A musical effect known as an orchestra hit, also known as an orchestra or orchestral stab, is a musical effect. Musicians create it having many different instruments in orchestras play one note or a chord at the same time for a brief period of time, usually one beat or less. Orchestra hits, in essence, serve as a musical accent or emphasis, and are typically used at the beginning or end of measures or phrases. It’s possible that the sound is real or synthesized.
An orchestra hit can use any combination of orchestra instruments in terms of content. Composers and arrangers generally try to include instruments from all orchestral families, but the orchestration is ultimately dictated the sound the composer or arranger wants. The composer or arranger has a lot of control over the final sound and power of the hit changing the instruments used and how they are voiced — that is, the register in which they play. The goal is to create a hit that is well-suited to the overall mood of the piece, regardless of which instruments and voicing the composer or arranger chooses.
An orchestra hit is traditionally written directly into the score, dictating each pitch for every instrument on the musical staves, as part of regular composition and part writing. Players use the music that plays just before and after the hit as a guide for how to attack and release the pitches during a live performance. The conductor, as well as the performance space, have some control over how the musicians perform the hit. For example, if the conductor prefers a crisper hit, he may instruct the musicians to play the hit for a fraction of the time specified in the score, allowing more time between the hit and the next note. Similarly, if the performance hall has a lot of echoes, the conductor might have the players play the hit faster to avoid the music becoming too muddy.
Orchestra hits are typically used sparingly in orchestra music because too many hits can detract from the melody and overall concept of the work. In this sense, an orchestra hit is usually a supporting musical element rather than the main attraction. However, there are a few exceptions. The opening bars of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Requiem”Dies “‘s Irae” are perhaps the best example of orchestra hits used for more than just effect. This movement begins with four massive orchestra hits in a row, which stop serving as an accent and instead serve as a musical statement or theme in and of themselves.
Musicians took advantage of new technology in the 1980s to create a new palette of synthetic sounds. They experimented in the studio with different ways of layering instrumental pitches and timbres, instead of using live musicians, to create unique hits for various musical situations. Many of these synthesized hits were saved in digital audio libraries, which the composer or arranger could access whenever he wanted depending on the sound he wanted. Whereas hits were once directly incorporated into physical scores, composers and arrangers could now simply remove or add hits via computer after the initial composition was completed, depending on their preferences.
A synthetic orchestra hit can be made with a variety of software programs, which were and are still capable of doing so. Regardless of which program the composer or arranger uses, the composer or arranger must still specify which instruments will be used and at what octave. The programs allow the composer or arranger to digitally define the length of the hit entering the numerical value of the time each instrument should play, often to hundredths of a second precision. Composing or arranging a new hit is a complex and time-consuming process because the programs allow the composer or arranger to add other effects such as echo or make the hit sound like it is within a specific performance area.
For about a decade, synthetic orchestra hits were extremely popular in hip hop, pop, and rock music. Synthetic orchestra hits, on the other hand, had almost become a cliché the 1990s. Composers and arrangers stopped including them as frequently in their work. As a result, the presence of many orchestra hits can be used to date popular music as belonging to the 1980s.