Yes, this species does bud on the interior and if you really do a good job of this, then alberta spruce will bud straight out of the trunk too.
The ingredients:
- Light hitting areas where you want that budding. A hollowed-out yard-grown alberta spruce may have a lot of interior shade. So you may need to clean out / thin out / simplify the tree a little bit, but this has to be balanced against the second ingredient (vigor/momentum). My teacher retains LOTS of excess branches on ezo spruce during development, and I do the same with alberta spruce.
- STRONG vigor / momentum. The growth you do leave on the tree needs to be allowed to really run. Retaining more branching helps establish this momentum. You might retain a lot more branches than you'll use just so you can put sugar in the bank for a couple years, let that excess branching pay back a few seasons worth, then start reducing. Spruce richly rewards patience and severely punishes insta-bonsai temptations.
- Lowering branches with wire until the tips are lower than the base of their parent branch. This will tilt the odds in favor of existing interior growth producing more interior growth, existing interior growth strengthening, and interior dormant buds forming/growing. Note that styling (wiring) the tree's branches so that they're lowered does not violate the "let growth really run" requirement, but excessive pruning does.
- Competent horticulture: Outdoors, full sun, excellent drainage, lots of air in the roots. Deal breaker. Nothing else in this list works without this.
- Avoiding stripping the tree of your retained surplus branching for as long as it takes until the tree is fully recovered and bushy from the transition process into aggregate (bonsai-style) soil.
- Avoiding shallow pots / bonsai pots during this period.
