Orchestra piece progress 006

The "final" mix is up on the player (in the number one spot!).

You'll hear percussion: A couple of big drums from Stormdrum, an EW snare, EW cymbals and gongs.

Also added in the beginning and ending: Celesta, Harp, Chimes

I need to go sleep now, but I'll do a debriefing on the process in the next day or so.

Thanks for reading!!

Orchestra piece progress 005

Odyssey Begins RF4 at the bottom of the player.

All the parts are tracked to audio now, with the exception of the percussion which still needs to be added (whew!!).

The choir has been added to this rough mix. With the exception of the strings, everything is pretty much mono right now. I thought that this might be a good contrast as the piece progresses to hear how much difference panning can make on an orchestral piece. The EW libraries and to some extent the KH library comes "pre-panned", but for this piece I'm using primarily SAM orchestral brass, SampleModeling Trumpet and Westgate Studios Woodwinds, which aren't pre-panned.

One thing I like to do is to bus all the individual sections to their own bus, which allows me to add a global amount of reverb via a send to each section individually. I can do detailed balances within each section with automation and then when I'm doing the very final mix, I have just a few faders to deal with. I can always go back in and tweak an individual instrument if necessary. I will do the panning on the individual tracks, but they all end up on the same bus which means if I need more trombones, I just pull up one fader. If I want to move the bones back in the room a bit, I just add a bit more verb send and drop the level down a shade if necessary.

More to come!!

orchestra piece progress 004

Odyssey Begins RF3 at the bottom of the player list.

The intro is on. I used material from the ending in the low brass and horns. That and percussion will be the extent of the intro, I think. It will be a nice contrast for when the strings and woodwinds come in.

The woodwinds are complete. The EW strings have been brought down a bit so the other parts are more clear.

Still to come is the rest of the choir parts and, of course, the percussion. The choir isn't on these mixes cause it's on a separate computer and doesn't get bounced with the internal VI's.

After that, I will track all the parts to audio tracks and mix.

Next blog I'll attach screen shots of some of the parts to show the keyswitches and the separate tracks for different articulations, particularly in the woodwinds.

orchestra piece progress 003

The next iteration is up on the player: Odyssey Begins RF2 (at the bottom of the song list)

It's starting to morph a bit away from the sketch but not much really. The sketch is pretty "sketchy" which leaves room for interpretation and doesn't lock things tightly. I have chosen to be pretty true to the harmonic progression and the rhythmic structure, which will save time and hopefully make the piece feel cohesive.

The strings started out as only Kirk Hunter Diamond and have now been doubled with EW Platinum. The KH strings have more "bite" to them, to my ears and the EW have the hall sampled in on the releases which makes the sound "swim" a bit and smooths out some of the mechanical-ness. I'll do some more "humanizing" on the EW parts to make them even less mechanical.

Of course, on this mix, it's "ALL STRINGS ALL THE TIME" LOL

You'll notice that the piece goes all the way to the end now, still minus the intro. I've added a string melody, which I didn't think I was going to do but it just called for it after the string flourish at bar 54. The melody was actually derived from the brass melody that comes in at bar 70, the brass melody there came first and then the string melody was put in at bar 58.

The woodwinds are conspicuously absent from about bar 42 on but they will be coming back, particularly at bar 70 to reinforce the brass melody an octave higher.

The voices will be more prominent in the final mix as well. They will be coming back in off and on.

The percussion will really help to add the drama and support the build. I intend to add Taiko drums as the piece progresses. I'll start with a fairly sparse part since the strings are doing their part to move things along but by the time bar 70 rolls around, we should have a fairly rockin' Taiko part going. The trick with percussion is to use it for color and drama, a little goes a long way. I always find myself going back and taking out percussion or really trying to find the perfect spot to add it. It's tricky to find the right balance. I think if I'm adding too much percussion, I'm trying to make up for some deficiencies in the rest of the orchestration, at least for a piece like this. I love percussion, don't get me wrong! But for a piece like this, a little goes a long way, and judicious use of the percussion will really heighten the drama and the build.

Enjoy!! More to come.

Orchestra piece progress 002

There's no way I'll make the deadline with a finished piece so I took a chance and bounced down what I have so I could submit. My wife's Prius died and I had to pick her up from the dealer this morning among other things, like a previous commitment to go look at furniture for our living room yesterday afternoon. Life keeps going on, it doesn't stop for little orchestra pieces!!

Here's a link to what I have so far:

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1672238

It's also in the player at the top, it's called "Odyssey Begins RF".

I usually don't post really rough pieces but for the purposes of this blog, it's available in all it's unfinished glory!!

I'll continue working on this today and tomorrow. I need to finish it by tomorrow afternoon due to other commitments.

Orchestra piece progress 001

I'm up to bar 50 but the piece is still kind of like a checkerboard. I'll work ahead with a section and then fill in behind it. I haven't written the intro yet, the music currently starts at bar 18. I'll probably leave at least one blank bar at the beginning for controller setups, initial keyswitches, etc.

Due to the time constraints, I've decided that the piece will ebb and flow by changing the textures of the rhythmic chords. It starts with horns doubled with woodwinds and then moves to brass and then strings and low brass (while the trumpets play the melody) and then down a bit with the strings and then adding the brass and then everyone will be playing big fat chords while the voices take the melody.

Right now the mix is a total mess with everything too loud and after I get the parts in, I'll go back and add the more subtle controller tweaks and begin to refine the mix.

The good thing about having a roadmap laid out ahead of time, is that the foundation is already down and the execution can be done more efficiently. Of course, things will change as the sketch is filled out, but it's way less hit and miss because the path forward is clearer before the computer ever gets booted up and the samples loaded.

Back to it!!

Sketch of orchestral piece

Well, below is a sketch I am going to start to put in to the computer, hopefully to meet a deadline on Friday, which is very ambitious. It's a TAXI listing, not a gig deadline, so if I miss it, it's not the end of the world. But I'd like to challenge myself to come up with a big orchestral piece and have it be big and powerful yet not over complex orchestrationally.

So, briefly, here's what I've done so far:

I set up a form and a harmonic structure and played it in to the sequencer roughly using a piano patch.

Then I printed out some sketch paper with the piano part on the top and 4 staves below.

I already knew that I was going to use strings, brass, percussion, woodwinds and voices.

I'm going to distribute the accompaniment amongst the brass and strings, starting with the strings and then moving to the brass later and then the combined "band" doing punches with the voices doing a simple long melody. I think that will be dramatic and will allow for good opportunities to build, which is one thing the listing mentions. It looks like the strings won't be doing much melody on this one.

As far as woodwinds go, I'll probably use flutes, clarinets and oboes and probably will have them doubling each other playing three note chordal melodies because I'll need the power. I may have them do some trills or flourishes near the end if it doesn't make the texture too complex or make the sequencing take too long!

That's all for now. Time to go boot up the Mac and get rolling!

See the pages of the sketch below (there's two page 7's, oops!) :)

Mazz

Sketch of orchestral piece, pics