EastWest has launched the next chapter of its new Hollywood Fantasy Orchestra with a full suite of thunderous, mystical, struck and shaken instruments to complement even the most epic soundtracks.
Hollywood Fantasy Percussion is well-suited to most orchestral scores, but particularly shines in combination with the rest of the Hollywood Fantasy palette. This is the first percussion library ever that is specifically designed for scoring epic fantasy soundtracks.
When scoring for fantasy, there are countless settings where conventional percussion simply doesn’t cut it – fiery iron forges, royal celebrations, traditional folk festivals, and that’s just scratching the surface. That’s when you need percussion that doesn’t just carry the drama of the scene but feels perfectly at home in the world you’re composing for.
Each instrument in this collection has been selected to span every setting imaginable so that no matter the scoring task, you have the tools to not only underscore the drama on-screen but to wrap up the audience in an entirely new, fantastical world they need to hear to believe.
Hollywood Fantasy Percussion features instruments spanning every imaginable setting to conjure up fantastic soundscapes from another time and space:
- Bodhrans, known from Celtic folk music and heard in Braveheart and Titanic.
- Gran Cassas, a bass drum to extend the low end of the orchestra, which is notably absent in many traditional ensembles.
- Large Taikos, as heard in many video game and film scores, recorded in a tight-knit ensemble to provide the glorious bassy rumble these massive drums are known for.
- 600 lb Nagado Ensemble: the massive nagado-daiko was designed for rituals and spiritual uses, and as such is a great way to underscore austere ceremonies with a single, haunting low impact. This drum ensemble especially shines in slow, quiet passages with little competition in the orchestra.
- Ceng Ceng: these Balinese cymbals have a splashy, resonant character perfect for background ambience.
- Many, many more types of mystical percussion instruments and ensembles to provide inspiration and evoke images of fantasy settings: Crotales, Cymbal and Gong Ensemble, Goatnail Shaker, Krakeb, Metal Shaker, Nagara Rub FX, Nagara and Ashiko, an Orchestral Bell Ensemble, Orchestral Metallurgy, a Snare Ensemble, and Toms.
The instrument library is available to purchase for the introductory price of $99 USD at distributor PluginFox and from the SoundsOnline store.
It is also part of the Hollywood Fantasy Orchestra bundle, or with EastWest’s ComposerCloud+ subscription service.
