orchestration

I'm talking about Cinematic and Trailer Music. Synthetic Basses work well in combination with Basses and Cello in Octaves. Low Brass Patches always mud up my mix. Do you have any tipps on how to orchestrate the low end of a track ? And how do you handle the following chords. I'm talking about...

Hi everyone, I wanted to experiment with the various 'colours' within an orchestra, from growling bassoons to sugarcoated French horns. Wouldn't dare to call this an actual composition, but it taught me a great deal about orchestration and how to work with VSTs. (That said, I think the...

Hi friends! Today, let's take a slightly different path and examine how to write in a chorale style for woodwinds and brass. With so many colours at our disposal, what's a good way to approach this? Let's dive in.

Hi everyone! I hope you're well. I wanted to share with you a concept that not enough people talk about, and it really can make or break an orchestral arrangement: the harmonic series. I think many people have a natural ear for what sounds muddy or clear in an arrangement, but hopefully this...

Sorry if a similar question has been posed recently . I am just studying various types of modulation , and it got me thinking about how songs or pieces of music use them and how powerful it can be. So on that basis , what are your favourite modulations and from what songs / pieces of music ...

Hi everyone! Just sharing something that i've been working on during this quarantine/lockdown period. I've been completely in love with music of Henri Dutilleux for a couple of years now and I've been wanting to do an orchestration of one of his Piano Preludes for ages, as an exercise to...

To preface, this subject falls somewhere between sample libraries, notation, and orchestration. I've recently come to my senses and realized that there are many aleatoric FX, etc. that bread and butter sample libraries don't typically come with. To clarify, I'm speaking not of pre-recorded...

20 Free Videos on Film Composition and Orchestration from Ludwin Music I'm posting a new series of video classes on Beginning and Advanced Orchestration, Modern Harmony, Examining The Rite of Spring, Film Music Seminar, Developing Variation, and Writing for Strings...

20 Free Videos on Film Composition and Orchestration from Ludwin Music I'm posting a new series of video classes on Beginning and Advanced Orchestration, Modern Harmony, Examining The Rite of Spring, Film Music Seminar, Developing Variation, and Writing for Strings. This links has 20 short...

Composer friends! You're free on Saturday at 11am Pacific Time, right? (It's not like we're allowed to go anywhere!) We at the Academy of Scoring Arts had an event planned with master orchestrator Thomas Goss, which due to obvious viral circumstances, had to be adjusted. Well, we are going to...

Hi composer, I'm looking for some advice on composition in terms of coming up with sections and ideas for motifs and themes. I have now been composing music for about 4 months and feel quite confident in music theory with my 10+ years of playing multiple instruments and in bands but writing...

I finally got to try the reins of orchestrating using the (much discussed) BBCSO library, integrating with some snippets of real solo violin and piano. The piece for solo piano and violin was written by Dalibor Vačkář, renown Czech composer. Dalibor wrote the piece for a family friend at the...

Any tipps on that? How do harp runs work in the real world? What about strings and woodwinds? How fast can runs be played realistically? Which notes do I need to hit (scale / chromatic)? Any advice is welcome.

How do you layer different articuations? Recently I´ve been noticing that some tracks have all parts of strings section (1st, 2nd violins etc etc...) playing the spiccato but at the same time they are playing the long patches. Maybe I´m wrong and just can´t hear it properly, but I´ll attach to...

I have tried producing a full blown big drums & overdriven guitars Hard Rock track with a fairly complete brass and string section. Here is the end product: Is there anything that sounds out of place or needs reworking in this version? Any general pointers as to how to make such a genre sound...

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Hi everyone! To celebrate my 100th video on my channel, I wanted to debut my new series 'ScoreTalk' with a classic John Williams tune. Please enjoy!!

Hello there, I had the fortunate opportunity to write and orchestrate a piece for a friend's final Bachelor exam who studies church music and conducting. As a VI composer this was a great opportunity to test my theoretical orchestration-ability for the first time and I'd like to share with you...

I know the basics of music theory, i.e (reading notation, time signatures, etc). But I have never worked with an orchestral track before. To put it in context, I am an aspiring film composer. I want to learn how an orchestra works, but have no clue where to even begin. I have a hard time...

Hello Folks, I am posting this to inquire about Marc Jovani’s Symphonic Virtual Orchestration (SVO) Course. I have following two questions: Would like to know about the experience if there is somebody who took it? I am mainly looking to improve my production capabilities- Arranging, mixing...

I am a big Spitfire fan who has all the Symphonic Orchestra and the Studio Orchestra as well as Albion ONE 10th Anniversary Edition. Having come from VSL before discovering Spitfire, I'm sometimes frustrated by the fact that Spitfire's long patches are all velocity insensitive, expecting the...

Found this video by chance. Absolutely brilliant, the audio is also very good. Lots to learn about orchestration just by watching (and listening to) this.

The mass of this sound is close to a celestial body...lush and fat!!!! Beautiful.

HELP I'VE TRIED NOTHING AND I'M ALL OUT OF IDEAS! (jk) First off, apologies for the wall of text. Thanks in advance to anyone who ventures through this whole thing. This is gonna be a bit verbose, but I'd rather be thorough than not. I was hoping if people may be so kind as to give feedback...

