How Sample Libraries Steal Emotional Impact From Stories
I published an article on this blog not too long ago about emotional impact in film scoring.
To me, we composers use sample libraries to create music that sounds like an orchestra without hiring one out. This has benefits and also some intense drawbacks. In my view: Sample libraries are great tools if we use them right.
From the article:
Emotional impact upon the audience of any film comes from humans who are primed and encouraged to bring their own emotions to the table, who deliver their own emotions in their performances, who take part in a story that has real impact upon the lives of the viewer.
Can this idea apply to the music of a film?
Oh my my, oh hell yes.
The technology for creating entire symphonies in a bedroom is available. It’s even cheap to produce a recording! To create a massive-sounding orchestral film score, many film composers nowadays rely upon sample libraries that include tens of thousands of individual sounds of instruments in the orchestra. The trade off is that they also have to program and then manipulate all of these samples so that they can create the score. In other words, the samples don’t come prearranged for the composer. The composer has to reprogram the sample library to sound appropriate for the film.
This small, almost insignificant detail, the fact that composers have to rearrange a sample so that it can be appropriate for a film score, has a remarkably stark effect on the emotional impact of a film.
Stay with me on this.
Before I get into why, we need to jump into a favorite subject of musicians and the online forums they frequent: Sample libraries...