What is the "Hollywood Sound"?

[Warren Peterson]

Wondering what others would offer as key components that result in what is often referred to as the classic (orchestral) Hollywood Sound.

Some categories include:

1 - Instrument/section selection and blending
2 - Recording Technique
3 - Playing technique
4 - Voicing

Please add your own as you see fit.

Thoughts?

Warren

[Lee Ophelius]

Hello,
I think the hollywood sound is a style in its own right, this may sound dumb but when a hollywood composer is depicting say a scene in europe for eg, the music sounds very european and if the scene was to cut back to america the sound just sounds hollywood again.
Hope this makes some sense :D

[Warren Peterson]

Hello,
I think the hollywood sound is a style in its own right, this may sound dumb but when a hollywood composer is depicting say a scene in europe for eg, the music sounds very european and if the scene was to cut back to america the sound just sounds hollywood again.
Hope this makes some sense :D

As a "style in its own right", what stylistic characteristics would you be referring to?

Thanks.

Warren

[nexus85]

It could be any style on the planet! The recent movie Memoirs of a Geisha (score by John Williams) had that Japanese style sound, while Harry Potter had more of a European Romantic/contemporary sound. I would, however, say that the majority is a throwback to romantic or impressionistic style of music, simply because the melodies are what seem to "grab the moment"; so to speak. Contemporary style is often used in either sci-fi or horror movies, like Matrix or The Sixth Sense.
Don't bite my head off if I'm wrong lol. I'm only 20, guys! This is just what I've gathered from my listening.


David

[fongi]

I joined this forum just recently to find about East West Orchestra and how I could use it to enhace my productions. If it´s got a Hollywood sound (which I doubt, because I´m not sure one exists, I´ll substatiate that shortly) then I don´t need to buy it at all!
Back to the Hollywood Sound saga. I know of one or two Hollywood film produtions that used the London Symphony Orchestra for the music and everything was recorded in my home town London. If I were to play you the soundtrack or you were to watch the film without seeing the "details" i.e. who played, and where it was recorded would you really know the difference? I don´t think so, what will surely make a difference is the style in which the music is written. So what is the Hollywood sound? perhaps a huge and beautiful Orchestration by John Williams and a first rate orchestra from any country? Just a point of view you understand dear musical collegues :D

[shnurgle]

Writing styles have changed a lot over the last 8 decades or so. Similarly, performance styles and recording equipment and techniques have changed quite a bit as well. So "the Holywood sound," if you want to qualify it as such, can't be defined apart from chronolgy.

But when someone says "hey man check out this library, it's got the Hollywood Sound," they mean it sounds like a big-ass contemporary American orchestra. Any orchestra can play this way (as someone mentoned the London Symphony does tons of film scores) but there are certain instruments and certain variations on instruments that are used in some European orchestras that make them sound "un-Hollywood." But the bottom line is by saying something sounds Hollywood, it's not saying much unless you qualify it with a date.

The earliest score writing was directly derived (and often copied) from the European Romantic orchestral music of the 1800s. As time passed, this evolved a number of ways as a result of new musical styles: jazz (and then as a result, Broadway-style show tunes which became a major staple of the Golden age of Hollywood scoring through the 70's) contemporary 20th century orchestral composition, including modern playing techniques and atonal harmony (composers like Stravinsky, Bartok, Holst et al influenced the way composers wrote for orchestra in Hollywood). Pop styles worked their ways into orchestaral writing in hollywod (Mancini) through the 70's too. In the late 70's-80's there was a resurgance of large-scale symphonic writing for the orchestra drawing on both Romantic and 20th century writing (thanks primarily to Williams' big action hits). This lasted through much of the nineties, and now the trend seems to be very basic harmony and melody and much more emphasis on percussion and rhythm.

In terms of playing styles, the Hollywood sound used to be characterized by heavy vibrato in the strings, where now the vibrato is much more subtle.

In terms of harmony, the music of the Golden age was richer than it is today, employing a much broader harmonic spectrum. With routes in Romantic harmony and jazz harmony, this music capitalized on stuff like altered dominant seventh chords, full voicings with chord extensions (major 7 on the minor, natural 6th on the minor 9 etc). More modern, Herrmann's music utlized atonal elements with romantic harmony and unique rhythm to juxtapose tension and beauty. The harmony of today's scores is much simpler and more "inside." Very rarely hear diminished or augmented voicings used the same way.

Same goes for meoldies. Romantic melodies charatcterized by larger leaps (like up a major 7th) have given way to much simpler pop-like melodies with smaler intervalic leaps.

Anyway, all of this could have been called the "hollywood sound" at some point in time.

Just a few observations.

[fongi]

Thankyou for that sir, that seems to put things right and certainly in perspective! ;)

[Nayi]

The Hollywood Sound is just...BIG.


It's hard to define it really, impossible even, because it various with time.

In movies you just know how to spot a typical hollywood movie a mile away, the same goes with music. When you listen to score you just know if it's a typical hollywood sound or not. Like Shurgle said this has varied with time, because Hollywood is always looking for the next "big thing" or "trend" to incorporate in movies and in music.

However no matter how many changes hollywood and the hollywood sound have endured over the years there seems to be one thing in comumn, the sound still is...BIG.

[Ecliptic]

Hollywood Sound:

44 First Violins (22 + 22 Divisi)
32 Second Violins
16 Violas
16 Cellos
12 Double Basses
8 French Horns
8 Trombones
8 Trumpets
4 Tuba
3 Bassoon and/or Contrabassoon
3 Bass Clarinets
5 Clarinets
5 Oboes
6 Flutes
2 Piccolos
I have not so much time to list the dozens percussion (tuned or untuned)
Some synths

No need a big concert hall, Altiverb is better than the best hall.
No need taking on hundred players, the instruments sections can easily strenghten by the samples.
Absolutely necessary a micing guru and some great engineers.

