How To Create Amazing Orchestral Mockups | BBC Symphony Orchestra Pro #ONEORCHESTRA

hi everyone louie here from spitfire audio and welcome to another one orchestra video in these videos we take a look at everything relating to our bbc symphony orchestra libraries breaking down pieces of music created with any version of bbcso as well as sharing some tips and tricks and our inspirations along the way we've launched our very own forum to allow you to share your bbcso creations for us to listen to and if you make sure to tag your pieces either on youtube or soundcloud using the hashtag one orchestra there's a possibility it'll be showcased in the closing segment of this video so do stick around for the end to listen to some stellar works from the community now this is a bit of a different video i'm joined by our very own lou colney now you started off at spitfire as part of the customer experience team but you've now transitioned into a developer role you may have seen luke appear in the background of some of christian's vlogs with a particular highlight being when you had your makeup done for picture day but no the real reason we've got you here today is because you've written an incredible demo in cubase uh using the bbcso pro edition of the library around the time it launched so let's go ahead and have a listen [Music] [Music] [Music] a cracking bit of music luke when we start writing these these demos we usually have briefs or a bit of inspiration so is there anything in particular that kind of inspired you to write this bit of music oh yeah absolutely it was mainly 90s film score like i think about things like forrest gump so composers like alan silvestri uh james horner i mean with this one in particular i was listening to a score by someone called william ross and the score was my dog skip so which kind of inspired the name uh man's best friend but uh yeah it's uh it's very kind of i'd even go as far to say it's quite simple and almost like cliche in a way but it's the good stuff from the 90s i think like if you listen to forrest gump it's so simple and uh that was kind of the structure i was trying to follow here really keep it simple but keep it interesting uh through orchestration decisions and things like that so i can see you've opened to start the piece using a lot of strings and you're predominantly using a lot of um leader patches and is there any particular reason behind that yeah absolutely now the leaders i guess a lot of people think initially when you see leaders you think of soloist and you just use them exposed like that but i really like to use them as a layering tool because it kind of brings in a bit of a soloistic expression to it but as well as that it really helps with the the transitions and this the way that it sounds in terms of realism so we can actually have a listen to those as well so if i just solo the leaders at this intro and just play that so by itself it's it's not actually that much but as soon as you layer that in with the section this is what it sounds like nice and then if i take them out again just to show you what it's like without those you'll just hear the detail that they're adding is subtle but it makes a big difference [Music] like you can hear that right away i think and it's just a really nice way of sort of bringing the strings a bit more detail a bit more focus and just helps with the realism overall i find other than using just the leader patches what else have you done to kind of help make this sort of whole string section sound a lot more realistic well it's that thing with samples isn't it i think with samples in general when they're exposed they're they're prone to sounding more sampling it's just the nature of samples so it's it's about how you approach using the samples like layering with leaders but also even just bringing in the woodwinds here so we've heard those now with just the strings but as soon as i sort of the woodwinds as well it just adds another texture to it which helps to sort of push it to that higher level so as well as that i've also used a lot of cc1 and cc11 which is expression so cc1 is uh the mod wheel as you probably know but uh essentially this is where the real realism kicks in i find so you kind of try to phrase things as a string player would using them in combination as well so you can see here this is uh the cc one data and you can kind of see at the end of the notes there's slight tail offs things like that but if we compare that with the expression which is essentially when you think about it is just volume so you've got to be careful with it you don't want to overdo it but just use it to sort of help the phrases so what i'll do now is show you an example maybe with and without expression and we'll see what that sounds like okay so this is with expression and this is with expression all at the top so this is more static expression you can hear the difference it makes without yeah i can see using the expression in combination with the sort of dynamics or the mod wheel really helps kind of give each passage in your in your piece a lot more movement yeah absolutely i know a bit more of a human feel i guess in a way when you think about it almost enhances the dynamic range a little bit and it just helps you to phrase things better which is really important because you've got to kind of think when you sample an instrument we're we're asking for almost like not necessarily static but an expressive consistent note and it's up to the person that's programming it to to bring in the realism and that's where cc1 and cc11 come in moving on past this is just the intro here but let's move on to the introduction of the first melody here so this is actually the the first part that i wrote and it's