Spitfire Audio Tenebra

The Synth presets are a treat, featuring sounds created using an ARP 2600, Moog Matriarch, DFAM, Polygogo, Therevox, Oberheim OB‑X, Folktek Resonant Garden, Super Gemini, Solar 42 and the Newton Brothers’ expansive Eurorack modular system.

Spitfire have teamed up with composers the Newton Brothers to create something that’s truly terrifying.

American composers the Newton Brothers have spent the past decade and a half terrifying audiences in creative ways with their scores for projects like The Grudge, Five Nights At Freddy’s, The Devil’s Hour, Ouija: Origin Of Evil, and more. With the release of Tenebra, in collaboration with Spitfire Audio, they share the tools of their trade to help composers conjure up all manner of nightmares, one meticulously‑sampled menacing note at a time.

With a download size of 11.35GB, Tenebra runs in Spitfire Audio’s Solar plug‑in, powered by their eDNA (Electronic DNA) technology, and contains more than 100 sounds, each of which was “born from experimentation”, according to the literature. Orchestral instruments, field recordings, human voices, percussion, modular synths and unconventional instruments are processed and ready, providing the building blocks for a suspenseful composition.

Overview

A great place to start, before exploring the 130 presets on offer, are the 10 factory presets that give you an overview of the core sounds that this library was built on. This is good for new composers (to learn what the foundation sounds like), and experienced composers (who often like to modify sounds from scratch). Here, you will find the full range of sounds that Tenebra offers: from staples like glassy, piercing tones (Bells & Glass) evolving, textured drones (Drone), impactful percussion (Perc) and creepy human sounds (Humanity) to more unique sounds from the composers’ personal synth collection (Synths), the dark side of an orchestra (Orch‑Nocturna), and the Newton Brothers’ signature sounds “mangled by the Spitfire Audio team” (Warps).

This is just the tip of the iceberg because after the factory presets come the other presets, with creepy but vague names like Angry Bees Dancing, Docking Off Jupiter, Freddie’s Basement, and Here & There, for example. I must give SA a shoutout from a usability perspective: if you mouse over the information icon to the right of each name, you get a clear sonic description of each patch. Angry Bees Dancing is a “buzzy pulsing synth”, Docking Off Jupiter is a “gritty atmospheric bass”, Freddy’s Basement is a “dark airy texture”, and so on. This is incredibly helpful, especially during the early days of using the library when you’re not yet familiar with it and just want to get to work instead of wasting time interpreting what Here & There could possibly mean for your composition. (It’s an “eerie wailing texture”, FYI.) A tip for new composers: when exploring the library, play the short audio...