orchHit

1. new order - round & round

i think you can say the 80s revival was never complete, because this never really came back

2. (but it'll always be #1 in my heart) art of noise - moments in love

3. yes - owner of a lonely heart

Did Trevor Horn invent this or popularize it?

It's a preset sound in Fairlight CMI, I think.

4) Prince - Sign 'O' the Times

Props to Prince for playing the orch hit only twice, towards the end of the song, which certainly adds some dramatic weight to it.

pet shop boys - so hard.

bobby brown - on our own

Ah yes, the egregious and overused Orchestral Hit, the Autotune of its day. Even the Smiths succumbed in the end, there in 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me'.

Duran Duran - "A View To A Kill"

probably because it was (at the time) one of the most satisfying noises a synth could make. my mate had a yamaha keyboard with orchit on it which i remember giving us hours of fun.

So the preset predates anyone constructing it themselves with a sample? Always wondered about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sFK0-lcjGU

suspect thomas dolby used it on hyperactive

Beginning of "Bizarre Love Triangle," no?

So the preset predates anyone constructing it themselves with a sample? Always wondered about this.

Yeah, I think so. CMI came out in 1979 or 1980, and I haven't heard any pre-80s song using a similar sound. It's also worth noting that many of the early users of orch hit were established and/or wealthy musicians and producers like Trevor Horn or Herbie Hancock; CMI was a very expensive machine, so you had to have some cash to get hold of one. You don't hear many orch hits on early 80s rap and electro, stuff that was produced on a smaller budget. (The exception to this are songs produced by Arthur Baker. He must've owned a CMI or at least had a regular access to one, as the orch hit is prominent on "Planet Rock" and other electro tunes produced by Baker.)

Speaking of which...

10. Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force - Planet Rock

11. Kate Bush - The Dreaming

and about a thousand Latin Freestyle tunes.

Hey Tuomas: Doesn't Prince also throw in the OrchHit at the end of "It"?

Yeah, I think so. CMI came out in 1979 or 1980, and I haven't heard any pre-80s song using a similar sound. It's also worth noting that many of the early users of orch hit were established and/or wealthy musicians and producers like Trevor Horn or Herbie Hancock

... and Kate Bush. And Peter Gabriel I think.

... owners of CMI, I meant

Thank goodness 12. Pet Shop Boys "Can You Forgive Her?" is such a great song, because it has a total of 1,024,542 OrchHits.

And as anybody who watches figure skating could tell you, the inventor of the OrchHit was of course 13. Igor Stravinsky "King Katschei Fire Dance" from Firebird.

What's it actually sampled from though? I thought it was Beethoven?

Ah there's different ones, of which the most popular is.... Igor Stravinsky "King Katschei Fire Dance" from Firebird!

No, Beethoven invented the OrchHeadbutt.

Found this article a few years ago:

http://bit.ly/99h3VI

ORCH5 is low-resolution, 8-bit digital sample, a very early one, perhaps the first one to be-
come famous. It was digitized around 1979 by David Vorhaus, a computer programmer and classi-
cally-trained electronic musician. The file appeared on Disk 17 of the 25-or-so eight-inch floppy
disks that made up the sampled sound library shipped with each very expensive Fairlight Computer
Musical Instrument. (In the United States, the going rate for a Fairlight Model IIx in the early 1980s
was over $25,000; see Holmes 1996-99.)

hats off to David Vorhaus of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, White Noise & composer of the film score to PHASE IV, best ant movie of all time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17JPoEy3TaI

http://www.pro-rec.com/samplecds.html

Fairlight Disk 13 TremStr - Orch5 C3 C4

(my personal favorite = Fairlight Disk 27 Effects4, Bizzare "Bizarre", no one could ever understand our bizarre relationship)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_gaaUiNs8

"Nasty Boys," kinda?

(xp) The whole of Effects2 just sounds like whatever Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon was being shown on the TV at the time.

pel mel - pandemonium

one at the start and then a bunch after ~2 min

the very last sound in depeche mode "little 15"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qLJj4ZgWZc