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Tricks to avoid over-orchestrating?

As someone who never actually took proper orchestration classes of any kind, I'm finding I sometimes waste a TON of time while composing trailer tracks because I'll accidentally over-do layers of strings/horns/etc, making a mix messy, melodies get hidden by too many notes in the same range, etc.

I took a step back yesterday while having trouble, and decided to go to just a piano sound and figure out what notes would be played where, and only let myself use the one sound so I couldn't over-complicate things by having too many notes clustered and sounding messy. I think that worked pretty well, but I would think there's times where you'll *want* instruments playing stuff near each other, no? Does anyone have any tips in terms of simple orchestration no-no's, etc?

I'm working in trailer music and don't plan on working with real orchestras, so I don't necessarily care about things being physically possible to play, but I do want to make sure I don't get way too messy. I've been checking out a lot of 2WEI stuff, and I'm noticing that their parts are actually way simpler than I tend to make things while composing.
To the 2WEI thing. The work like Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL. The orchestration is very similar and you don't need to use the fff section on the majority of sections. Maybe for a few seconds. But you will get closer to the sound by using lower dynamics.
 
I took a step back yesterday while having trouble, and decided to go to just a piano sound and figure out what notes would be played where, and only let myself use the one sound so I couldn't over-complicate things by having too many notes clustered and sounding messy.
One useful technique is to take such a piano piece and divide it into sections that "lead to" and build tension towards the climax. When the sections are divided, you could then plan the instrumentation from the climax itself (tutti) and work your way backwards towards the intro, etc. This technique essentially works to distribute the instrumentation into these sections based on dynamic and emotional intensity. It also creates better sectional contrast and helps "conserve" the orchestral resources until the most crucial moment of the piece.
 
I think a big part of over orchestrating comes down to whether you like the sound of things raw or not. If you're using a bunch of sounds that you think sound good in a mix but don't stand on their own, you'll want to cover them or blend them with other things that might not really need to be there otherwise.

Think about Pizza. The 3 flavours of cheese, tomato and bread are enough for most people because they taste good on their own and together make a good mix. Some like to add one or two extra ingredients for extra flavour, but really it isn't necessary.

Meanwhile pasta doesn't have a particularly flavoursome taste whilst being a large part of the meal. So you compensate with lots of flavour in sauces, meats and vegetables prepared in interesting ways mixed with likely a bunch of spices. You need the spices and ingredients because you want really want to eat a plain bowl of pasta - and because of that, its much easier to screw up than pizza because you've got a more delicate balance to make.

So if you want to keep it simpler, use sounds you want to hear own their own.
 
I think a big part of over orchestrating comes down to whether you like the sound of things raw or not. If you're using a bunch of sounds that you think sound good in a mix but don't stand on their own, you'll want to cover them or blend them with other things that might not really need to be there otherwise.

Think about Pizza. The 3 flavours of cheese, tomato and bread are enough for most people because they taste good on their own and together make a good mix. Some like to add one or two extra ingredients for extra flavour, but really it isn't necessary.

Meanwhile pasta doesn't have a particularly flavoursome taste whilst being a large part of the meal. So you compensate with lots of flavour in sauces, meats and vegetables prepared in interesting ways mixed with likely a bunch of spices. You need the spices and ingredients because you want really want to eat a plain bowl of pasta - and because of that, its much easier to screw up than pizza because you've got a more delicate balance to make.

So if you want to keep it simpler, use sounds you want to hear own their own.
Yes but I don't think there is really any music that make sense when you separate the individual parts. Who would listen to the Trombone divisi of a big band recording?
 
Yes but I don't think there is really any music that make sense when you separate the individual parts. Who would listen to the Trombone divisi of a big band recording?
I could have been more clear about this. More like, if you isolated the Trombone divisi of a big band recording, it would be of sound good quality and you could tell it's real because it comes with all the human quirks - hopefully played well together without any weird happenings. It wouldn't sound offensive.

But if the only Trombone VST you've got is BBCSO or something worse and for what you're trying to do it just doesnt sound very good for a multitude of digital reasons that the real band doesnt suffer from, but you *really really* want Trombone in there, there's a drive to to thumb it in anyway and then cover it up with something else.

If you want to write big, its not really a problem because it *can* probably hide in the mix just fine. But if you're actively trying to write simpler, you can't use VSTs that produce a sound you don't like because they'll be more exposed.

Does that make more sense?
 
If you're using a bunch of sounds that you think sound good in a mix but don't stand on their own
This is a big reason I write in sections, particularly with VI;

My take on this is that if a section or solo doesn't sound good on its own, then it has no place in the piece: You must rearrange, edit performances, mix properly, etc., until it is fully capable of standing on its own (assuming it has enough notes to play during the phrase in question)
 
Trailer tracks are not my specialty, and I admit the rules of engagement are different from underscore. I don’t think orchestration advice for underscore is always applicable to trailers. Trailers seem to have gotten alot more ‘aggressive‘ and seems to me there is an angst to the tone in them. I guess invoking the notion of heavy tension currently is considered to be referencing a story that is ‘important, or epic’.

