Fake Orchestras

Unfortunately, not every musician has access to a whole orchestra.

While it would have been nice to make 50 people play the Towne of Gringle soundtrack, I had to settle with virtual instruments. Also I do not have lots of money to throw around so it all had to be free instruments- off the top of my head I think I used Spitfire Labs, FLEX in FL Studio, and Arturia Strings which I got for free when they gave it away one month.

I knew I wasn't going to get a perfect sounding orchestra, and it was fine because I wanted a weird uncanny sound to match the tone of the game. I found that there was still a balance that needed to be found, as a lot of the release envelopes on the instruments were really abrupt and needed manual volume adjustment. Managing it was fiddly.

I'm reminded of this tonight because I just listened to Your Blues by Destroyer. The orchestral elements sound perfectly imperfect to me. Inorganic yet organic? It almost reminds me of Oneohtrix Point Never's use of virtual instruments.



Listen to the trumpet in Your Blues, the strings in The Music Lovers, the orchestra at the end of Notorious Lightning. I forget which track was playing, but I was listening to it while walking tonight and was suddenly compelled to start running. Fantastic!  

It feels like an odd outlier in Destroyer's discography- but might be one of my favorites now. I also recommend Kaputt, LABYRNTHITIS, and Have We Met.

Where do these fake strings go wrong? 

Sorry to the Killers, but I think their song Sam's Town is an example. I'm not sure if the sound in the beginning is supposed to be an actual synthetic string sound or just a synth soundalike, but sounds so lifeless, dull, and almost atonal? 


 

On the flipside, Untouched by The Veronicas has strings so ugly and gaudy that they work. Extremely 2010 sounding!


 

It's been a while since my last blogpost- new songs and stuff are still coming. Probably will release one soon.


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