Template:Short description Template:About
Template:Infobox instrument An orchestra(l) hit or stab is an isolated staccato note or chord synthesized from the sounds of many orchestral instruments together, or sampled from a single sforzando performance.<ref name="Best 2004 72">Template:Harvtxt</ref> The orchestra hit sound was propagated by the use of early samplers, particularly the Fairlight CMI's ORCH2 sample.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The sound is used in pop, hip hop, jazz fusion, techno, and video game genres to accentuate passages of music.<ref name="Fink 2005 14">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
The orchestra hit has been identified as a "hip hop cliché".<ref name="Fink 2005 6">Template:Harvtxt</ref> In 1990, Musician magazine stated that Fairlight's ORCH5 sample was "the orchestral hit that was heard on every rap and techno-pop record of the early 1980s".<ref name="Musician 1990">Template:Harvtxt</ref> The orchestra hit has been described as popular music's equivalent to the Wilhelm scream, a sound effect widely used in film.<ref name="Kopstein 2011">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
HistoryEdit
Precursors to the popular samples can be found in contemporary classical music, for example in Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird.
{{#invoke:Listen|main}}
Use of short samples (such as the orchestra hit) became popular in the early 1980s with the advent of digital samplers.<ref name="Warner 2003 69">Template:Harvtxt</ref> These devices allowed sounds to be replayed at specific times and at regular intervals by sequencing, which was extremely difficult through previous methods of tape splicing.<ref name="Warner 2003 69" /> Samplers also began to allow sections of audio to be edited and played by a keyboard controller.<ref name="Warner 2003 69" />
The orchestra hit was popularised in Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" (1982)<ref name="Fink 2005 1">Template:Harvtxt</ref> and used soon after in Kate Bush's "The Dreaming".<ref name="Fink 2005 5">Template:Harvtxt</ref> Other examples of use in popular music include En Vogue's "Hold On" (1990)<ref name="GPI Publications 1994 11">Template:Harvtxt</ref> and Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" (1985).<ref name="Holmes 1997">Template:Harvtxt</ref> Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" (1983) used an orchestra hit which was sampled from Funk, Inc.'s "Kool is Back".<ref name="Di Nicolantonio 2004">Template:Harvtxt</ref> By the mid-1980s, the orchestra hit had become commonplace in hip hop music,<ref name="Fink 2005 15">Template:Harvtxt</ref> and its ubiquitous use became a cliché.<ref name="Warner 2003 105">Template:Harvtxt</ref> Use in other genres extends to jazz funk, where it was used on the title track of Miles Davis's 1986 album Tutu.<ref name="Sabin 2002 206">Template:Harvtxt</ref> By the mid-1990s the sound had begun to be used in Caribbean music.<ref name="Best 2004 72" /><ref name="Best 2004 73">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
Anne Dudley and Trevor Horn used an orchestra hit with the Art of Noise as a sound effect rather than a melodic instrument.<ref name="Fink 2005 5" /> The sample was used in "Close (to the Edit)", where it was sequenced alongside sound effects of chainsaws, breaking glass and motorcycles.<ref name="Weisbard 2007 238">Template:Harvtxt</ref> Similarly, the brass orchestra hits in "Owner of a Lonely Heart" are used as a rhythmic device, rather than an effect to evoke a specific environment (in a similar way to samples in Yes's earlier recordings).<ref name="Warner 2003 69" /> The stabs in the song may also be substitutes for other instruments in the rhythm section, possibly drum fills, and the use of orchestra hits and other samples is particularly noticeable between the first chorus and the start of the guitar solo.<ref name="Warner 2003 69" /> High-pitched versions of the orchestra hit were used in many late 80s and 90s songs in Eastern Europe, for example one notable use there was in the song "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) by Greek singer Thanos Kalliris in 1997.
Orchestra hits are sometimes used in film music to represent loud noises such as closing doors.<ref name="Machin 2010 157">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
TechnicalEdit
Orchestra hit is defined in the General MIDI sound set.<ref name="Rothstein 1995 56">Template:Harvtxt</ref> It is assigned voice 56, in the ensemble sub group.
The Fairlight CMI synthesizer included a sampled orchestra hit voice, which was later included in many sample libraries.<ref name="Di Nicolantonio 2004" /> The voice was given the name ORCH5, and was possibly the first famous orchestra hit sample.<ref name="Fink 2005 2">Template:Harvtxt</ref> The sound was a low-resolution, eight-bit digital sample from a recording of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite<ref name="Fink 2005 1" /> – specifically, the chord that opens the "Infernal Dance" section, pitched down a minor sixth.<ref name="Fink 2005 3">Template:Harvtxt</ref> It was sampled by David Vorhaus.<ref name="Fink 2005 3" /> Music magazine The Wire suggests that the prototype sample is owned by Vivian Kubrick.<ref name="The Wire 2007 64">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
Early orchestra hits were short in duration (often less than a second) both due to the nature of the sound (a staccato note) and the restrictions on sampler memory. A compromise for longer durations would be lower bitrates, which would leave the sample with little timbre.<ref name="Warner 2003 69" />
Fairlight produced a number of orchestra hit samples, including a chord version (TRIAD), a percussion version (ORCHFZ1) and a looped version (ORCH2).<ref name="Fink 2005 3" /> Samples ORCH4, ORCH5 and ORCH6 were located on the CMI's disk 8, within the STRINGS1 library.<ref name="Synthiman 2007">Template:Harvtxt</ref>
The Chord is an F minor sixth chord.
SamplesEdit
The following samples are examples of orchestra hit voices on different sound modules. Each note is played at C4 (see scientific pitch notation).
See alsoEdit
- Stab (music)
- Sforzando, the equivalent in classical music