The Percussion Section in Modern Scoring

I have talked in several posts already about the changes in film and media music that are caused or at least favored by the technical developments. There are implications from the movies themselves but also from the way that composers create music.

One effect that we didn't talk about yet is how recording technology influences the music. One of the best examples to document this is the use of the (orchestral) percussion section in "modern scoring".

In traditional orchestral music, the role of the percussion section in the orchestra is usually very "punctual". It is employed to highlight certain downbeats, support brief dynamic bursts with just a few exceptions. These exceptions are usually instruments like Marimba (or other mallet instruments) that might have parts that are more active over longer time spans or things like snare drums that are used to portray militaristic or marching gestures.

Even with the large and expressionistic works of the 20th century (like for instance Stravinsky) , the percussion sectionis used in a way that emphasizes more on peaks and musical "centerpieces" of the work.

Even the pieces from the classical music literature that are remembered for their special use of percussion, like for instance the cannons in Tchaikovsky's 1812 Ouverture or the "Mahler Hammer" in Gustav Mahler's 6th Symphony use these in isolated moments to emphasize certain points.

Here's one of the rare examples where the percussion from Rite of Spring by Stravinsky are not just used punctual but as a percussive "bed" at a relatively climactic moment in the piece:

There  is not just an esthetical reason to use percussion more sporadically and more targeted on peak downbeats but a more striking one that has its cause in acoustical reasons.

The orchestral percussion section can be overwhelmingly loud which in itself is not a big problem, but it turns into one when you want to balance it with the rest of the orchestra. The sheer volume you can get from the percussion section can easily overpower the rest of the orchestra which from an orchestrational point of view is of course nothing that you might want. The Stravinsky example above puts all other orchestral forces at high dynamics against this percussion section which is the only possibility to create a balance in such situations.

Let's make the jump to 21st century orchestral scoring and we can observe that in many scores we have a lot of percussion beds under the orchestra. This is a trend that started mainly in trailer music but since then has found its way into main stream film scores. The film music industry named these "epic percussion" as they very often employ non standard orchestral instruments like Taikos, Djembes etc. Interestingly, these instruments found their way into the film scoring world first with movies that used them in a more "accurate" ethnical way like Tan Dun's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon score from 1999. Since then these non-standard instruments have lost their ethnical meaning and are treated as standard instruments in the modern scoring world.

The use of these percussion instruments are very similar to what a drum set would be doing in a band production which is providing a constant bed of rhythm. Here's an example of such a percussion bed. Very often, these percussion alone carry the task of keeping up the rhythmical momentum of the entire piece with the orchestra just doing chord swells or lines with long sustaining notes on top of this.

Film music transitioning into this way of using percussion has a lot to do with the way recording technology has developed. With the advent of digital recording and the use of Protools it was now easily possible to layer several multitrack recordings on top of each other allowing to digitally balance what would not balance in the "real world".

In fact, 99% of such "epic percussion" tracks will be recorded with the percussion separated from the orchestra either by enclosing them into a relatively soundproof both on the stage or more commonly by simply recording them separate in another pass and layering them on top of the orchestra in the mix.

How this would sound with this approach not being applied can be heard at the countless acoustically problematic versions of trying to recreate such music in concert. Compared to the original recordings, the percussion section sounds incredibly flat intransparent and unsubstantial and the pulse and drive is nowhere near the level as one knows it from the soundtrack recordings.

The reason why recording these percussion together with the orchestra doesn't work has not only to do with the volume differences but also with the phenomenon of mic bleed. Hitting a snare drum will be audible on every microphone in the room, even the close mics that at the first violin section. With the run time differences of the sound in the room and the resulting washiness of the transient and the impossibility to  adjust the sound of the microphone to sound great with the percussion it picks up and the violins it is supposed to record, you don't stand a chance to get the sound of these percussion to really achieve some transparency in the mix. Boxing the percussion into a booth that has no acoustic bleed is similarly problematic as you eliminate the room response which very often creates the "size" of the sound of an epic percussion. A taiko in a small room sounds just like a poor man's timpani.

So there is effectively no way around recording these percussion beds individually (or of course use sampled/electronic layers of percussion). In fact, it is quite common to hire a group of specialized players for these kind of percussion and layer multiple takes of them on top of each. In most cases such percussion beds are extremely multi layered often with 10+ individual percussion instruments sounding at the same time.

In general, one could say that the larger production with more budget usually do these extra sessions while low and medium budget production usually rely on additional sample layers to create these beds. However, also in big budget productions, you might get the occasional sample layer for specific sounds. It is relatively tricky to properly record such a percussion section as the mix of getting the right players, getting all the right instruments and recording that in a room that sounds great is usually trickier than hiring a standard orchestra. Usually, you would for instance not hire "regular percussion players" for that job but people who are specialized in this line of work. To see the amount of work that can go into such a percussion recording, it might be worth watching this behind the scenes video from Hans Zimmer's score for Man of Steel.

However, recording these percussion players separately doesn't eliminate all problems that come with this approach. Such a percussion bed "occupying" every 16th note on the grid often eliminates a lot of the details from the rest of the orchestra, even when they are recorded separately. Consequentially, you still need to write the non percussion instruments more on the stronger side of the dynamic spectrum to balance. Still with the percussion occupying a lot of the frequency spectrum, you are bound to loose the finer details of orchestral colours and attacks in such a setup which might be desirable on the one hand but also limits the range of sonic variety, very often creating a constant wall of sound.

Additonally, relying on such a "rhythmical engine" replaces the need to keep the rhythmical momentum up in the orchestra which as I mentioned already above very often leads to "blocky sustains over percussion" or "staccato string ostinato+percussion" pieces. We all know and have heard such pieces a million times. So in a way, the fact of losing details plus the lack of the need to find plausible ways to keep the rhythmical energy up in the orchestra very often "dumbs down" the musical approach that needs to be taken here. On the other hand, this esthetic is closer to the esthetics of pop music which naturally resonates more with the general audience.

As a conclusion, I want to make a little comparison between a two cues by different composers in the same musical universe (no pun intended) of STAR WARS.

Let's compare two action tracks. One from the original Trilogy by John Williams and one by John Powell for Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Here's the brass and Percussion from one of the climactic moments from The Asteroid Field by Williams:

And here is the corresponding recording.

You can see and hear how Williams carries the rhythmical momentum in the entire cue in the orchestra utilizing the percussion only on peak moments (except for the mallets that are employed more constantly) He also did it the same way in the more recent parts of the franchise.

John Powell chooses a different approach of often utilizing a percussion bed as can be heard here. He doubles the rhythmical momentum of the orchestra in the percussion, creating a stronger pulse. There are a few more things to be talked about the orchestral approach of John Powell which I will however cover in later posts.

The bottom line here is to be aware of the two fundamentally different ways of handling percussion in the orchestra and how much the production and recording philosophy influences their successful use.