"King Kong"s score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American "talkie" film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra, and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music).Steiner used a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for his use of leitmotifs.