I don't think Goldsmith used any synthesizers delerue for this one but Wendy Carlos for ''A Clockwork Orange'' I believe did somewhat and in ''Tron"which is before "Backdraft".

serifiot, January 29, 2008; 7:46 PM

Goldsmith talks about his Freud score being his first dabble with electronics, which was in
the early sixties, but the electronic elements were most handled by someone else. But
this is what got him intrigued in mixing the two techniques.

With my Goldsmith library being limited to around 30 CDs, I can't really give a
comprehensive overview of his work, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he nailed it
before Zimmer did.

his_dudeness2002, January 29, 2008; 11:03 PM

Have I missed something? Didn't Tiomkin use electronics in his brief score for The Thing and include orchestra? I could be wrong.

TheSaint.786, January 30, 2008; 6:42 AM

And no one mentions Maurice Jarre? His early/mid 80's scores of orchestra with electronics are exceptional. It's as if he used them to usher in a new age in film scoring. The past meets the future in a way. "Enemy Mine", "Witness", "Apology", "Dreamscape". I'm wracking my brain to think of the others. I've listened to and enjoyed them all.

Listening to the score from "Insignificance", the Nicolas Roeg film composed by Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer. I noticed there is one piece by Zimmer that takes a hell of a lot from the stuff Bill Laswell was doing in the early 80's with voices, shortwave and electronics.

I would say that Maurice Jarre did more for creating a new dimension in film music with his electronic based scores than anyone else.

And then there are the early 60's scores for the television series "Twilight Zone"...

victoravalentine, January 30, 2008; 2:47 PM

I love Maurice Jarre and his knack for beautiful melodies but his synthesizer scores completely turned me off. From Enemy Mine to Witness to Dreanscape to .... He should have left that instrument to his son to play with :)

And yes, Maurice Jarre skillfully and successfully incorporated synthesizer into film music way before some of the Zimmer fans were born.

delerue, January 30, 2008; 3:48 PM

I've heard some people say they don't like the electronics in the Maurice Jarre scores. I've always loved it. Although I wonder why he believed it was needed for "Witness".


victoravalentine, February 4, 2009; 9:37 PM

I notice in this thread and in general, people say "synthesizer" when really meaning to refer to any type of electronic instrument. Theremin and ondes are non-synthesizing, but I'm happy to include them in this debate. It is largely a matter of opinion what is "successful" combination. Edgard Varese and Oliver Messiaen beat to the punch all those mentioned previously in this thread, though I'm not sure they're the first to have combined synthetic and natural. In fact, I'm fairly confident they were not. In a sense, the very first masters of sonic synthesis were really those early geniuses who labored on organs, with all their variations made to simulate the sound of an orchestra and its constituents. There were even such devices which, through pneumatics, hydraulics, and pure clockwork, played themselves. See: Maelzel

zuvqwyx3, February 1, 2008; 8:43 PM