Orchestral Programming: Day Two

in the last one of these films of a standing a warm morning Santa Barbara Beach seems a far cry from where we are here today the top of an old volcano in the middle of Edinburgh Scotland it's bloody freezing - but thanks for coming back and thanks for saying you wanted a day - if you haven't seen the first film it's linked above and below in the comments I have to say I approached today with a degree of trepidation as you may or may not remember I'm not formally trained as a composer of the orchestral variety and I've used technology to kind of bypass the Conservatoire education as a consequence my chops will start running thin over day - you may get a day three out of me at best in fact when looking at day one I see that within I think half an hour I get you about I'd say 60 maybe even 70 percent of what you'll need to use on a day-to-day basis you'll see that today it will probably be longer and I'll only probably get you up to kind of 90 95 % beyond that is the territory of the true experts that Andrew Blaney's and Ben vanishes I guess the next step of what we've got to look at with orchestral programming is moving along from using predominantly ensembles patches the ones which are combinations of sections if you remember we break the orchestra into choirs woodwinds brass strings and within say for example strings there are sections first second violins violas cellos basses the same for brass and for woodwinds and obviously you can subdivide those into divisie sections so you split them in half or indeed get someone within that section usually what's referred to as the principal to play a solo line this gives us such a kind of multitude of tomber all opportunity and that's what we're gonna do today is we're gonna move away from the ensemble way of thinking that paired the cynthy way of thinking and thinking more in the sense of the individual sections and the best way to think of it is these are no longer fingers their voices most musical instruments but designed to play just one note at a time certainly brass woodwinds violins cellos they can play more than one note but it's it's not really how the instrument is designed which is why I guess the piano and the guitar dominates is the preferred compositional tool as composers think of things in cords and in pads and in blocks we need to tear ourselves away from that thinking because the people are playing those chords and pads and blocks are thinking in single voices in passages in melodies sub melodies counterpoint and accompaniment so let's get down to the shed now not that I need much excuse to buy stationery I think the best way to review your own work is to have a notebook and a pencil it's a lovely new notebook this year from ona fer Thank You ona fer and just to sit back listen to your work and just to make a list of things that you feel you can do to improve the piece this doesn't have to be just before orchestral stuff I know many kind of EDM producers to do the same thing just actually just listen to it in a kind of mindset of just real deep analysis and just note down all the bits you want to address so let's have a listen back [Music] [Music] right so I have a list of 1011 things the great thing about having set of notes like this is it suddenly goes from you know the daunting task of making a track sound better to just a simple list of - dues which you can cross off and I think that the minute we get away from the kind of artistry of what we do and break it down into kind of these more kind of craft components it's a lot less daunting so these really are kind of aid memoirs for me they're not kind of assistance notes so they're real like it's mega shorthand so opening staccato so boring the opening winds I want to split them up into individual voices and I think that should be a cor anglais I think the entry of the low winds is as I've said here the strings I'm going to split them off into they're separate voices I mentioned up on the volcano and use lagartos there when the wind staccato start I'm going to do something a lot more interesting there again breaking them into the the separate voices and I'm going to introduce some piccolo flowers around bar 9ish put some kind of brass the counterpoint in probably a horn line it goes to kind of a military bit so I might embrace that and introduce another choir of the orchestra I'll get back there in a minute and then I'm gonna cut and paste the wind stuff that I do previously to the last bit possible top line in trumpet for the climax and then I'm gonna return back to an individual wind instrument at the end and the final thing is you know at points I find it drags and you know something I think that we forget in this day and age is that a form of expression certainly with an orchestra is not just soft and quiet and vibrato and non verba art oh and the various different colors the various choirs you can use in the orchestra it's also tempo so there are points where I feel that we can quite happily speed up slow down AB and flow and I feel that the use of tempo as a means of expression is something that is being lost on this kind of age of working everything to a click so that'll probably be the last thing I do along with just a little bit of tidying up and maybe just a little point couple of pointers of how I get the stuff to mix together a little bit better but first things first there's no beating around the