again it's kind of following that simplistic structure so i'm trying to keep the melody as simple as possible as well and that sounds like this it sounds sort of lullaby-esque almost like it belonged in a disney film or something oh absolutely yeah i think that was the whole intention with this as well i mean i used the the labs music box which is kind of perfect for that that lullaby kind of sound and that's in combination with the the celeste there as well kind of just adds a bit of a dreamlike quality to it it's very subtle but i'll play that quickly just by itself [Music] and then if i just add in the music box nice that's that's straight straight out of a lullaby isn't it that kind of thing so you mentioned this section was what you sort of initially started out writing before the introduction so how did you do that did you start with the strings or with that kind of lullaby melody what did you write it on so i usually try to sketch things out with piano sometimes it doesn't work out so well and i find that i'm just hacking away with the strings and things like that but i do think that especially when it comes to melody writing and things like that having a piano in front of you it's like the full range it's it's just easier to get that down exactly the same with me as well piano being my main instrument i tend to kind of sketch things out on piano as well yeah absolutely so in the case of this uh it's it's such a simple melody it really is but if i just play the melody by itself so that's how it starts started out essentially and it's kind of just i find like with the simplest melodies it's really good if they kind of follow uh almost the the harmony that you're using so in this it's literally just based around c major you know that you can just you can hear it straight away and then as the melody develops to the second half of the a melody it's just a minor and also when it's the first time you're hearing a melody as well i think it's really important to to make that the simplest representation of it so don't get too complicated with maybe the orchestration or even just like adding counter melodies and things like that you know keep the first statement as simple as possible and then develop it in the second statement of the melody so at this point we can we can move a bit further along and just listen to the the introduction or the reintroduction of the strings here so let's just play that and i'm actually just gonna solo the strings by themselves at this point from here there you've decided to use sort of a lot of legato patches and what's the reasoning behind using legato as opposed to maybe longs or a different articulation so legato i think if you're going for anything towards realism or some form of convincing mock-up work i feel like legato is always going to be the go-to just because that's the the intervals between the notes essentially and with the longest patch you don't get that whereas in reality obviously you do so you can actually hear the players moving between the notes and that's just adds a whole new level as well and that's something you don't get with the long as long as you tend to use maybe more for more i guess harmony work building up chords and things absolutely and even just more like pad like work i can find and it depends on the writing really but as this is strictly quite melodic in nature i think that uh legato is is the way to go and that honestly uh if i look at the the project itself almost all of these all of the woodwinds legatos the brass as well and the strings of course and there are some other things going on but we'll get to that further down the line so at this point the strings have been reintroduced and it's kind of important so i'm moving into the second statement of the the first melody but i don't want to just bring the strings in at that point so this part here was really just acting as a way of slowly reintroducing the strings and then we get to the the statement the second statement of the first melody [Music] so i can hear that same melodic theme again but this time you've transferred it into the woodwind absolutely so this is the whole thing with uh we've already stated the melody once in its simplest form so we get to state it again and make things a bit more interesting really so i moved the melody over to the flutes but also more in the woodwinds and as well as that the strings are taking more of a accompanying role and also even the the music box and the chiles they're kind of you know they were the state the first statement themselves they were the the lullaby and now they're still there and they're kind of just doing this arpeggiated if i think a little shimmer kind of thing yeah absolutely and that just adds it kind of keeps it consistent so i'm not getting rid of them and dropping them completely but it just keeps them in there and kind of stays consistent the first statement despite the fact it's still developing basically yeah i think in this sort of second instance of this this main melodic theme you can really hear that kind of disney inspiration now especially with all the kind of orchestra uh working together absolutely and it's actually funny you mentioned because the next part so after this statement it moves into kind of the part that's directly influenced by menken which is most of the disney stuff you hear and this is kind of that classic question and answer thing that you just you hear it everywhere but i think it's really really common in the disney stuff so in that instance you've got the the strings asking the question and then you've got the the woodwinds and the brass answering and it's kind of like again like i said that's simple disney stuff so if i were to play it it's kind of like or similarly