I've been getting into different types of video game and movie music. I'm not MUCH of a composer but I love to write rock music. I've been incorporating orchestra sounds with rock music (yeah, like that hasn't been done before) for industrial rock-ish movie music. Make sense? Well to give you an idea, I've REALLY been digging the music of Charlie Clouser (Saw, Resident Evil films, former NIN member...)

Well anyway, if I could afford to hire an orchestra and orchestrator and record it (and if I could actually write scores well) then that would be rad! But fact is, I'm kind of wiggling my way into this whole deal, and this is the digital era, if I can get away with writing great music 100% digital and MAYBE throwing in an acoustic guitar or electric guitar of my own then sure! ;)

I currently own and use Reason 4 which has AWESOME sounds. I don't have any of the Refills but I will probably look into that into the future.

I was wondering what the pros use for composing movie music (that obviously is not a real orchestra, otherwise I wouldn't be asking). And by this I mean lots of cymbals and percussion, timpanys and string sections with cellos, basses, violins, violas, big bass drums and etc.

I have a hard time finding good percussion and nice string sections with attack. I find a lot of really synthy and slow, pretty violins but I've yet to discover many powerful staccatos and etc

I want to accomplish this via Cubase Studio 4 + virtual instrument/ plugin , or maybe there really ARE great Refills out there for Reason 4 that can accomplish this. I'm also open to trying new sequencers too. I've got my hands on Ableton live 7 lite and it was neat but not sure if it was what I was looking for. I've never really got my hands on Logic either. And I used to use Fruity Loops but for scores it doesn't exactly work so efficiently.

I'm open to any suggestions for plugins/virtual instruments, other software, etc. I just want to hear what other people are using so I can discover some new ways to create music. *ahem* to create digital orchestras.

THANKS! You guys rock! =)

And check out http://www.myspace.com/clevelandbledsoe if you want an idea of what kind of music I like to deal with.