 8 different patches from Tundra and Alternative Solo Strings to create this sound. We are going to audition them individually and have a closer look at the settings in the patches themselves. Let’s start with the first one. The Albion Tundra Woodwinds High Doodle Tonguing.

Layer 1: Tundra Woodwinds High Doodle Tonguing

This is a patch from the Orchestra section. The woodwinds play a constant A minor chord which results in a warm and some what pulsing sound. With the mic mix set to ambient I tried to blend in this sound with the others.

Layer 2: Tundra Brunel Loops Metal Shaker and Bodhran

This patch is part of the Brunel Loops section of Tundra. I haven’t really changed much about it. Well, one thing though, I deleted the Bodhran part of this patch cause I was only after the metal shaker sound.

Layer 3: Tundra Strings High Gypsy Harmonics

A beautiful patch from the Albion Tundra Orchestra section. This is one of the sounds I associate with the Nordic sound I’m after. Raw and mysterious.

Again I used the ambient mic mix to blend it in. Another thing I slightly changed, is the reverb setting. I used the baked in reverb in this patch to add a little bit more feeling of space.

Layer 4: Tundra Strings High Travelling Trems

Another orchestra patch from the Albion V library. This one layers perfectly with the Gypsy Harmonics. The tremolo effect by the violins high up in their range adds some movement to the sound. Making it more vivid.

This time I used the outrigger mic mix to make the sound feel more spacious. And again I cranked up the baked in reverb of the patch.

Layer 5: Alternative Solo Strings Cello Tremolo Sul Pont

What a beautiful raw sound this is! The cello tremolo sul pont from the Alternative Solo Strings library. For this one I used the Stereo Room Mic mix to blend in the sound with the other layers.

Now this library is recorded very dry. Perhaps that is the reason I haven’t used it much so far. To add some more flavour of the room sound, I cranked up the baked in reverb of this patch too.

Layer 6: Multi patch with Tundra and Alternative Solo Strings

This layer contains two layers, cause I made a combination of Tundra and Alternative Solo Strings in this one.

The Strings High Gypsy from the orchestra section out of Albion V is one of them. With the outrigger mic mix activated and with the use of the baked in reverb to blend it in well. I also transposed this patch with 3 steps. So it does play the same notes as the solo violin, but 3 steps down. Making it harmonically more interesting.

The other patch is the Violin Long from the alternative solo strings library. This time with the Stereo Pair mic mix activated and with the use of the baked in reverb. Another setting that I manipulated in Kontakt is the position of the violin. I used the Stereo Pan control to push the violin a bit more to the left side.

Layer 7: Tundra Stephensons Steam Band Bard Pad MW is Glitch

This layer is part of the Stephensons Steam Band section of Albion V. This section contains lots of beautiful drones and pads which sound awesome straight out of the box. I didn’t change anything in the settings of this one.

Layer 8: Tundra VRAL Grid

I’m definitely not an expert of using the Evo Grid functionality of the spitfire audio libraries. Actually this is the first time I experimented with it. And to be honest, it’s mind blowing! I don’t understand everything quite well, but for now it’s good enough. I see it as an inspirational sound board to which I randomly can assign patches.

This is the result I ended up with. My ears led me towards this result. But again, I need to dive into this Evo Grid thing more, cause I can’t really explain how it works.

Audition the end result

Let’s start to audition the end result. I will start with a session with all the layers activated. And then a session in which I will activate layer per layer starting with the low ones first.

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Filed Under: In depth orchestral walkthrough videos Tagged With: Albion, Albion Tundra, Albion V, Alternative Solo Strings, Brunel Loops, DAW, Iceland, Icelandic North, kontakt, Layer, Layers, logic pro, MIDI, midi mockup, Musical layers, Netflix, Nordic, Nordic Sound, orchestra, percussion, Scandi, Scandinavian, Solo Strings, Spitfire Audio, Stephensons Steam band, strings, Trapped, Tundra, walkthrough

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