bush here in order to get really realistic sounding emotional emotive orchestral mock-ups you really have to go into the individual sections if you recall with the strings we use the whole kind of ensemble some high strings some low strings whole symphonic string choir it's time to go into the individual sections so we need to basically split up our pad parts into separate voices you have to imagine these as I said before as voices not fingers it's not as daunting as it sounds because the rules are quite simple first violins play at the top second violins are next down violas underneath the second violins cellos underneath them and bass is right at the bottom now they can play higher and their harmonies or voices can cross but it's kind of scorned upon and if you were to do an orchestral session often an arm would go up is it right that I'm going above the section above me so this actually makes our job nice and easy all we need to do is to divide up our fingers into the different registers now where their ranges are concerned the samples will tell you where they're comfortable ranges are in the sense they'll run out when you're getting a bit unreasonable but really the rule is that all strings first second violas and cellos can go pretty darn high in fat cello sound awesome pretty high up whereas the basses start to sound a little bit wobbly where their lower ranges are concerned you'll just simply run out of necks it's physically impossible for the note to go any lower than what the sample sets takes so first things first is because it's always a chance will make a total Horlicks of this let's save this down as an easily recognizable day to now splitting these string lines up if you recall we had a kind of a high string line and a low string line so I'm going to split them into the basic five different components of a string section which is the first violins second violins violas cellos and basses we mustn't be too puritanical about the way in which we arrange our kind of MIDI strings I see many very successful composers using a combination of ensembles and the individual voices so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to pull up some individual voices and blend them in with these Albion once the advantage of that is my favorite string library is the chamber strings library may by Spitfire it's a much smaller sounding string library but it gives you huge amounts of detail so I'm gonna get the weight from Albion 1 and the detail from chamber strings so let's pull these up now if we recall lagartos are a monophonic you know one note at a time technique where the actual transitions between the notes have been recorded and are basically inserted cleverly between the notes that you play provided you join up the notes now in chamber strings we have these performance lagartos whereby you can select different types of transition with the different velocities that you play with so if I play loudly will get bowed if I play it kind of in a middle range we'll get fingered and then if I play really really softly we'll get the porterman to her transition was absolutely fantastic which again is another way of adding some expressions and power to what you're doing and also if you do stuff fast it'll do runs for you as well quite clever anyway let's just get down to the business of basically separating out these string parts into their different voicings and it really is quite straightforward so I've merged those two parts together copied it down here let's mute that for the time being and what I'm gonna do is because in the higher strings we've got the three different sections we've got the First's seconds and violas so basically just copying all the parts across and we want to look at the first the violins now basically this is only a two part harmony so what I'm gonna have is the first and the second playing this line so I'm just gonna get rid of the violas there and then you'll see the violas it all goes up an octave violas could come out there but then it's in octaves so what I'm gonna do for the first is just literally delete the seconds and then we go to the next one and again we're doubling on the seconds and we've already got these take those out take the violas out and then poor old violas with these very boring lines but that is a quite common kind of thing you'll find with the owners they tend to play the middle parts which where the harmonies don't move as much there we go excellent so I'm just gonna mute these and the other thing I should have done this before sorry when I copied them up is just remove all of the automation data the real magic of separating things off into their individual voices is you can get each voice to express itself slightly different from another they're all playing together they're all in tune but by not duplicating you suddenly create more kind of beautiful chaos within what's going on the other thing I want to do is just make sure that everything is joined up so I'm just gonna do this except for those - just gonna hit lugar so and then I might as well just make sure they're all overlapping and let's listen to the style of lagartos we're going to use here so [Music] very nice so let's have a look at the velocities here and basically I'm going to change the legato bowing styles so that we've got bowed fingers then bowed and then this nice gap here I think would be great if we were to do that portamento so let's