The Secret to Orchestral Programming

hi there my name is christian henson i'm from spitfire audio and aside from my job at spitfire audio i also have a day job which is i'm a media composer i write music for film tv and computer games thing is i never went to music college and i don't really read music i really congratulate anyone who has gone through that process but for those of us who haven't orchestras and orchestration can be a really daunting prospect but fortunately modern technology enables anyone to communicate with orchestras to create orchestral music now having spoken to many composers starting out in orchestral i believe that one of the other kind of fear factors are these things controllers and when you see people going like the concept behind using these is fairly simple and you don't need to have a dedicated controller a modulation wheel will do and many keyboards come with their own faders on them the main reason we need these i call mine expression controllers is that keyboards come up slightly short when it comes to emulating orchestras let me demonstrate something to you now here's the labs soft piano this is recorded at one dynamic layer so we've just pressed a note at a single kind of volume and recorded that across the keyboard so what i'm going to do is play the keyboard really quietly and then louder and what you'll hear is the volume is changing slightly between soft and loud it is a soft piano so it doesn't get that loud and the reason that it doesn't is because we haven't recorded the upper dynamic layers now if i demonstrate with han zimmer's piano what i mean by this you'll hear soft it not only gets louder it gets brighter and more metallic that is because we've recorded the different dynamic layers and the different timbras or tone color that an instrument makes as you play it louder now the thing with the keyboard is the dynamic layer is determined by how loud you strike the note quiet loud that is because a piano is by and large a percussive instrument a hammer hitting a string you have no control over that hammer after it's hit with an orchestra the note is continuously being determined by your string pressure or the pressure that you're blowing at so say for example and the only way of doing this on a piano is to repeatedly strike the notes which is why when we program orchestral instruments we have two different techniques of dynamic expression if you will with shorts they work pretty much like a normal keyboard so quiet [Music] it's allowed and in fact the real way of making very realistic sounding orchestral pieces using short notes is to really take advantage of these terrible differences so if i was just to record it all at one level it would sound like this [Music] compared to something like this likewise if i was to record long notes in like this it has a one-dimensional synthy almost primitive nature to it as opposed to so with short notes what we're simply doing is triggering the different dynamic layers the louder we play and you'll see if you look at the voice count here i'm going to play three notes three voices however with our orchestral longs when i play three notes nine voices this is because this particular sound has three dynamic layers and that's all this controller is doing it's basically mixing between the three dynamic layers which are constantly playing in the background from quiet medium to loud now it's my real honor to be demonstrating the principles of expression control by using abbey road one which has the biggest number of dynamic layers we've recorded for non-percussion instruments in our history so you'll see when i hit three notes on high strings it's actually using 30 voices [Music] so getting into expression control is a real way of expressing the humanity within an orchestra now i'm using a palette gear basically because it looks fancy uh is it the best solution possibly not it's quite expensive you do get the odd drop app because it's kind of clever you can kind of break it up like that i love the kenton control freak but it's ugly as hell for a tutorial like this and i know a lot of people use the korg nano control but as i say all you need really is a modulation wheel or indeed a couple of faders on your keyboard and if you don't have any controllers not to worry because you can program these controls in more of that later i'm using logic but this will apply to anyone working in any door i'm not interfacing with logic here i'm interfacing with the plug-in and the most important controller is modulation and that's cc one so that's really the first controller you need to get your head round and you'll see that these plugins come with this default cc one which is your modulation wheel controller but a lot of us composers also like to use expression you'll see this fader on the left that is cc 11 expression here and what is that well expression is difficult to describe really because it's it's kind of like volume it's a way of balancing your instrument against the rest of the section or the orchestra whereas dynamic control literally controls the dynamic recordings that we've made in order to really get the best out of orchestras you want them to be as dynamic as possible and a lot of composers find by using a combination of expression and modulation that you get the most kind of bandwidth the most bang for your buck so instead of just [Music] you get just that extra punch now why have i got control 11 on that one and controller one on that sorry for british people out there this is actually a swear sign um in our country this finger has a dedicated uh tendon where this doesn't so this basically you you have more control over this finger more detail than this one and what you'll find is you'll want to be doing more subtle kind of nuanced things in here whereas this finger is simply acting as a balance against the rest of the orchestral instruments or indeed within the section right so let me show you the mistake that everyone makes when they start out and throughout their career so what i'm going to do is going to find a level that i like [Music] so i'm going to go quiet then loud now the mistake i've made has already happened crescendo diminuendo [Music] the mistake happened because i set the level without being in record so see what happens now if i pull up the expression data here you'll see basically we haven't set the level the nominal level we want at the beginning so basically if we go all the way to the end it diminuendes down to the bottom and so we're right at the bottom level and then it jumps up there so the rule is always give it a wiggle when you're in record [Music] that's an expression and that's in your dynamic modulation controller little wiggle there to let your plugin know where you want the dynamic controls to be at the beginning now most of us composers when we're composing we don't just sit at the piano and compose there and then go right how are we going to orchestrate it we compose