something like this you know that that classic question and answer thing yeah i mean there's a really lovely calling response between your strings and your woodwinds there yeah and i think you can kind of get away with two different things with this kind of cool and response stuff so you can either change the range so you can start in a lower range and then the answer would be in the higher range uh in this instance though i just changed the orchestration so the range is kind of around the same uh but we've got the strings again and then the woodwinds are answering so it's just it keeps it interesting because you're just changing the sound of it yeah i mean i feel like you're putting that response in the woodwinds i've done about you but it feels a lot more intimate as opposed to kind of the whole string section taking that yeah absolutely and that kind of leads into the next section as well because it's bringing it down a lot so having the woodwinds they always sound quite exposed and you know the soloist instruments as well so it kind of helps to lead it into that next section [Music] so at this part i actually had a really hard time trying to decide which instrument should take the melody so if you think about it i've already had the strings take a melody and then i've had the woodwinds i remember trying on this part i i was trying the clarinet english horn it's like it's just not working it just didn't feel like enough of a different color uh and i find this is really useful as well like i was listening to field of dreams which is james horner's score and there's this part halfway through and the orchestration to that is kind of exactly like this i think it's just so useful to to listen to something and just pick up on orchestral devices that work and uh so in this case he actually had a an acoustic guitar playing this melody and i was like okay to keep this consistent i'm going to actually do it in the celeste as well and it worked like so the rest of the orchestration here the tremolo strings and the the pizzicato bass and the harp that's all very inspired by field of dreams and i think you can even listen to it i think it's called the place where dreams come true don't quote me on that but uh about halfway through that piece uh there is you're just basically here the inspiration for this for this part yeah that's something i wanted to pick up on as well it's because you've got a you know an individual instance for each kind of instrument um but you've not split it between articulation so it seems to me like you've been using some key switches here yeah absolutely uh now keyswitch is a it's a workflow preference thing i don't tend to use them too much i tend to prefer to split things out by tracks but it's really a personal preference thing but in the case of this demo i did use keyswitches and what it's doing really essentially i can actually just show you let's have a look at the bases for example so i've got uh let's find the note they're always at the bottom of the range the key switches usually or actually no on bases they're up there so obviously out of the instruments range and what we've got here is that's just the long and then that moves that key switch there is triggering the pizzicato and the bases which i can actually show you so you're just switching between articulations while remaining on the kind of same midi track absolutely yeah so it stays on the same track and you use a key that's out of the range and you see all these green notes up here those are the key switches essentially and i can actually press them now and you'll see that it's just by clicking through those it's changing the articulation and that's uh that's the benefit of keyswitches keeping it all on the same track and it means that you don't have to split that out so again because we're now introducing the b melody so we've already heard the a melody we've heard it restated now in this section we we're hearing a new murdy so at this point uh again it's back to the simplest statement i don't want to just over complicate it straight away this one's just based in the relative minor of the piece so the piece is in c minor c major sorry and this is a minor which is the relative minor but let's just play that melody quickly [Music] so at the end of this section i've actually again there's a real directly inspired part from a field of dreams which is like the cello run where the cello's just sort of moving up the range and that leads into the the sort of the climactic part of the piece and that just introduces that so let's just go ahead and play that from here [Music] so because again this is the second statement of the beam idea but it's also the climax of the piece i've kind of brought in everything here so this is like every family we've got the woodwinds doing stuff we've got the brass which actually hasn't had that much of a role so far as well the brass it's really just been a supporting role but at this point i've i've kind of brought it in and it's doing some more stuff a bit of a counter melody and things like that working with the strings so let's actually solo out the brass and you'll notice this the cc stuff and the brass as well it's all very similar to the strings you don't have to really follow many different rules in that respect just pay attention to how the instruments work really and if you listen to enough uh even just film scores or just general orchestral music you kind of just naturally develop your ear to hear what they sound like yeah and that's the best advice i can give in getting it sounding convincing so let's go ahead and play that now and i actually think that that is i hope i'm not getting this wrong i think it's the violas and the cellos that are working