Why Orchestral + Electronic Scores Hit Harder

[00:00:00]Sometimes the thing that makes a modern film score sound expensive can actually be the cheapest thing to pull off. A bad orchestral sample library is always going to sound fake, but a synth pad sounds exactly like it's supposed to. If you're scoring from a bedroom with a laptop, this should be the sound that you're chasing. What you're about to watch isn't a YouTube summary, it's a lesson that I pulled straight from my course scoring your first scene. This is lesson 4.3 and it's basically unedited, exactly how the students will get it.

[00:00:29]I'm actually putting this one out just as a free lesson before the course opens on August 1st.

[00:00:37]>> [music] >> All right, if we take a look at our action queue here, basically the way that I've got this whole thing laid out is that I've got three buses full of synths, arpeggios, plucks, um, you know, all your hybrid stuff. Basically, it is going to be in red in this queue.

[00:01:03]Anything that's orchestra is going to be below that. So, there is a lot of orchestral stuff, but basically just the synthesizers and the synthetic instruments are meant to add to the orchestra and blend well with it. And that's the thing. Sometimes you want it to be distinct like this sounds like a synthesizer, but a lot of times you're actually just wanting it to enhance and kind of add some life to the orchestra that you already have in place.

[00:01:29]Sometimes it will be purely synthetic and it will not be any orchestral sounds at all, but knowing how to blend those when they talk about hybrid is a really important thing to know how to do. You know, I think when a lot of directors want like a modern film score, what they're really looking for is something that is orchestral, but it's also got that blend. You almost can't even tell that it was blended unless you were to take out the, you know, the synths and the, you know, sound design elements and things like that.

[00:01:58]So, let's take a listen to the cue right now.

[00:02:02]I'm going to minimize all the orchestral stuff. So, all the orchestral stuff is here. Everything again in red is going to be your hybrid score. So, let's take a listen.

[00:02:13]>> One thing I actually do like though is the chase.

[00:02:20]>> Stop right there.

[00:02:25]>> [music] [music] >> Sorry to uh >> [music] [music] >> All right, and that is pretty much the cue. So, again, taking a look at it, what we've got here is if we just solo this, you know, we've got a lot of pulses, plucks, >> [music] >> some downers, >> [music] >> distorted elements.

[00:03:34]And that is strictly our other half of the hybrid, the synths, the sound design elements. So, let's mute all that and listen to it again, but just this time just the orchestra.

[00:03:46]>> One thing I actually do like though is the chase.

[00:03:50]>> Mute our dialogue track this time.

[00:03:57]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> All right. Yeah, I mean it's good, but it's uh it's a little lacking in weight.

[00:04:27]So, if we go back again one more time and listen to it all together with the dialogue muted, we're just focusing on the music here.

[00:04:35]Again, this is everything together.

[00:04:40]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> All right. We just get a more full, kind of rounded sound. It kind of brings and glues everything together. You know, for this, there were certain parts that I did want it to obviously sound like a synth, and then there were parts that I wanted it to blend really well. So, if we take a look at what we've got going on, um I kind of break things into sections.

[00:05:36]So, I've got pulses and bases, um arpeggios, synths, things like that. And then like, you know, your synth leads.

[00:05:46]And then I'll have a section for what I call SFX. So, that's like your um risers and whooshes, things like that.

[00:05:57]Um and the reason I break these up into sections instead of just having all the synthetics going into one bus is a good example would be like the bases and pulses because when I'm doing EQ and mix on the track, the bases and the pulses are really going to kind of maybe fight in the low end with the orchestra. So, if I'm looking at this bus, I might want to >> [music] >> I might want to come in and see how much low end I need to cut off because if it's again really fighting with like maybe some orchestral percussion or things that I've got going on, a lot of times I will solo the percussion of the orchestra and then solo like this bases and pulses section. And some of those get pretty low into the sub frequencies.

[00:06:48]So, if they're fighting that, I will EQ out some low end or a lot of times they live in the sub frequency around 20 to 40 hertz. So, I might actually come in and where the orchestra percussion naturally lives around like 100, that's the punch of like your orchestral toms, timpani, things like that, I might actually carve out a little notch in the bases and pulses section so that it's not fighting against the orchestral parts.

