Music

Music to Write By – Hybrid Orchestral Epic Music

/ JR / Leave a comment

In the last month or so, I’ve became more and more aware of a genre of digital music – “hybrid orchestral,” also called “epic music.”  This came out of my using movie soundtracks as background music for my writing times.  I wanted more than what was available, and began poking around YouTube.

There are many, many examples of this type of electronic music available on YouTube.  Hours and hours of it.  One of my personal favorite channels is Pandora Journey.

Most of the recordings are compilations from cinematic score composers who put together literally mountains of orchestral tracks for use in the gaming and movie/TV industries.  A great upcoming example is the Trailer 2 for the 2017 movie “Wonder Woman” featuring a great track “Catapult” by Position Music.


Other composers are looking to create a piece of electronic (hence the “hybrid”) orchestral music that has a message/story all it’s own, rather than something created for a movie studio to incorporate into a soundtrack.  The example above, Tales of the Forgotten “GRound Zero  is part of an outstanding hybrid orchestral trilogy of EP-length pieces, concluding with this also-excellent “Ep III: Devolution“.  Another favorite of mine is a composer known as Varien – love The Valkyrie Trilogy:


After awhile I do admit to growing weary of the genre, and will segue into worship music or my short list of all-time favorites such as Acoustic Alchemy.  But, these days orchestral tunes keep drawing me back every few weeks as I am pondering a new chapter of a character’s life…  Here’s another post I wrote about music to write by.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

Music to write by

/ JR / 4 Comments

music-influences-writingMusic is a big part of my writing process; I have the earbuds in most all of the time when jamming through pages of text.

The categories of what I shove in my ears would be as follows:

  1. Christian Hard Rock – typified by my favorite band, Red (Just got their new album “of Beauty and Rage”, awesome).    Also Day of Fire and Building 429 are favs.
  2. More Hard Rock – Stuff like Linkin Park.  I’m a huge Evanescence fan as well.
  3. Classic Christian Rock – nobody plays this stuff anymore; like Dogs of Peace, early Kutless and Justifide (9 out of 10 is a true classic metal song).  Jaci Velasquez, anybody?
  4. Movie soundtracks – I have a collection of full soundtracks and bits/pieces of others.  It’s fun to play the Iron Man 3 soundtrack or Gravity and see how many times the mood of the piece matches my character or setting mood in the book.
  5. Classical – I’m a huge Rachmaninoff fan.  Can’t play Piano Concerto No. 2 enough.
  6. Old pop – still loving Depeche Mode, REM and Seal in a pinch.  “World in my Eyes” is a personal favorite.