whilst playing the orchestral instruments and when we compose we use both hands not to worry i'm going to show you how i get around this so let me select both the high and the low strings so i've got both hands going on [Music] okay so what i'm going to do is just set a nominal level there i'm not going to worry about the wiggle just yet and i'm just going to write something into the door it's interesting what happened though the reason it's really quiet is because of this last bit here so what i'm going to do is give it a wiggle and then i know this is the this is the volume i want it at so i'll give that little wiggle and then play these in with both hands [Music] and all i do is simply record the controller data over the top so we've got our wiggle [Music] there we have both our expression and modulation data there now we've talked about crescendi and diminuendi so let's demonstrate those two principles a crescendo starts quiet and a diminuendo gradually gets a little bit quieter so we can see just very simple expression control there getting louder at the beginning you play in the middle and softer at the end but i think to get truly now you'll see look we've got a little dropout here this is what i was talking about with this uh controller these are annoying you need to to fix those because you get these look kind of they sound like little glitches anyway that's great sounds very expressive but what about the middle bit well when you see an orchestra play you'll see them kind of rocking in and out of the notes and i have the great privilege of having worked with many orchestras and many orchestral players and from what i've observed every note is shaped so as a consequence i think it's really important when programming orchestral music that you're constantly moving these faders up around so you don't get this kind of static section here it has a mechanical slightly artificial quality to it sounds very strident but after a while you're like you can hear these samples just being triggered so let's just try that again but shaping that middle section now for me it's really just going with your feelings but if you want a guide to the shapes most string players make is they bring the note in softly and make it die down gently so just set a nominal level there and just play this straight versus and something i'm constantly being corrected on is the idea of just stopping notes suddenly and that's a real tell of bad orchestral programming it's just things coming to an abrupt end a player will simply never allow his or her note to simply stop they will gently coax and bevel it out so this and this is where as i mentioned before reverbs really do help us believe what we're doing let me just get a nice one up here because i'm using a combination of expression and dynamic control you often maybe take out quite a lot of the room as well and the reverb helps us kind of stay in that room if you know what i mean before we move on to brass and woodwinds i just want to give you one more consideration for programming strings using expression control so let's just lay down a two-handed part again [Music] now another thing i think is really important about orchestral programming is to understand that each of these notes have been created by a different section a different group of players and as i mentioned before they'll all be leaning in and out of the notes and if you have time i think for the most realistic results i think it's great to split those different notes into different voices and program in the expression control independently for those so you get all sorts of different shapes this creates more of a sense of the humanity behind the notes being played it's very very easy to do so what i'm going to do is i'm going to duplicate three of the high strings so we've got our first violins second violins and violas and then we've got our cellos and basses there i'm going to simply duplicate this five times and when voicing an orchestra is concerned it's just really simple if you kind of make each one of your fingers a voice you've already voiced it and you just need to literally split them off so top first violins get the top poor old second violins are getting a pretty boring part there pedal note and then we've got our violas they're cellos bass is sitting an octave under the cellos which is very very common voicing so what i'm going to do is actually start with the cellos and then i'm gonna do the basis so let's keep the cellos and bases on there and this is when this whole balancing act with the expression i think really comes into play so next up basis maybe a bit heavier than the cellos [Music] and you can see there that i've i've made the bases a little bit stronger than the cellos to make it bass heavy but also have allowed the cellos to die off a little bit earlier keep the bases going on there let's have a go at this second violin here and again so i'm controlling i'm keeping an ear out for tonbra but i also want to use expression to mix this voice in with the cellos and bases [Music] now we've got some additional movement in these notes in the violas and that i'm really going to want to eke out and let's see if we can match something similar in the firsts so then what i'm going to do is just send them all a little bit of to reverb land and the great thing is if you feel that it's not quite right or you just want to tweak some bits or you can hear it going between layers or the release triggers then there's always a bit of post-production you can do afterwards so i've got a button here that hits me up for expression and then for modulation and what i'm going to do here is just roll that off there roll that off there all that off and i can see there's a little thing that is correct in there let's see with a bit of reverb what that sounds like [Music] beautiful so all generally following a similar shape but all of these interweaving voices are acting just that little bit independently of each other and the more of those variables you add in the more you're going to be working like an orchestra works right so that's strings what about brass and woodwinds well i always think that basically brass instruments are like two instruments in one you've got the kind of mellow chocolaty stuff and then you've got the growl [Music] so dynamic control in brass is absolutely fundamental let's have a look at some horns probably the most regal of your orchestral instruments so for me the transition into the brassiere tones as i think they're referred to the slightly more growly bright tones for me creates a wholly different emotional reaction you'll see that i'm recording a lot of this into logic i'm going to export it as a logic file but also as a midi file if you don't use logic so you can get under the hood and look for yourself which would be particularly useful if you do use abbey road one now theoretically this should work for any orchestral library but the key point here particularly