hear what that sounds like [Music] so that's interesting so basically this part is the actually actually should be in a viola because it drops beneath the violin range so that's actually going to be a nice bit of crosstalk between the sections so I'm just gonna take that out for now [Music] you [Music] you excellent so let's have a look at the second bit now that's when this all lagartos and then let's accept the repeated notes this is Krusty's over so then we want to re-record the controller information there so that the violin behaves as its own voice with its own kind of independent expression from the rest of the band so what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the rest of the track in and see if I can just kind of meld that into the rest of what's going on using a combination of expression and dynamic control here let's go to the next bit [Music] great so let's have a look at the seconds and again we're gonna have that issue with these going to low lagarto force legato make sure they overlap [Music] it's the gasser these up as well and let's record the modulation and expression for that one just can unmute the first so we can really merge them together [Music] and let's have listen to this one as well [Music] great we're just losing a little bit too much of the firsts that this transition point here I'm just gonna just take that controller maneuver back okay and then let's have a look at these Fiona's [Music] okay so let's select some nice little transitions there [Music] okay so we've really got to push that out keep it nice and it's a kind of a it's an accompanying note up into that point these two points here it really needs to come out so let's record the midi automation for that now [Music] great so let's title this up we're gonna go seconds short for viola is vars and then we're gonna do exactly the same thing just going to duplicate this track for the cellos and for the bases let's copy those and let's stick those together make the same mistake twice I'm going to get rid of all of the automation data for copying it across down to the basis and then let's go cellos there and basis they're awesome and just copy that down and then same as before nothing too complicated here just they're working in octaves so we're starting with the basses cellos art and then take the basses out of the cellos which you don't hit Espino below their range cellos are actually called viola on cello's so this short for them is VCS but whatever this is it for an aide memoire for you see bees contra bases is their kind of short backronym there and then let's just have a look at these and let's make them all nice and joined yuppie do that and the same with the bases [Music] simple as that okay so let's have a listen to the cellos [Music] okay so let's have a go at recording the automation for that the controller data for that [Music] great and then finally the basis so don't need to alter the base velocity because this only has one kind of style of legato so I'm just gonna mix it in with the midi-controller [Music] brilliant that's separating off the strings into their various invoices now because I'm using a smaller string sound than the Albion one really big ginormous strings section it has kind of gone a little bit thinner in aperture so what I'm gonna now do is add back the original Albion one so you can hear how we blend a combination of really hyped ensemble sounds and the slightly more intimate more detailed chamber sounds now what I have noticed is I've actually stupidly deleted the original low CS so I'm just going to grab that from talk about making a Horlicks I'm gonna grab that from the previous version so if we just quickly go here there we go rescued so it's gonna be interesting to see how these kind of mix and meld together [Music] great sound really kind of rich powerful emotional [Music] great now what I'm gonna try doing is just doubling up this part here I'm entirely convinced by the sounds of the violas on their own so I'm just gonna do this use all of the same controller data let's just see what that sounds like so basically ostensibly I'm dividing the cello section into two [Music] jumps out a little bit too much now [Music] okay that's quite good let's just have a look at the data here I think we need to do is just have it coming in just a bit softer like where it gets too [Music] the violas and cellos [Music] great so that's task number one done like with the strings we've been using basically woodwind ensembles which sound great and we're going to leave some of these in but I find particularly with woodwinds by going into individual players not just sections of two or three but actually solo players you get these lone very personable voices this is where we can really increase the kind of emotive content of your Kestrel piece that we're writing so what's next up on our shopping list okay the opening winds I'm gonna take off it being on Ensemble [Music] okay I took a breath there I think they'd be actually fine with that but let's just take it off the ensemble and I'm gonna call up a thing called a cor anglais Corrin glaze just sounds so beautiful both in samples but also in movies so often they mistaken for oboes number of times I have directors going I'd really like an oboe to kind of lead this score when they hear the oboe hmm I think well what you actually mean is it's a cor anglais it's a slightly richer sounding instrument