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Hollywood orchestra opus edition and hollywood orchestrator

sounds like they’ve mastered the drug dealer method....

get you hooked...then create a drought and keep you wanting for me...then give you just a taste, and then tell you that you’re getting a deal on some top grade stuff....

i imagine as videos continue to come out, the mood of this thread will temporarily change as well....
 
Patch naming as it comes up when the instruments are loaded seems to have been improved. Or at least it doesn't seem as cryptic and intimidating as the original HO had it. Not that it matters now, most users already had it down, but good on them for making that easier to figure out for new users.

The GUI seems nice. It sounds great, too. A bit of high CPU usage. Maybe it is a mid-tier laptop or something. But I wonder... is it too soon for this?

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Also, I have to admit that whilst I have no interest in using the orchestrator for any work, this looks like a cool toy to play around with.
 
I just want a library walk through.

Still have no use for Orchestrator, but that looks like a fun toy to play with.
 
ALittleNightMusic said:
What do you consider score study? Or learning a new piece? We're all copying from somebody that came before us. You can either use Orchestrator as is and just print it, or you can use it to speed up some commonly used figures, or as stated above, you can use it to learn (via a different medium) how the greats do things and then try to incorporate that into your writing.
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I agree that studying others' work and learning from it is a good thing to do, but I don't see this sort of software features as accomplishing or aiding that, nor as being designed to do that. Looking over someone's work is one thing, or even making a mockup from someone else's work. You can learn a lot there.

This kind of feature just plays it for you, though. You don't even see the notes, but just play a chord and suddenly you get John Williams coming out - and that seems to be how it's being marketed (and presumably what it's designed for). It sure seems like the idea is to literally write your own music using these presets.
 
Lazer42 said:
I agree that studying others' work and learning from it is a good thing to do, but I don't see this sort of software features as accomplishing or aiding that, nor as being designed to do that. Looking over someone's work is one thing, or even making a mockup from someone else's work. You can learn a lot there.

This kind of feature just plays it for you, though. You don't even see the notes, but just play a chord and suddenly you get John Williams coming out - and that seems to be how it's being marketed (and presumably what it's designed for). It sure seems like the idea is to literally write your own music using these presets.
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From what I gleaned from the video, you do see the notes for each section. And you can program your own. There may even be a way to export it. So it is effectively just notation, except in MIDI.

How you use it vs. others, it's all personal preference. These are all tools. Tools that make making music easier and more fun. Or do you make all your own samples? Does John Powell orchestrate all of his pieces himself? Is John Williams mixing all his recordings? Everybody can use help in different areas.
 
Toecutter said:
Yea, gimmicky... I mean it's cool for hobbyists but who would you use this in paid gigs? Even under the most intense stress I would not want to NOT write all the music myself. Feels almost like cheating, that's why I don't care about libraries like Sonokinetic or The Orchestra. Even for adding underlying movement if you know your stuff you do it much faster and better than any software. And it doesnt sound so obvious that it's a freaking machine doing the work for you.
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i dont think clients care who did it so long it doesnt get them sued for copyright infringement. If it works for folks, more power to them.
 
Toecutter said:
Yea, gimmicky... I mean it's cool for hobbyists but who would you use this in paid gigs? Even under the most intense stress I would not want to NOT write all the music myself. Feels almost like cheating, that's why I don't care about libraries like Sonokinetic or The Orchestra. Even for adding underlying movement if you know your stuff you do it much faster and better than any software. And it doesnt sound so obvious that it's a freaking machine doing the work for you.
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Fantastic, monumental sketching tool, imo. I would use it to lay the groundwork and then flesh it out. As they say, huge timesaver. Two thumbs way up.
 
Now if only you could view the track you are running the orchestrator in as a pure control track and have all the midi resulting from the orchestrator automatically exported into the corresponding instrument tracks in your daw.
 
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Frederick said:
Now if only you could view the track you are running the orchestrator in as a pure control track and have all the midi resulting from the orchestrator automatically exported into the corresponding instrument tracks in your daw.
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Yes I agree - that would be fantastic. I think it will come one day.

I'm so tempted by this product. I think it looks and sounds fantastic. So well thought of and executed. I already own other orchestra libraries - so I know I shouldn't buy - but I think I will.

If I was staring out today that is the orchestra I would buy. For $799 it's a steal.
 
I can't find much negative about the orchestrator. I don't need to use the presets and whether I set notes in the piano roll or here makes no difference. However, here I can play creatively with my ideas and quickly perform chord changes.
Already strongly resembles The Orchestra with some improvements. I think it's not bad.

The overuse of these tools can quickly make a composition look static. As a basis for ideas that I then refine with variations I find it useful. If I can export that to the DAW it's cool.

I also don't consider it cheating if I'm not intensively processing the score presets into a new track. In the end, isn't it the idea that counts? How it comes about doesn't matter to the listener in the end.
 
