# A couple of adventure pieces (with score pdfs)



## Leon Willett (Jun 26, 2011)

I posted these two pieces on my website a few weeks ago, and I've been receiving requests to scan the sheet music (as usual, hehe), which I've finally got around to. 

You can listen to the pieces and download the pdf scores here:

http://www.leonwillett.com/leonwillett. ... ching.html

Sorry I can't make downloadable mp3s, as they are part of a forthcoming library CD 

Anyway, I know some of you guys really enjoy looking at the scores as well as listening, so I hope you enjoy it  

Incidentally, how do you guys sketch for the orchestra? As you'll see from my blog post, I've slowly gravitated towards completely unmarked staves, and away from my old sketchpad where the instrument groups were all laid out.


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## Guy Bacos (Jun 26, 2011)

Wow! Well there's no doubt you are in full command of your style and orchestration, and you have my full admiration on how well you master your craft. I've been listening to other cues on your website, very impressive!


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## lux (Jun 26, 2011)

as expected pretty refined orchestrations and a great sonic result. Thanks for sharing those.

Luca


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## impressions (Jun 26, 2011)

great stuff! what control you have over each motif and very detailed. how long did it take for you to compose it(without creating a mock-up)?
did you compose it as you go, or did you play with it first to see what motif works and if the development is flowing correctly?


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## Musicologo (Jun 26, 2011)

I'm totally impressed! This is really good stuff! 

I can already imagine scenes to put this. It's very visual.

I second the questions of the guy above. I'd love to hear more about your composition process and strategies. 

Do you ever write the scores?
Is this all played "by hand" in a keyboard? Or do you use written midi files exported to the DAW?


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## germancomponist (Jun 26, 2011)

Very good work, Leon!


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## David Story (Jun 26, 2011)

Wonderful feeling of playful adventure, dramatic shading, and flight.

Thanks for the sketches, I love scores.

When I do a sketch, it's on unmarked staves. As many or few as needed. The guys I know who use a set layout end up crossing out what's printed often.

It makes me sad to hear so much effort put into a mockup that deserves real instruments. On the other hand, these will probably sell well, they're excellent!


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## Alex Temple (Jun 26, 2011)

Fantastic writing and orchestration! Thanks for posting this. The rest of the music on your site is great too, I particularly enjoyed "Tinkerbell's Frantic Romp" and the tracks from Eridian.


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## JB78 (Jun 26, 2011)

I have been studying with Leon for almost 18 months now and can say that besides being an amazing composer, he's also an equally great teacher and all around good guy. Highly recommended!


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## Leon Willett (Jun 27, 2011)

Hey guys, thanks so much for the feedback.



impressions @ Sun Jun 26 said:


> how long did it take for you to compose it(without creating a mock-up)?
> did you compose it as you go, or did you play with it first to see what motif works and if the development is flowing correctly?


I've finally gotten to the point where I'm writing 6 pages a day (had been a goal for a long time to work up to this), so these pieces were about a day and a half to compose. Because I'm not on a deadline for these pieces, I just compose when I feel like it tho  

The 6 pages a day thing works out to 1 minute of fast music, or about 3 minutes of very slow music. 



Musicologo @ Sun Jun 26 said:


> I'd love to hear more about your composition process and strategies.
> 
> Do you ever write the scores?
> Is this all played "by hand" in a keyboard? Or do you use written midi files exported to the DAW?


I just write the sketches as you can see in the pdfs, and the orchestrate in the sequencer (the music pretty much orchestrates itself, since each line is so typical of one instrument or another). 

I play in parts which are easy, or "program" parts which are difficult, because I suck at playing keyboards 



David Story @ Sun Jun 26 said:


> When I do a sketch, it's on unmarked staves. As many or few as needed. The guys I know who use a set layout end up crossing out what's printed often.