[00:07:25]And it just leaves a little room for them to kind of breathe and everybody can kind of coexist in their own sonic space. So, that's why I will typically have all of this broken down by sections. You know, if I just wanted to hear the arpeggios that are going on.

[00:07:44]And these are automated.

[00:07:47]>> [music] >> A little bit lighter there. Again, just for the part where it slows down.

[00:08:04]So, I've got the individual sections for those.

[00:08:07]Synth leads, things like your distorted uh I think this is like a distorted brass.

[00:08:16]And then, of course, we kind of went over our risers and whooshes.

[00:08:28]You know, for risers and whooshes and reverses, you can go more natural. Some have a more synthetic sound design element. Um the one I'm using here is by it's a damage library. So, they're all kind of made and sampled off of like um symbols and percussion elements. So, they kind of have a more natural sound.

[00:08:50]They blend well with the orchestra. So, that's a big part of this is picking sounds that make sense with the orchestra. Um there are certain libraries that, you know, they will blend really well because they're sampled from an orchestra and then maybe sound designed, but there are some that they are so far sound designed that they do not sound anything like an orchestra.

[00:09:11]So, they're going to stand out a little bit more. Um things like let's look at this section with our bases and pulses.

[00:09:20]Um let's see. So, we've got I think like a downer here.

[00:09:27]For when he jumps over the railing.

[00:09:30]There was like a lead bend that I wanted to do here.

[00:09:42]>> And this was just kind of help that transition right here. So, it's just bending from C up to D and then back back down to C because that's where right at this section we go down from a D minor to a C minor chord. So, right here.

[00:10:00]Down to C.

[00:10:11]>> [music] >> And [music] for this section, this was kind of cool where it gets a little bit more chill for a second where he's like hopping over the car or whatever he's doing. And then right here the the bad guy thinks he got away. So, he's kind of like resting for a minute as the hero kind of runs past.

[00:10:41]So, let's check that out.

[00:10:56]And that all kind of builds up to him getting punched in the face. So, again, there's not a lot going on here and that's the thing. Sometimes people tend to overdo it. You don't need to do a lot with um you know, the sound design and the synth elements. It just needs to make sense with the orchestra. Again, if you listen to it like we did initially and take it away, could the orchestra stand up on its own? Maybe it won't have the same weight, but could it be a complete score? If the answer is yes, the sound design and synthetic aspect of it is just helping make it a better score.

[00:11:33]Um but sometimes again, the director will want things that are less traditional, so it might be 90% synth, 10% orchestra. You might just have some strings in there. Really depends on which way they want to go. Now, let's talk about when hybrid scoring works and when it doesn't. Not every scene needs electronic elements. A quiet period uh drama set in the 1940s, you're probably not going to need synth pulses. A romantic comedy, you might want a cleaner orchestral or acoustic sound.

[00:12:03]You know, hybrid scoring works best in genres with tension, atmosphere, um you know, modern things like sci-fi, thriller, horror, action, you know, most video games and a lot of contemporary drama. You know, the key here is really serving the scene. Don't add synth elements just because they're trendy.

[00:12:24]Add them because the scene benefits from them. Always go back to your emotional map and ask, "Does this element serve the story?" Now, here are a few genre-specific tips. For horror, you're going to look at drones, dissonant textures, reversed elements. Those are going to be your best friend. Basically, subtlety creates more fear than, you know, volume. For sci-fi, you're looking at arpeggiated synths, wide atmospheric pads, and processed orchestral sounds.

[00:12:55]They work really well with sci-fi. Think about, you know, space and distance. For action and games or something like what we're looking at here, pulses, heavy percussion layers, um aggressive brass combined with, you know, distorted bass and synths. Those create that intensity. And then for drama, you know, use hybrid elements sparingly. Maybe just a subtle pad or a texture underneath. The orchestra is really the key here. Don't let the electronics overshadow the emotion when you're writing for drama. All right, in the next lesson we're going to talk about mixing, how to take everything we've layered together and make it sound clear, balanced, and professional in the final output. So, that's hybrid scoring and it's just one section of the course out of over 5 hours of material. This course is designed for musicians that already write great music, but need a road map to landing gigs, how to communicate with directors, how to deliver on time, and the types of things that you'll need to know on a tactile level to get hired again and again.

[00:13:58]Score your first scene opens on August 1st and the early bird pricing runs through the 8th. Link is in the description, get on the list so you don't miss the early bird pricing. See you there.