Frederick said:
Now if only you could view the track you are running the orchestra in as a pure control track and have all the midi resulting from the orchestrator automatically exported into the corresponding instrument tracks in your daw.
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I was immediately wondering about this too. All the note information is there somewhere in the program, so it should be possible to have midi export if they want you to have it. The Orchestra (Sonuscore) didn't have midi export at first, but it was added later.

If the Orchestrator already has midi export I am surprised it is not mentioned in this walkthrough. I don't like the cookie-cutter approach to voicing chords and assigning rhythms, but if I can tweak the midi later it would be useful (at least for sketching/composing/experimenting if not for final orchestration).

Perhaps if you mute all but one instrument you can take that and tweak it in midi. (if not, I suppose in audio, of course.) We'll wait and see.

It only reassigns notes in the chord you play, but if you want a note to alter to a non-chordal passing tone you have to carefully play that with your right hand, but even then it must always be in the right position (top, bottom, middle) in your close voicing. So this is rather limited in terms of composition. If you are writing a separate melody over the top of a preset you may want to move a particiluar tone to avoid conflict or harmonize the melody, etc, and midi export would enable you to do this quickly.

Personally, it is unlikely I would ever use the presets unaltered in a final mix, even if it is not reminiscent (copied!) from an obvious source, but simply because I know others could use it at anytime and I will be unoriginal sooner or later.

But I am excited about making my own presets, and will certainly have fun messing around with it.
 
I think for those who regularly write music, may this isn't necessarily helpful. But I can potential for sound design with this, especially if you can split out the signal and add effects to some instruments and not others. It is a lot like using something from Heavyocity.

I also hope we will be able to export midi.
 
Just watched the walkthrough and super impressed with it. Has certainly made me more excited to get the update for CCX. I think they will get a few more upgrade sales with these walkthroughs if they are as good as this one as you can now better see the value.
 
The Scores examples in the video sounded amazing to me - especially the Dark Hero, Superhero, and The Planets ones. Orchestration Recipes (which is amazing!) is like $50 for 30 recipes (and completely worth it). This has what looks like at least 120 just in the Scores section (and maybe they can add more as free updates). So, $200 just for that if trying to get that elsewhere? Plus all the other orchestrator functionality, the new recordings and the more flexible player (this video clearly shows they finally consolidated the patch list - hallelujah!).
 
ThomasS said:
I was immediately wondering about this too. All the note information is there somewhere in the program, so it should be possible to have midi export if they want you to have it. The Orchestra (Sonuscore) didn't have midi export at first, but it was added later.

If the Orchestrator already has midi export I am surprised it is not mentioned in this walkthrough. I don't like the cookie-cutter approach to voicing chords and assigning rhythms, but if I can tweak the midi later it would be useful (at least for sketching/composing/experimenting if not for final orchestration).

Perhaps if you mute all but one instrument you can take that and tweak it in midi. (if not, I suppose in audio, of course.) We'll wait and see.

It only reassigns notes in the chord you play, but if you want a note to alter to a non-chordal passing tone you have to carefully play that with your right hand, but even then it must always be in the right position (top, bottom, middle) in your close voicing. So this is rather limited in terms of composition. If you are writing a separate melody over the top of a preset you may want to move a particiluar tone to avoid conflict or harmonize the melody, etc, and midi export would enable you to do this quickly.

Personally, it is unlikely I would ever use the presets unaltered in a final mix, even if it is not reminiscent (copied!) from an obvious source, but simply because I know others could use it at anytime and I will be unoriginal sooner or later.

But I am excited about making my own presets, and will certainly have fun messing around with it.
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Yes, adding midi exports to PercX has become an important thing as well. I just couldn't master the internal sequencer. And possibility of random parts selection would also be nice.
 
Lazer42 said:
I am still interested in OPUS overall, and to be honest I was never really interested in the Orchestrator because I thought it was going to be something like this demo shows it to be.

I just really hate this trend in the industry right now of software which essentially writes music for you out of a bunch of pre-written phrases, ostinatos, etc. Now in fairness, it does look like while this product will do that, it will also do some other things which are more in the way of tools for arranging and such, so that's good, but as for the overall idea? I want libraries and tools to make it easier for me to write music, not to plagiarize from John Williams or others (and some of the examples in the walkthrough were pretty blatant, to put it lightly!)

And to reiterate, this is not just an East West thing. It's being done across the industry. This just happens to be an example of it.

(By the way, what score is being copied around the 7:30 mark with the "The Planet 01" preset? It's very familiar but I'm having a hard time placing it exactly.)
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Yeah, it’s not as if John Williams ever plagiarised anyone... :whistling:

You know what happens when you photocopy a photocopy of a photocopy? The quality degrades. ;)
 
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