Thanks a lot David! I was hoping for some feedback like this. Yes, it makes sense to used unmarked doesn't it? Yeah, cramming the strings into 3 staves while the percussion lies empty doesn't make much sense. It took me a few years to finally find the best template for myself, and it's kind of funny that it's a completely empty template 



Alex Temple @ Sun Jun 26 said:


> I particularly enjoyed "Tinkerbell's Frantic Romp" and the tracks from Eridian.


Thank you Alex, you can download the score for Tinkerbell here, including an engraved version that's tidier http://www.leonwillett.com/leonwillett.com/Blog/Entries/2009/4/24_Tinkerbells_Frantic_Romp.html 

That's my "old" template, with the instrument groups laid out


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## Marius Masalar (Jun 27, 2011)

Immensely impressive and humbling work, Leon, as always. Nothing makes my day like seeing a new snippet from you posted 

A few brief questions, if you don't mind:

1. Are you still running everything off your one Mac Pro? If so (which I hope is the case as I'm doing the same and am trying to avoid becoming a computer farmer) then how have you outfitted it RAM & Harddrive-wise, if you don't mind me asking?

2. Do you host samples in VE-Pro/Bidule or no?

3. You had, at one point, pre-ordered HS. Are you using it in your work now? Can you share any brief impressions on how workable it is on your machine?

Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts on those if you get a chance. To answer your question in return, when I do sketch by hand, I do so on a template I've created that's basically a series of unmarked staves that I can assign or ignore as I see fit — so basically your method, I've just included some general "groups" so that I can keep things visually organized on the page.

Thank you!


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## Leon Willett (Jun 27, 2011)

Thanks a lot for listening! 



Mathazzar @ Mon Jun 27 said:


> 1. Are you still running everything off your one Mac Pro? If so (which I hope is the case as I'm doing the same and am trying to avoid becoming a computer farmer) then how have you outfitted it RAM & Harddrive-wise, if you don't mind me asking?


Yes, just my Mac Pro! I have 32gb of ram (my template is 23gb of ram when loaded, that's about 14gb in kontakt, 4gb in Play server, and logic swells to about 5gb)

I have just normal 7.2k rpm drives for the sample library drives (no SSD or anything)

The performance is fine, though it sometimes stops during a big tutti, but is fine on the second pass. 



Mathazzar @ Mon Jun 27 said:


> 2. Do you host samples in VE-Pro/Bidule or no?


No, just inside logic. BUT! I have to use kontakt as multis (rather than having one instance per track), AND I have to eq inside kontakt, using only one output per instance. This is because of the retarded way Logic assigns any multi-out instrument to a single CPU core. Only single-out instruments are correctly distributed among your cores. 



Mathazzar @ Mon Jun 27 said:


> 3. You had, at one point, pre-ordered HS. Are you using it in your work now? Can you share any brief impressions on how workable it is on your machine?


I love HS! I don't use it on its own, but its part of my legato string "magic potion" (involving HS, CS, a bit of LASS LS, and a bit of custom stuff). But HS is half the sound at least, for legato. The only thing I would change about LS is that it sounds like a smallish room to me, I would have preferred something like todd ao, or wherever cinebrass recorded. 



Mathazzar @ Mon Jun 27 said:


> when I do sketch by hand, I do so on a template I've created that's basically a series of unmarked staves that I can assign or ignore as I see fit — so basically your method, I've just included some general "groups" so that I can keep things visually organized on the page.


Thanks for your feedback  I really am quite curious about how other people sketch. Feel free to post a pdf if you feel like it.


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## vlado hudec (Jun 27, 2011)

wow, very nice music, in JW style, which I probably will never be able to write :D


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## Colin O'Malley (Jun 28, 2011)

Excellent writing, Leon. Always get a lot of great info from you blog/site as well. Thanks for sharing. 

Colin


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## Ashermusic (Jun 28, 2011)

Found them.


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## nikolas (Jun 28, 2011)

I just commented, but I have to say it: Lovely music, lovely orchestration, lovely mixing and lovely mockup!


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## Ian Dorsch (Jun 28, 2011)

Thanks for sharing, Leon. I almost always find myself inspired and enriched by your writing.