with the horns there so i'm just going to solo those together and see what that sounds like [Music] so that part is actually moving between the violas and the cellos so the horn initially is actually playing what the violas are playing and then it moves to what the cellos are doing later on in the phrase that's what's good about this library as well is because you can have sort of orchestral libraries for separate sort of orchestral sections but with the the bbc library we've obviously recorded all the plays that that work together interact together so it's very kind of seems quite seamless to blend each section together yeah cohesive this is so easy and that's the good thing about this as well you don't have to fight the library it does just all slot in together which is exactly what you want when you're trying to write something like this really like i found it came together really well and even in terms of just the balance like the orchestral balance so just playing things in i didn't have to mess around much with that it kind of it came together really nicely and i think that's a huge bonus of the library you mentioned as well in this sort of i guess closing a big kind of grandiose section of the piece that you've brought in pretty much all the orchestral families together i noticed a bit of a symbol there and i could even make out a little bit of the glockenspiel um away yeah so that the celeste and the glock at the end here now this is actually interesting because it's so subtle but this is one of those things i think it's subtle but it makes a big difference so if i just solo that actually let's just do the celeste there and you'll hear so again it's just a similar to earlier just an arpeggiated phrase but i'll show you with and without and see if you can hear the difference it [Music] makes and then if we add everything back in just try and listen out for that [Music] like it's it's really subtle but it's there and it's just adding a bit of a shimmer behind everything which again it keeps it consistent with the earlier stuff in the piece but it just i love that kind of thing a big climactic part to have that kind of whole kind of theme of it being sort of a lullaby even though it's this big orchestral section yeah you've got that kind of running through i also noticed a bit of a harp and a piano going on there as well yeah yeah so actually if i solo all of the percussion here this will sound quite quite interesting but it's gonna be a very very different vibe to what you hear with everything in is it's interesting [Music] i mean even though it does sound very different you can still hear that kind of core of the piece in there i suppose that comes from sketching out on a piano first and then building it using using the orchestral sounds yeah absolutely and i'm a big fan of consistency yeah i don't want to sort of lose the listener and that's what again keeping it the whole piece is so simple but it's so easy to lose the listener still uh so the whole purpose is like an exercise in just keeping things interesting despite it being simple and that's what those those guys like sylvester and horner were masters out really you look at their writing and it's it's very simple but it's so engaging i find at the same time and that's you can hear the inspiration in that so with that played out we can now actually move to the end of the piece and it goes back to that kind of that break part so there's that part with the question and answer earlier that we heard and that was the the part that kind of separated the a and the b sections so i think it makes sense to to have that again at the outro basically and that's what i did here [Music] i can hear you bringing back the call and response at the end of the piece there yeah absolutely though there is one change on that actually uh i think earlier in the piece it was the strings asking the question in the woodwinds answering right but because this part it just had the sort of the big part of the piece and it was very very string heavy uh it kind of wouldn't make sense to have the strings asking the question again so i actually mixed it up and the woodwinds asked a question and the strings are answering this time uh just keep it again it's the sake of keeping it interesting essentially i feel like it sort of neatly ties the bow a little because you started off with the strings and it's going to come full circle now ending with the strings kind of giving that answer in that final really lovely chord oh yeah for sure and this whole piece is really really string heavy like i think they're kind of prominent throughout the whole thing uh there are there's plenty of melody in there there's counter melody as well but really that's just consistent that style i think you'll hear a lot of strings in those 90s film scores so i think we've been through every section of the piece now is there any more advice you want to give in terms of programming for realism anything you want to look at uh in the session as a whole yeah i mean a big one is this thing at the top here the tempo map so actually let me just open that up uh and this is it looks pretty scary uh what's going on here but this stuff is so so important so there are some tempo changes throughout the piece but it's these bits that really make a difference these dips at the end of the phrases so actually if we just go back we'll just play it from here and just seeing as this is the most jarring to look at this part here you'll kind of hear what the tempo matt's doing and you can even look at the bottom here the change of tempo it's constantly changing and that kind of just helps to kind of keep it like it's a performance really you know someone's conducting it it can be a bit of a trap to