All this setup is less than nothing without The Composer.
You can get million musical instruments, but if you don't know what playing with them they are as nothing.

[LHall]

So what sound would this be?

110 cornets
1 and only 1 bass
rows and rows of fine virtuosos
1000 reeds
at least 2 double-bell euphoniums
50 mounted cannon
trumpets playing 8va of the cornets
horns of every shape and kind
somewhere between 75 and 77 trombones

[Ecliptic]

So what sound would this be?

110 cornets
1 and only 1 bass
rows and rows of fine virtuosos
1000 reeds
at least 2 double-bell euphoniums
50 mounted cannon
trumpets playing 8va of the cornets
horns of every shape and kind
somewhere between 75 and 77 trombones

You forget the 15 Krumhorns, 62 Bombardes and all the Scottish Army Bagpipes

[shnurgle]

So what sound would this be?

110 cornets
1 and only 1 bass
rows and rows of fine virtuosos
1000 reeds
at least 2 double-bell euphoniums
50 mounted cannon
trumpets playing 8va of the cornets
horns of every shape and kind
somewhere between 75 and 77 trombones

I haven't had that much fun since I portrayed Prof. Harold Hill in a high school production of the Music Man.

[Warren Peterson]

I haven't had that much fun since I portrayed Prof. Harold Hill in a high school production of the Music Man.

Fun? With shameful music like ragtime?.....:)

[Nick Phoenix]

I think when people talk abou the Hollywood sound, they are referring to the big soundstage sound (with extra Lexicon reverb) that you hear in the soundtracks by James Newton Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer etc... (Even though the absolute best Hollywood sound seems to come out of London). Then there is the slightly smaller, but equally cool sound that you hear in a David Newman score recorded at Sony or Fox. Pure Hollywood. :p
Most filmscores use a large stage and this makes it sound spacious, clear and natural. The orchestras tend to be big and play with attitude and use certain techniques frequently. I aspire to be a Hollywood composer so I make libraries that sound "Hollywood." Or at least i try. In reality EWQLSO can sound "Hollywood" or classical. It's an orchestra.

[leogardini]

Hollywood Sound:

44 First Violins (22 + 22 Divisi)
32 Second Violins
16 Violas
16 Cellos
12 Double Basses
8 French Horns
8 Trombones
8 Trumpets
4 Tuba
3 Bassoon and/or Contrabassoon
3 Bass Clarinets
5 Clarinets
5 Oboes
6 Flutes
2 Piccolos
I have not so much time to list the dozens percussion (tuned or untuned)
Some synths

No need a big concert hall, Altiverb is better than the best hall.
No need taking on hundred players, the instruments sections can easily strenghten by the samples.
Absolutely necessary a micing guru and some great engineers.

All this setup is less than nothing without The Composer.
You can get million musical instruments, but if you don't know what playing with them they are as nothing.
Wow...witch film composer uses this kind of setup besides Hans Zimmer???

[Doug Rogers]

Altiverb is better than the best hall.

You're kidding - right?

- Doug

[LHall]

I haven't had that much fun since I portrayed Prof. Harold Hill in a high school production of the Music Man.



We have a winner!!!!!!!!

[Ecliptic]

Wow...witch film composer uses this kind of setup besides Hans Zimmer???

You're kidding - right?

- Doug

Hey Leo and Doug,

Yes, I was kidding !

I meant that we can hire also a 300 players orchestra and rent the best concert hall, but the most of "The Big Hollywood Sound" is within the score itself, and if we are able to write a good score we can get "The Big Hollywood Sound" also with XP, Altiverb and a good engineering.

Cheers

[White Noise]

I think Snurgle's analysis is the most relevant to the question. In terms of definition, there is a tangible link between the orchestration and language of Williams, Alfred Newman/Miklos Rosza, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mahler/Richard Strauss and the other late romantic composers. They were all students or contemporaries of one another.

Williams started out as a concert pianist for Fox under Alfred Newman & Miklos Rosza. Both Newman & Rosza worked, and were influenced by, Korngold who studied with Mahler who was friends/mentored by Strauss. You can keep going back if you like.

Oddly, the Nazi's had as much to do with defining the 'Hollywood Sound' as anyone in LA by driving the Jewish austrogermanic composers (Korngold, Steiner etc.) towards Hollywood as they were fleeing the holocaust. In a sense, a whole generation of talented composers were forced to explore film as host medium for their music as opposed to the more traditional concert hall route.

How to define, the Hollywood sound? I would say that even though there are examples of composer's who have added ethnic intrumentation (people keep talking about Williams' Geisha score) the foundation is fundamentally of a late romantic orchestral mode. Of course this is not to denegrate the contribution that composers like Copeland made the American Symphony sound that has permeated through film. But, to summarise, a Hollywood Sound can be best expressed in terms of a "large, bombastic symphony orchestra". IMHO

[Doug Rogers]

But, to summarise, a Hollywood Sound can be best expressed in terms of a "large, bombastic symphony orchestra". IMHO

That sounds familiar!

- Doug

[fongi]

This would be an extremely unbalanced sound even if it was well arranged! :D

[White Noise]

That sounds familiar!

- Doug

Yep. I get it every time I open up EWQLSO. I love it. And to the fella who is thinking about buying this library and hasn't yet... do yourself a favour and buy it!

[Blazinghammer]

So what sound would this be?

110 cornets
1 and only 1 bass
rows and rows of fine virtuosos
1000 reeds
at least 2 double-bell euphoniums
50 mounted cannon
trumpets playing 8va of the cornets
horns of every shape and kind
somewhere between 75 and 77 trombonesThat would be Music....Man!!! :D