so let's have a listen to that also known as the the English horn and you'll see it comes with the legato in there absolutely beautiful so let's just pull that down have a listen to that [Music] that's it beautiful I'm just gonna make the entry just a little bit quieter [Music] that's great and then just this last bit here might be a little bit high but let's have a look okay so let's split that copy that down here okay so what we'll need to do is find another instrument for that cor anglais s-- and I think maybe what we can do is use the piccolo might be quite fun when played so these are absolutely beast little bastards the piccolo but when played kind of gently they can actually have a slightly tin whistle II feel to them which is quite nice so let's have a listen to that first [Music] very nice indeed I'm gonna call that pick legato so these are the long woods let's have a check of those [Music] okay so conversely with fees these come in at a really odd point because we took that breath before so I'm gonna alter that but also another great sound is our bassoon so let's have a go on that soon solo because it's a kind of it's it's got a double reeds there's a similar sound to the choral let's kind of part the oboe bassoon family so it's basically it's almost like a deeper cor anglais so there should be a nice relationship with the two of those [Music] we actually don't mind that entry now that it's it's a lots kind of softer I'm just gonna balance that a little bit I think maybe the corner on Blake could simply come up a bit I'm just gonna try one experiment I'm just gonna see what cor anglais sounds like down an octave against the piccolo or maybe even down torches I like it I'll reserve judgment on that might prefer just that the lonely piccolo I mentioned the staccatos notes here I'll speak our toes find them a bit boring so what I'm actually gonna do is pull up some of these chamber shorts to just basically produce a little bit of kind of harmonic interest almost like a some kind of echo so let's have a go at that I'm just gonna go here and I'm gonna go to chamber strings and actually use the ensembles I just will have a slightly smaller sound than the ambience nice let's just see what these sound like a slightly softer we may actually make them just a little bit more distant [Music] you [Music] okay that sounds great so that's a chamber stack and then I'm just gonna try stacking that with a : yo which is the back of the bow and hitting the string that's interesting [Music] it's gonna try a couple of again I'm not trained so I'm just basically trying stuff out and Mon Homme just gonna try another woodwind sound there to play that really interesting line there let's start with the bassoon and see if that's not an interesting [Music] excellent see if there's not another sound we can find it's just have a little look at a bass clarinet such a great soundness [Music] Gregg makes it a lot more interesting at the beginning there so opening stacks boring ticked off now this next section I really want to arrange up these woodwinds so currently we've got them in a and Ensemble so that's a mixture of oboes flutes and clarinets so let's actually just create tracks with those three different elements in and see if we just make this part just that a little bit more interesting maybe take influence from that we've just done so let's go flutes shorts they're hobos I'm going for the section so two players not just the one so it feels like a section not just two soloists oboe and finally Conan's now woodwinds don't operate necessarily like strings within the kind of the discipline of say flutes Piccolo's Alto flutes bass flutes the register is kind of is key I guess I mean often I will maybe get a bass clarinet to play in a clarinet range because it has a richer sound but the rules of where they position themselves aren't as hard and fast as say with first second violins violas that kind of stuff so let's just label that so we've got flutes just let's get them more on the shorts it's all about the shorts [Music] let's try these answering phrases [Music] okay and then it's gonna harmonize [Music] it's gonna bring the flutes forward they have slightly more you've got to play slightly more behind the beat or ahead of the beat rather for them to kind of sound so [Music] just gonna take away that original boring part and I'm just going to just gonna up the old velocity for that bit cuz it's much more of a climax [Music] okay so that's that crossed off like we did with the strings and the woodwinds let's have a look at kind of individual voicing of the brass I want to find a new kind of counterpoint part here and there's no better or more regal instrument than a horn or a horn section a small one they for me are like the cellos of the brass section incredibly versatile dynamic with an incredible range in the right hands [Music] what the hell are there just have a little bit of a very emotional line that I feel that's nice horn part very happy with that okay brows can't count point now is gonna put a trumpet climax at the end so again not a huge section let's just call that horn hum and then another little track [Music] little thing to take off very nice so I've been speaking of choirs the choirs in the orchestra brass the woodwinds the strings there is a course of force it doesn't have to be a big section this one can be just one person can be four but it doesn't have