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## Leon Willett (Jun 29, 2011)

Thanks a lot for your feedback, I appreciate it!


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## David3D (Jun 29, 2011)

Leon, Your music is incredible to say the least. I would write more, but I'm speechless.

Thank you for sharing!


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## Casey Edwards (Jul 2, 2011)

Really lovely stuff. Your template for sketching looks a lot like mine, the only difference being stave numbers, but in all honestly I need more than I have. What size paper do you use? If you have a PDF of your blank template staff paper please post it, I'd love to snatch it up and have some printed. If not I'll just make my own in Finale, but still knowing what size paper you use would be helpful.


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## tumeninote (Jul 2, 2011)

Hi Leon,

Very impressive! Music in your website are top notch as well.


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## Leon Willett (Jul 2, 2011)

Hi Casey, I'm trying this one at the moment, inspired by the template John Williams uses, but with 14 staves instead of 8. 

The paper size is a4, landscape. 

http://www.leonwillett.com/a4.pdf

unless the music is very busy, draw barlines so you get 8 bars per page, instead of 4


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## mducharme (Jul 2, 2011)

Very nice music! I wish I were that methodical when it comes to sketching.


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## rJames (Jul 2, 2011)

Great stuff and very nice of you to share the sketch to watch as we listen.

Thanks.


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## Casey Edwards (Jul 2, 2011)

Leon Willett @ Sat Jul 02 said:


> Hi Casey, I'm trying this one at the moment, inspired by the template John Williams uses, but with 14 staves instead of 8.
> 
> The paper size is a4, landscape.
> 
> ...



You can cram 14 staves on 8.5 x 11 paper? Wow, I just printed off 10 stave paper and it's getting a bit small. I love the measure number blocks though. My only problem is that I don't like to draw measure lines through different orchestral families. It helps me see the separation a lot quicker. To each their own, and you obviously have no problem doing a great job, so keep on keeping on!


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## TGV (Jul 3, 2011)

I'm impressed. I read your blog before. I found the way you show the structure of your pieces in sketch form very instructive. Difficult, but instructive. And the quality of the music is consistently high. I very much like how you so fluidly move from one idea to another. Great stuff.


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## musicpete (Jul 4, 2011)

Thank you for those links Leon!


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## Kejero (Jul 6, 2011)

Man I've been looking for an update to that blog for a while  Your writing is as mindblowing as ever. Need more games with that kind of sonic quality! Keep it up!


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## adg21 (Jul 6, 2011)

Great music and great blog. thanks o-[][]-o


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## adg21 (Jul 17, 2011)

Leon Willett @ Sat Jul 02 said:


> Hi Casey, I'm trying this one at the moment, inspired by the template John Williams uses, but with 14 staves instead of 8.
> 
> The paper size is a4, landscape.
> 
> ...



Is there any way that one could post a John Williams sketch example? Is it like a 2 stave piano reduction Wind, Brass, Percussion and Strings for each section of the orchestra?


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## synergy543 (Jul 17, 2011)

There is one copy, encased in glass... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_4wV1Dk1C4&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_4wV1Dk ... re=related)

Although some think this may be by the copyist rather than by the master's own hand.

Although not a great film composer, here's one by Aaron Copland
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/enews/2009/march/insider.html

Somebody PM me if there is a real JW sketch - thanks.


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## Casey Edwards (Jul 17, 2011)

synergy543 @ Sun Jul 17 said:


> There is one copy, encased in glass...
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_4wV1Dk1C4&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_4wV1Dk ... re=related)
> 
> Although some think this may be by the copyist rather than by the master's own hand.
> ...



That is not JW's writing, that is John Neufeld. I can tell just by looking at the engraving. I have the entire Jurassic Park score (yes, every single cue!) handwritten version by him (and Conrad Pope too I think) in PDF format. It's very awesome to look at!


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## synergy543 (Jul 17, 2011)

Thanks Casey, I thought that was the copyist's handwriting!


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