Elite Orchestral Percussion | Keyboard Magazine

Other-worldy percussion in an orchestral landscape sounds thoroughly modern. When excitement is called for, not having loads of massive percussion often sounds empty and, well, quaint. I can't imagine the driving intensity of a Batman score feeling the same with just an orchestral bass drum and temple block behind the string and brass sections.

Influenced by years of pop music, percussion has become and increasingly dominant force in many modern orchestral scores, especially in film and TV music. Practically every dramatic action cue is underpinned with hyped, percussive ostinatos and booming accents from either live players or samples - or both - that often dominate the rest of the orchestra.

However, there's more to the orchestral percussion section than sub-shaking timpani and taiko drums. Although too numerous to mention all the possibilities, also traditionally found are gongs, snare drums, tam-tams, shakers, tambourines, wind chimes, cymbals, triangles, and more. glockenspiel, vibes, marimba, and tubular bells add both melodic and harmonic content, usually handled by a dedicated musician who specializes in pitched percussion.

Old versus New
In today's orchestral music, the specific demands of the score drive the size and makeup of the percussion ensemble. There are no rules anymore regarding percussion - or even what qualifies as being called percussion. It's not uncommon for big-budget films to use sections of specialty percussionists and esoteric instruments in order to sound unique. A great amount of both commercially available and customized percussive samples and synths show up in everything today from block-buster movies to TV ads, as the symphonic and pop pallets are fused further into various hybrids.

There's a distinction between "orchestral" and "cinematic" percussion. Orchestral percussion are the more natural-sounding traditional instruments that work equally well for classical repertoire and modern music; while cinematic sounds tend to be larger-than-life and not wholly natural through sound design, and/or derived from world percussion instruments.

Several standout libraries see a lot of action with composers. On the traditional orchestral side, Big Fish Audio London Orchestral Percussion, Sonivox Symphonic Percussion, and East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra cover most of the bases and sound great in a classical context. Vir2 Elite Orchestral Percussion bridges the gap nicely between orchestral and cinematic, and a selection of ethnic instruments are included. The sounds are large and rich, and in some instances may actually be too big for a traditional orchestral setting.

On the cinematic side, ProjectSAM True Strike (I and II) and Quantum Leap StormDrum (I and II) are staples of film, TV, and multimedia. Two great-sounding newcomers are Spitfire's Percussion and Vir2's World Impact: Global Percussion. Developed with Native Instruments, Heavyocity Damage (reviewed Nov. '12) is a great choice for contemporary action films and darker dramatic scenes. At this point, the lines between orchestral, cinematic, and ethnic percussion start to blur as these libraries include some of all; and there are many more libraries out there to choose from.

The Room
Getting percussion to sit correctly in a mix is always a challenge with samples. It's almost always necessary to use one or two unifying reverbs to tie all your orchestral sounds together cohesively, and a percussive instrument is going to reveal the virtual room for your virtual orchestra quite clearly. To test this out, I like to call up a few percus-sion sounds, like a timpani, snare drum, and marimba. These cover a wide range of transients and frequencies that will reveal how your reverb or virtual acoustic space will perform. Orchestral percussion are usually positioned towards the back of the ensemble and require a bit more reverb; so when you find the size and color of hall and early reflections that work in the way you want, the same ambience tends to work well for strings, brass, and woodwinds.

Size Matters
Keep in mind the "size" of the sampled instruments. Most good libraries are recorded fairly dry and close, as it's always easier to make something sound smaller and farther away than the other way around. The result is that many sounds out of the box tend to be too large for an orchestral ensemble and need to be shaped to some degree.

Depending on the specific sound of the instrument, it may be necessary to roll off some bottom end - and maybe even a touch of top end - to "move" the instrument back in the mix. The proper combination of EQ and ambience is key to get-ting the percussion to fit properly in a traditional orchestral setting.

As mentioned before, there are no rules on the cinematic side. In fact, "the bigger the better" is usually the maxim; although manipulating the "size" of your percussion is still a critical issue that demands a good handle on signal processing, even with the best libraries.

What to do if you don't own any of the previously mentioned libraries and need to sound cinematic? Roll your own, of course. You'd be surprised at what you can create with much of what you probably already have. Some of the most mundane sounds can become massive when processed with extreme EQ and filtering, effects, pitch-shifting, and layering with other sounds.

Decide on the sonic area of an instrument you want to be prominent and boost those frequencies with a fairly narrow EQ, for example, the low end of a bass drum sound around 90Hz. Pull out a lot of other frequencies to make room for other instruments - you're going for exciting, not natural. If there's another component you want, like a brighter clock on top. find a cymbal or wood sound and mangle that with EQ and maybe a slow phaser. Now layer the two sounds; and maybe even add a heavily filtered, pitched synth under them that subliminally follows the root notes of the score. Then add a distinctive reverb sound to it all. Remember again, there are no rules - if it sounds good, it is good.

As inspiring as scrolling through factory pre-sets from a sample library may be, making your own sounds is fun and makes you better at sound design. This is an asset for higher levels of composing work, so experiment!