If you’re a composer, sometimes you have to stray off the composition for a while to explore the capabilities of your instruments. It’s one of the many ways that we can expand our musical vocabulary and in any case we need to take breaks sometimes.
And if you’ve been around since the invention of consumer level keyboard synthesizers, you’ve no doubt come across the ‘Orchestral Hit’. Yes that’s right, a magic option on many keyboards that seems to promise to make a sound that as an orchestral composer, i cannot even conceive of. Some theoretical ensemble where every instrument is capable of playing in every register from the low bass notes of the tuba to the high scream of the piccolo. Instant orchestral music with nothing but piano skills? Guess again…
The Orchestral hit sounds like the most hideous, pointless, useless piece of sound junk you ever laid ears on. That’s not to say it never found it’s uses, ask the writer of ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’. And as it turns out, an orchestral hit is actually just an entire orchestra playing the same note but in whatever octave is possible for them.
Which raises the question…which octave is each instrument playing in? Or maybe each instrument plays only in those chords in which their instrument is capable of joining in? But then there would be no chord where we hear both low instruments and high instruments. So actually…the orchestral hit is impossible with real acoustic instruments in a conventional orchestra.
The way these pitches are combined is completely out of your control if you write only with a synthesizer. The ‘orchestration’ has been done for you really. But anyway, we’re losing sight of the greatest question of all time…for synth players.
What does an orchestral hit of orchestral hits sound like?
Ok so perhaps this question hasn’t been bugging any of you. But if it has, let me show you what a series of orchestral hits sounds like, performed by the East West Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra…Sample library…
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Sounds pretty useless right? Well…unless you breakcore-style beat sliced it or filtered it and slapped on a hundred delays, this sound is not likely to be terribly useful to you. Here’s an attempt at writing a melody with orchestral hits.
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Just as you thought? I have to admit I haven’t written too many emotional scenes where this kind of sound has ever come in handy. But this is nothing. The point is that, we have always wanted to know what an Orchestral Hit of Orchestral Hits sounds like. Well now, feast your ears on the loudest, screechiest, most terrifying sound you can imagine, and compare it with this monstrous noise…
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And here’s what it looks like on paper.
So there you have it, you can rest your mind now because you no longer have to waste precious minutes wondering what an orchestral hit of orchestral hits sounds like. Next time, we’ll be testing the sound of every drum from those monster film trailers playing at the same time.* Because who knows, maybe that’s the sound you’ll want in your next flick.
*We’re not really going to test that.