Hi. I've made a fourth episode in my series analysing 1950s "Light Music". This episode focuses entirely on woodwinds and demonstrates a dozen examples. Hope it's of use! EDIT - I've had to re-upload as the final 25 seconds of music got the video blocked in North America. A new link now...

In today's video, I discuss why I prefer to pan up the middle, especially lead melodies. Enjoy!

I just want to share with you my orchestral Reel with Recordings in New Zealand with the NZSO and the Park Road production Team, and also in Skopje Macedonia. I've learned a lot in this forum and It's a pleasure to show you what I do.

I want to ask some of the pros here or advanced composers, what do you think of this small piece I composed. I know its really difficult to judge a piece of music composed by orchestral instruments since its very subjective. specially when accounting how deep and diverse the psychological...

Happy Sunday music makers! Please enjoy the second part of this mini series, discussing the arrangement and orchestration of my original ‘A New Beginning’. I’d love to know what you think!

Hey guys, the third episode of my Lord of the Rings series is live. This time we talk about the second film in the series "The Two Towers." Be sure to pick up all the score graphics created for the video in the pinned comment. Hope you enjoy. :)

UPDATE: It's taken a few months but I'm now announcing my YouTube channel as an active channel making videos daily. Steve Steele's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSteveSteele, new unfinished website http://www.stevesteele.com recent VSL Certification and much more. (Dorico...

Hey guys, if your a fan of Howard Shore’s scores for the lord of the rings films, you might be interested in my newest video in my LOTR score analysis series. There will also be two more to follow looking at the TTT and ROTK. Hope you enjoy :) Ashton

I am excited to announce a series of seminars in Los Angeles! These seminars will run for four consecutive Saturday mornings beginning May 5, and are similar to the ones I have presented in Boston, Seattle, Toronto, NYC, Beijing, Shanghai, Vietnam, and Thailand. Check out more info on me here...

Hi All, In this video I show in details the techniques I use to orchestrate and to create a sound which is closer to realism. Libraries used in this composition: - Hans Zimmer Strings - Spitfire Symphonic Strings - Spitfire Chamber Strings - Spitfire solo alternative strings - Olafur Arnalds...

Hi Guys, Here's a tutorial on enter your own melody into Orb Composer. Thanks, Bill

Hi! My name is Alexander Falinski, I’m freelance music composer and sound designer with 13 years of experience and about 50 finished game projects. The most famous games with my music and SFX: Cut the Rope, Tap the Frog, Lep’s World 3, Planetbase, Dawn of Man. I was also orchestrator of...

This seems like it'll be a useful resource for those here who want to learn a bit more about orchestration, and hear how it practically works. Vlad has written specific examples to demonstrate the techniques and arrangements he talks about, which have all been recorded by a real orchestra for...

I would like to have this melody glide from the A to the D in a chromatic way. Is this possible on Clarinet? On bassoon it probably isn't, right?

Hey all! Over the years listening to many soundtracks, I've come across this particular combination in mostly traditional orchestral scores and I absolutely love it. I've tried to replicate with samples, but I just haven't achieved a result I've been happy with. In most cases, I believe it's a...

Hi guys, I recently composed this orchestral track. I would love to hear your feedback. I am most interested in what you think about the orchestration, which I am working on improving. This track was meant as a practice. Cheers Rok

Hey Guys, I recently started a youtube channel focusing on discussing film music and all things surrounding it and this week we are doing a discussion of the music of the new Star Wars film The Last Jedi. We stream at 4PM PST and this is the streaming link: Thought this would be of interest...

We recently had the chance to talk with German composer and producer Dirk Ehlert (trailer music for The Hunger Games, Destiny 2, Assassin's Creed Unity) on the creation of his first solo album ELEMENTS, published by Dos Brains, L.A. In the course of the interview, Dirk was kind enough to...

Jolly hockey sticks! I've finally managed to put together a second episode to this pet project of mine. This time getting right into the nitty gritty of basic five-part harmony and block chord writing. The video assumes you have some musical knowledge and can read the scores, otherwise it...

Hey folks! Earlier this year I wrote an 88 page eBook about the process of extracting untidy MIDI from a DAW and making it neat so that when imported into Sibelius, it looks neat and can be easily orchestrated. In addition to this, I touch upon how to ensure that you don’t encounter any...

Hey there, I was wondering if someone of you fellow composers already tried to find out how the dynamic range on the Spitfire Symphonic Libraries (Strings, Brass, Winds) are laid out on the modwheel. I am currently going through Visual Orchestration 2 which is a great source of information and...

For anyone who is at all interested in Orchestration, I want to highly recommend the Mike Verta Masterclass, "Orchestration 3." I am no stranger to orchestration. I have read all of the classics, I can see the Rimsky-Kosakov, Adler, Forsyth, and Kennan on the shelf in my studio, and I have...

What are some comedy scoring techniques that you've picked up? Any favorite comedy scores? Thank you - JS

Do you want your music to stand out from the pack? Do you want to take one on one, private lessons with an industry pro? Do you have questions on how to develop your musical ideas or add pro touches to your orchestrations? If you answer yes, then check out my private lessons, offered via Skype...

A project I've been working on for a while. Looking at the theory behind Light Music of the 1940s and 1950s. Includes ten examples and discusses the use of extended harmony and shows the scores. Hope you enjoy it!