make a racket talking of course about percussion and for me the way I imagine percussion within an orchestral context is it's your kind of it's your punctuation marks it's a bit of kind of maybe making stuff in bold underlying that kind of stuff so you'll hear some of these bits it certainly needs to be like marked a little bit more some of these bits are what I refer to sounding a little bit lumpy so percussion could really help us kind of smooth through how the audience understand the dramatic markers of the different sections so let's just have a look first at the very obvious section which is this slightly militaristic one I'm just gonna put a little kind of I don't think I'm gonna put a snare in there because it immediately has this kind of Imperial quality but there's this technique with a a Tom where you can play on the sides with a stick which I just think it's nice to bring out a little bit of definition there and then we'll look at other areas where we can do some other stuff [Music] okay so what I'm actually gonna do is I'm just gonna completely even those all out so let's just go note velocity I'm gonna use this thing nice just see how it sounds on that [Music] let's have a listen to maybe a nice cymbal swipe here if we can find some bass drums just for a little bit of punctuation in the bottom out so let's go again - drums low [Music] I just put another one of those nice symbols here [Music] good stuff so that's another tick off there the final part of the puzzle is tempo and this is something I feel that we often forget is a form of expression particularly within orchestral music okay so let's start just a little bit slower I'm gonna go to tempo operations start at 65 let's get to 75 and we'll go in eighth so let's have a listen to how that sounds [Music] I'm going to go back down again to 70 75 to maybe 72 yeah and we'll get back up 75 very quickly [Music] 72 back to 75 and then as we move on here can slug in much more excited slit so listen [Music] yeah from 11 I really want to feel this getting getting considerably faster not consider a pivot term a smidge it's only 75 let's get up to 82 [Music] too fast too fast 78 but it can feel the passion and then we're going to come right back down again 78 back down I'd say to even maybe 70 [Music] back up 75 there 7075 just repeat this thing against it at 75 to 78 and we'll find a way of getting back down possibly here maybe a bar and a half 78 back down to a leisurely 70 there I think that's pretty good for a second pass for today okay I think it's really important to kind of pause at this point before we play this track down to talk about how I've made this film I'm running probably at about three times the comfortable pace I'd like to run at I think as I've proven today that just being able to actually do something leave it come back reflect is an important part of the process but in order to kind of keep things motoring along for you so you're not spending in a day watching this I'm working at quite a pace also what we've decided to do is we've not include any of my mistakes so basically I'm giving you all of the the final takes that takes that I'm happy with and believe you me sometimes I'm having eight or nine goes I think it's just important to say that so you don't feel that somehow kind of magically this stuff is spouting out of my fingers most of what I do is just kind of mess around and fiddle around you start learning the sounds and the way these instruments can kind of operate you'll hear things that are familiar you would have heard something by Mozart years back and you go oh that's that's how he combined that instrument to make that sound that's interesting so you start kind of logging stuff in your own head but most of the time it's just me kind of miss making mistakes and when they stop sounding like mistakes I tend to leave them in [Music] so I think the key take-home from today is again you know this is a voyage of discovery for you you know I don't want to make too many of these videos because I don't want you to be locked into the way that I work it's all about finding a workflow that works for you if it sounds right if it sounds good then leave it in even if you feel that it might be breaking certain rules as always the quality of what comes out your fingers the quality of the decisions you make will be based on your own personal heritage the music that you have listened to all of your life so make sure you put the good stuff in your tank but most of all don't fear orchestral just dive in and have a go if there is another day a day three that I could do let me know if you'd like to see that I think I've got something quite fun in my head but that'll probably be it that is the the length of my 25 years of working out how to do this orchestral stuff it's not rocket science it just takes a bit of practice thanks as always for watching if you haven't subscribed to the Spitfire channel there's loads of amazing content in there and coming up so hit the subscribe button if you want to be notified the next time we put a video up ding that Bell and if you've liked this video one of those would be most appreciated see you next time you

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 248,255

Rating: 4.9758687 out of 5

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Id: fNCfXXIGnsI

Length: 51min 27sec (3087 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 09 2019