# I had a go at Spitfire's Orchestral Programming series advice



## Mornats (Sep 25, 2019)

Big thanks to the Spitfire team and Christian for posting these videos. I’ve watched day 1 and 2 (and skipped over day 3 as I’m not writing for an orchestra) and have to say that I’ve learnt a lot from watching these.

In case you've not seen them, here are the videos and my experience with them is detailed below.



I finally understand piano sketching! I’d assumed beforehand that you’d need to be quite a pianist to get a good sketch down. The simplicity of Christian’s initial piano sketch, when compared to the finished piece showed me that it is actually just a sketch – as the name implies. I’m no Olafur on the piano by any means and I’d always been put off starting with a piano sketch as I believed my piano chops weren’t up for it. What I took away from the Day 1 video was that you’re not trying to impress with the piano, you’re trying to see if the tune can carry itself. I want to do some alterations to my piece and I believe that returning to the piano sketch to try them out would let me focus on the tune and nothing else.

I’ve learnt a bit about orchestration. As you can see from some of my notes that I’ve reproduced below I’ve taken out some bass lines as the basses are playing the ostinato parts. I’m thinking about ranges and what should be playing where and sticking to the five voices of the string section. I may not have it all right in this particular piece but I will in time. I’m currently hunting out a copy of Adler’s The Study of Orchestration (£48 on Amazon so looking for a cheaper or second hand copy).

I loved what Christian did with passing the woodwind line between the high and low woods to give the players time to breathe. I think it also helped add variety and interest to the woods lines.

Making notes. This is something I already do. Making music isn’t my day job but I’m lucky enough to be allowed to pop on my headphones and listen to music whilst I work. So I tend to listen to my work-in-progress tracks and make notes that I email to myself at home. I’ve reproduced them below so you can see my thought process between day 2 and day 3.

Here’s where I’m at so far. My days don’t match the days in Christian’s videos but here’s what mine work out as.







Day 1 is the piano sketch.

Day 2 is the first version of the orchestrated version.

Day 3 is the version after listening to the piece several times at work and making notes.

Finally, I just want to mention that I’m a hobbyist. My main instrument is bass guitar and whilst I’ve had bass lessons from a professional bass player that covered some theory, I’m not musically trained, let alone classically trained. I can’t read music (yet), know a little music theory but not much and don’t even know all my scales on the piano. I’m sheepishly relying on my S61 keyboard’s scale function to learn them as I play.

What I want to end on, is that despite my amateur hobbyist skill level, I found I broke new ground with how I approached this piece. It’s maybe not a great piece and that’s fine! I like it because I can see the progress I’ve made. I’m now seriously considering Spitfire Studio Strings (not the pro version) as I think I’m closing in on the stage where I can utilise the individual string sections.

Many thanks to Spitfire and Christian for this video series. If this is part of the direction Spitfire are heading in terms of educating budding composers then you’re bang on track. Cheers!

My notes to myself about my track for Day Two:

Add the flute bit at the start and then start all stems from their beginnings. The start will be repeated but that should work still.
Bring in a small pause between the starting flute melody and the strings starting.
Main melody strings – bring up the close mic to bring them to the fore a bit.
Try it with Albion One legacy strings.
Try it with Tundra (although watch for the lack of violas).
Try it with Hyperion strings (as a prelude to Studio Strings).
Brass horns need to do more than just play a single note.
At the end, get the choir to play the fifth as the cymbals come in (start it earlier to hit the crescendo of the note).
Woods, especially high woods are a little lost.
Try part two without the first violins playing the octave above. Move that octave above to the next section.
After the drums come in, would a nice, low strings/woods/brass interlude based on the FAmFEm progression work? Then bring in the full strings as is.
Also try removing the bass from the cb and vc octaves. The basses are playing the ostinato so shouldn’t be in there and it may clear up some space in the low end for the brass and woods to breathe in.
I also made some further changes once I'd tackled the above. I've made the brass work more and I didn't know what to do with violas so I made them vibrato. Day four will be trying out Hyperion Strings and Albion V Tundra on this track.


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## BassClef (Sep 25, 2019)

Great post... thanks for posting, and I too am a hobbyist. I learned from Christian’s videos and also did mockups of day one and two.


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## Mornats (Sep 25, 2019)

Post your mock-ups if you're up for it! I'd be interested to see how others got on too.


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## BassClef (Sep 25, 2019)

I posted this one a while back...





__





It's a beginning...


OK. It's a beginning. I'm getting started using Logic and some orchestral libraries. I ran across a Christian Henson video, I believe called Day One. I tried to emulate this little tune to get it to sound as close to his as possible using only Albion One... learned a few things along the way.




vi-control.net


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## Tilt & Flow (Sep 25, 2019)

Mornats said:


> Big thanks to the Spitfire team and Christian for posting these videos. I’ve watched day 1 and 2 (and skipped over day 3 as I’m not writing for an orchestra) and have to say that I’ve learnt a lot from watching these.
> 
> In case you've not seen them, here are the videos and my experience with them is detailed below.
> 
> ...



Nice work. Thanks for sharing.


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## Mornats (Sep 26, 2019)

BassClef said:


> I posted this one a while back...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Nice, I like how you did your version of Christian's piece for that. I love that piece and never got sick of it when watching the videos. Have you been tempted to do any more?


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## BassClef (Sep 26, 2019)

Mornats said:


> Nice, I like how you did your version of Christian's piece for that. I love that piece and never got sick of it when watching the videos. Have you been tempted to do any more?



Yes... immediately began work on (later completed) an original piece using those same techniques, but have not uploaded it.


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## BezO (Oct 10, 2019)

I stumbled upon the SA vids and skimmed through each hoping they would be helpful to me. They seemed great, but I forgot to go back to my Composition Playlist. Thanks for the reminder.

And nice work!


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## visiblenoise (Oct 16, 2019)

Mornats said:


> Making notes. This is something I already do. Making music isn’t my day job but I’m lucky enough to be allowed to pop on my headphones and listen to music whilst I work. So I tend to listen to my work-in-progress tracks and make notes that I email to myself at home.


I do this a lot too! My favorite way to bunk off. Although it's only recently that I actually started to take notes - makes it much easier to get back into it at home, especially when you're feeling a bit directionless, when you can start off just by knocking off tasks like "sidechain funny noise to brass section."


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## Mornats (Oct 16, 2019)

I do wonder if IT read my emails to myself and wonder why I'm telling myself that my horns are pants.


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## Mornats (Oct 17, 2019)

Getting back on topic, I'm actually almost done with another piece that was based on a piano mock-up. It's amazing just how far you can develop a piece once you've got the basic sketch down on piano. Next time I'm going to spend a lot more time on the piano sketch to make it a fuller piece before orchestrating it. One bit of feedback I got about my piece above was that it didn't develop and go anywhere (which is absolutely true - it's the same piano piece repeated three times with different instruments being used each time in the orchestration).


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