fall into keeping things consistently one tempo throughout the whole thing and that's kind of the difference here at least with orchestral music anyway so let's just play from this bit here and you'll see what that's doing it seems like all these little changes are very kind of quite slight in terms of using uh you know a little bit of expression and dynamics and having changes in the tempo mapping but it all adds to that kind of real human performance and using those legato patches as well it really helps phrase things really nicely yeah and that's the dream for me with this kind of stuff this is the stuff that i get a bit obsessed over and you know you can be sitting at home in your pajamas writing for an orchestra basically on your computer and i think that's just a really cool thing and again this library is just great for that just having access to all of these instruments and that cohesive sound again it shows you don't have to write kind of a really ridiculous kind of melody that's going all over the place and and having all sorts of different articulations popping in and out is like you said it's very simple but it really kind of almost tugs at your heartstrings through how it's programmed and how you've conveyed that realism with it yeah and and again i do really just think that's important to be able to do that stuff i think it's quite easy to jump jump through hoops and go into the complicated stuff straight away and overwrite but if you can get the simple stuff done well and develop it well that carries over into when you're getting to some more perhaps complicated writing and just uh your ability to be able to do that is if you get the simple stuff right it's a lot easier is there anything else you wanted to touch on in terms of maybe the mix or the mic signals that you've used yeah i mean we can have a little look at the the mic choices in this so there was quite a few decisions i made i think i wrote everything with mix one initially and i thought that was that was sounding great there were some changes that i wanted to make uh not so much in the strings the strings are all mixed one if we just have a look yeah so as you can see there it's literally just mixed one though i will say i got some of this going on uh this bill which was really really cool like a really cool feature to this library and that's something you only get in the in the professional edition of the library that's right yeah so if you're using core i think you just get mixed one don't you so to get access to the other mics it is the professional version yeah so let's just have a look at maybe the woodwinds so you can see here i've also used this tool here which is really cool the techniques editor just to get rid of everything else you know once you've finished a project you can just really bring the ram down if you just get rid of those uh but looking at these so we've got the the deca tree there and then mid which is probably my favorite mic for woodwinds by far they're not too close i don't like woodwinds to be too close like in your face and the mids are kind of like a mid distance between the room and the close mics and that's just it's really nice pickup to use those on woodwinds and then looking at the brass one thing i love about this room made a veil where this was recorded is it has such nice depth to the room naturally and i kind of just with the mics uh it was all about the width uh so i've gotten for the outriggers here the tree is a lot further down if we go further along we've even got some sides in there which are like literally right at the side of the room uh but it's just all about the natural width with this stuff and even some balcony in there and of course spill that's about it so you've got mixed one on the strings taking that uh you've got the the width natural width from the mics on the brass uh the mids on the woodwinds and as for the the percussion and the mallets and things like that that's all mixed one as well but there yeah that wraps it up really well thanks look it's been great diving into your whole piece there i've been quite flattered by some of the comments people have said over this one hopefully there's something in here that's useful to someone that's watching and uh great if so now it's time to show off some of your creations you've shared using the hashtag one orchestra let's have a listen first up we've got a brilliant demo by takanori ojima using bbc discover and piano [Music] next check out jonah marvin's brilliant bbc core piece titled leaving forever [Music] so now we've got owen baldwin's bbc esso pro piece remember the rose this one really takes you on a journey [Music] and finally we finish with forest mischief by gel proof using bbc so pro what a remarkable piece [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you'll find all the full pieces from these fantastic composers linked in the description below as well as a link to luke's full piece and midi as always we love listening to your music so definitely get involved by tagging your bbc so pieces with the hashtag one orchestra as well as uploading them to the spitfire forum for a chance to be featured on upcoming videos give us a like if you liked and let us know what you want to see covered in future videos in the comments below as always download the discover edition of bbc so if you haven't already as well as our monthly labs instruments so you can start creating music today it's free and that's everything cheers for showing your piece luke and i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 14,551

Rating: 4.944212 out of 5

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Id: bZ5oNh9PWoE

Length: 35min 59sec (2159 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021