ARTICLE - You Belong Here: Why Your Voice Matters in Orchestral Music.
- Jack Hughes
- Sep 22
- 3 min read
For much of the 20th century, the path into orchestral music looked like a locked gate. If you wanted in, the rules were clear: start piano or violin lessons as a child, spend years in a conservatory, master harmony and counterpoint, then climb a strict hierarchy ruled by maestros.
That system produced extraordinary music, but it also reinforced a culture of gatekeeping. Elitism was celebrated as sophistication, and the unspoken message was simple: this art form belongs to a select few. For many, orchestral music felt less like an open landscape and more like a walled garden.
Technology Changed Everything
That wall is crumbling. Technology has reshaped how music is written, recorded, and shared.
In the past, composing meant hunched hours over manuscript paper, sketching every note by hand. Years of training in notation and theory were the price of entry, and even then, your ideas often stayed trapped on the page unless you had access to an orchestra willing to play them.
Today, the tools are different. With digital audio workstations, MIDI controllers, and high-quality sample libraries, you can hear your ideas instantly. You don’t have to wait for an orchestra, you can be the orchestra, layering strings, brass, winds, and percussion from a laptop. Even if you don’t read music fluently, you can compose by ear, guided by intuition.
The result? The pool of voices has widened. Rock guitarists and drummers, hip-hop producers, and electronic artists are bringing their own perspectives into orchestral writing. The tradition is being enriched by influences it never would have absorbed under the old system.
Theory and technique still matter, but they are no longer gatekeepers. What matters most now is imagination. If you have a story to tell through music, the tools are there to help you tell it, with no permission required.
Breaking Down Barriers
Classical training still offers deep insight into craft and history. For centuries, though, it was the only recognized route. Stepping outside tradition often meant being dismissed as “not serious enough.”
Today, composers arrive through unexpected doorways: film scoring, game soundtracks, beat-making, even sampling. Instead of being trained to follow a canon, they’re guided by the sounds and stories that first moved them.
For many listeners, orchestral music wasn’t first heard in a concert hall at all, but in Star Wars, The Lord of The Rings, Halo, The Dark Knight, Final Fantasy, or The Elder Scrolls. These scores have become modern entry points, proving that orchestral writing doesn’t just belong to tradition, it belongs to creativity itself.
Your entry point is valid. What matters isn’t how you arrived, but what you create once you’re here.
Your Voice Matters
Every time someone with a different background writes orchestral music, the tradition grows. For too long, the field was dominated by a narrow idea of who was “qualified.” But today, there is room for voices shaped by gospel, EDM, hip-hop, folk traditions, or years spent producing beats on a laptop.
What might once have been considered a weakness is now a strength. A hip-hop producer hears rhythm differently than a classically trained violinist. A folk songwriter tells stories in a way no harmony textbook could teach. Those perspectives help to expand the orchetsral traditon rtather than dilute it.
This is how orchestral music stays alive, by adapting, by welcoming new voices, and by reflecting the diversity of those who contribute to it.
A Final Invitation
If you’ve ever felt the orchestral world was closed to you, consider this your invitation. The orchestra isn’t a walled garden, it’s an open stage, waiting for more stories, more ideas, more sounds.
You belong here. Your voice matters. And the music you create may be exactly what someone else has been waiting to hear.
Thanks for checking out this blog post!
Contact - jack@northernfilmorchestra.com
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Great read!
While all this is true, modern orchestral composition methods have also imposed a gate beyond which many have great difficulty in passing; namely that of mastering the technological knowledge required to adequately use a digital audio workstation, midi controllers and sound sample libraries. I started composing in the early 1970s, was lucky enough to have one piece played by a professional orchestra in a public performance (the final of a composing contest), and was largely self-taught regarding theory, harmony, counterpoint and orchestration (and I have never mastered any degree of proficiency as a performer on any instrument). I later largely gave up composing, until computer technology allowed me to actually hear an approximation of what I was writing, in the…