with the horns is if you listen [Music] it has a plaintive kind of quality to it now if i go [Music] it has a more regal angry officious sound so working with your samples using your ears and working out how the samples respond to your dynamic control is fundamental to orchestral programming what i do with this horn patch may not be similar to how it would turn out with say our symphonic range or our bbc range so it's really important that you work with the sounds and it's i think profoundly important with horns because if you want to keep it tearful [Music] and then a bit angrier trumpets sound like a fragile youngest brother or sister [Music] but they can have a right old tantrum and as for lowbros what is also particularly beautiful about low brass is it's a way of introducing lower harmonic content so let's go back to this part here i'm just going to copy it across so if you do decide to download this logic session you know where we are i'll label it all up so what about adding some content here first following what the string is doing and then a little dissonance there like that [Music] a lovely way of adding in harmonic complexity deeper down without creating a kind of sludge that you get just by adding loads and loads of string voices and woodwinds are no different they rely wholly on the ability to change the note quality whilst playing it similar to the brass maybe not as pronounced you'll find in lower woodwinds you do get that that change in timbre that really goes from soft and chocolatey to a little bit more raspy another problem you may encounter with your expression controller and this way of inputting stuff in is what i call fight fight fight so let's just reprogram in that part that we played before but with the orchestra [Music] don't know if i entirely intended to play that last chord but we'll run with it so let's uh program some controller data over the top [Music] so not too happy with that second bit there so i'm going to go over the top just do that second half and you would have heard a little bit of a fight ensuing in the middle there this is no fault of the controller or indeed the plug-in or the door is just the way that midi works simple way around that is to get your pencil out and just to even that out but you can see the general gist of what i'm trying to do and make sure if you're using both the expression and the dynamic control just to have a little bit of a smooth out there [Applause] expression control you kind of almost got to imagine it like a like a monophonic control if you try and layer too much you'll simply be fighting between the different bits of info that you're inputting via your controller which leads me on to programming if you find playing the piano hard enough the idea of using a fader controller at the same time terrifying i know plenty of hugely successful composers who don't bother with this at all they simply program it in later so here i've got that same part the whole orchestra playing that and i'm simply going to i know that i want this to start quiet i want it to get loud here i want it to dive here and i know i need to make those shapes to make it feel like an orchestra of human beings not a synthesizer so again i'm going to whip out the pencil and i'm going to first start with modulation i'm just going to go in like this and then do something similar with expression i'm not as experienced as doing it this way so i'm i'm kind of dreading what this is going to sound like but the whole point about programming is you can change it after the event so let's have a listen to these two and what's interesting at this point we're sitting at that kind of break brassy point and if i was playing it in at the same time i probably would have come in a little bit lower i would have felt that so keeping expression the same so that the kind of level that it's playing at and maybe just nudging that back a bit conversely if i want to make the whole thing sound a lot brassier i just hit alt in logic i'm sure there's a way of doing it in cubase and pro tools and dp and just pull that all up there now i mentioned earlier that expression is simply like volume and a lot of people ask well why don't you just use volume well it's important to have more than one gain stage or way of attenuating the level of an instrument or a preset or a voice so that you can mix them against each other now we've programmed in all of this lovely expression and dynamic data but i want say for example the cellos to be a bit louder now i don't want to have to go in and change all of this programming so i can use one of two methods one simply turn up the volume here or indeed the fader here and we can automate both the instrument volume and the track volume what i tend to use these for is like little attenuators so if i just feel there's something in the sample or the trumpet is biting a little bit too much throughout the piece i'll reattenuate that trumpet level for this particular cue and then i'll reserve the fader here for kind of mixer automation if i'm mixing it myself but it doesn't just apply to strings woodwinds and brass many of you have had the pleasure of downloading the eric whitaker choir patch in labs which is free and again you'll see that this really can make the the whole thing sound just that much more human [Music] and i suspect once many of you get used to this way of working that you may become tempted to start applying it to things that aren't human say for example some textual pads music is an emotional medium and maybe the most correct description of this form of control is emotional control and i think it will open up a world of possibilities not only with your orchestral programming but anything you do that contains notes that you can influence after you've struck them so we'll put a link in the video description down below for this logic session i'll also do a midi file version as well and as i say if you own abbey road this will translate perfectly you can try on other orchestral libraries to see what i'm getting up to but i won't be responding to the timbral differences of that library which is again why it's often such a wonderful thing to do live via a controller whilst you're inputting if you want to find out more about abbey road click on the link down below and do subscribe for any other videos that will be coming up with useful tutorials about how to break into the scary but it isn't it's the brilliant world of orchestral it's a world of possibilities so ding that bell if you want to be notified the next time we put a video up and one of those always much appreciated thanks as always for watching to the end and see you next time

Channel: Spitfire Audio

Views: 134,979

Rating: 4.9625893 out of 5

Keywords: the secret, orchestral progarmming, expression, using a mod wheel, realistic samples, abbey road one, abbey road studios, tutorial, how to, composing

Id: 7Vxj4ghJHtY

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020