For regular underscore, the one thing I noticed is that people generally don’t raise the question of why you did NOT double a part or line, especially when it all seems to work in the way the composition is played. An orchestra has alot of colours, and in order to successfully exploit them all ( again IMHO ) you should establish a small slice of it in order to move away from that and create interest by establishing and revealing other aspects of the orchestra or sound pallette. It’s still amazing to me that you can tease a much bigger picture of something by revealing disparate instrumentation. The mind naturally fills in the gap. This should make one question just how filled out the outline should be in order to successfully have the listener realize the ‘big picture’ you are implying. This is the orchestrator’s path and cross to bear.

One point though, in my opinion, doubling sections is about increasing the volume mostly, and at the same time having the new intruments add their flavour, which can be good, or not depending on dynamics chosen. The old masters and orchestrators had the players in front of them and tried stuff out all the time, which led to a general idea of what worked and what was felt to be less effective. It’s easy these days to overcome some of the things that made the less effective orchestration choices in the past because we can artificially correct the natural way the instruments sound together. One example is the heavy use these days of short stroke strings, which are always made to sound much louder then they would when played for real.
 
Don't be tempted to mix your way out of the mud! I was always trying to fix muddy mid and low end with EQ. Nope: I needed (still need to!) to orchestrate better for clarity.

I wish there were better visualisation tools for harmonic analysis - maybe there already are?

That said, I should probably stop looking for the easy way out and continue learning orchestration and harmony.
This is very important. I always go back to conflicting or overpowering voicing in the low end and clean that up first. One tool you might find handy for this is the hornet plugin called MultiFreqs. You can slap it on a lot of tracks and it will overlay the frequency contribution of those tracks to the mix. You can then isolate problem instruments that stick out too much or see that 3-4 instruments are competing too much in a certain range.

I plan on using this a lot more going forward.
 
It helps to go back to pen and paper. A 4 stave sketchpad should be able to hold all your ideas, most of the time only 3 staves are necessary.

in the DAW it is all too easy to create an accompaniment part, and then add another and another, without thinking or seeing how they all relate to each other. Sometimes these are the same musical idea but spread across a big pitch spectrum - that creates richness but reduces clarity. You only need 3 notes to create a triadic harmony, if those notes are doubled an octave higher or lower, it should be for a reason!
:)


The reduction below uses 2 or 3 staves almost all the time - even for action music. If you did the same reduction but without using multiple layers per staff, (but also, leaving out the details of some independent percussion parts) it would be 3 to 4 staves for almost all of the cue.

 
I think this part here is particularly notable:

Screen Shot 2022-09-18 at 11.54.53 AM.png

I'll bet you someone writing this cue in a DAW (and straining to add musical impact to the spaceship liftoff) would use a lot wider doublings than JW did here. But because JW can see the entire cue on paper his doublings are VERY controlled. In particular the traditionally-correct voicing of the first inversion AbM chord - lots of emphasis on Ab, less on Eb, and only one C appears in the voicing. Same with the maj7 chords.
 
1. Arrangement is definitely one of the secrets to good orchestration. Start with a basic sketch on piano, keep it simple. Work out your ideas at this stage. No doubled notes, no b9s (unless you're going for ominous).
2. Start with only 2 parts (pick from melody, harmony, ostinato, counterline, etc.). Keep this stage simple; can add complexity later.
3. When one line plays many notes, make other lines with longer notes, and visa versa.
4. Try to keep lines no closer than a 3rd apart.
5. Learn the Overtone series. Natural order of the Overtone series is wide space between notes in the bass, and closer as the octaves increase towards the treble higher notes. The natural note series from bass up is R-R-5th-R-3rd-5th-b7th. This is mother nature's series, not man-made.
6. Learn the orchestra instrument ranges.
7. Finish the sketch. Disregard the temptation to start assigning instruments at the sketch stage, even if you already have a certain sound in your head.
8. Once sketch is finished, assign instruments based on the notation. This is where understanding the ranges of the various orchestral instruments comes in. If you have a melody in the top portion of the treble staff, say in ledger lines, you should instantly realize instruments in a bass range won't work for that line, and even a clarinet in that high range will be iffy. So probably a flute or piccolo, or violin is gonna' work. After a while, where a line is played on piano will reveal the type of orchestral instrument and range that will fit.
 
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I'm finding I sometimes waste a TON of time while composing trailer tracks because I'll accidentally over-do layers of strings/horns/etc, making a mix messy, melodies get hidden by too many notes in the same range, etc.
Well, that is actually my technique for composing. I start with a fixed percussion loop. Then overcompose, then lay it all out in seperate sections until they do not cluster. This means that some riffs may be directed to breaks only, while others may be divided in A and B parts. From here, I might add further voices, bridges, C-parts etc. Are you sure it can't be turned to your advantage?

Freya's peace
Gothi
 
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One main thing I had to learn (and still do) is thinking different when coming from a band background.
In a band (pop, rock, jazz) the roles are rather fix: drums for the basic groove, bass with rhythm and bass notes, guitars and keyboards for chords and movement in mid range, solo instruments and vocals for melody. And when a groove starts it might change in different song parts but it rarely ever stops.
So one problem for me was mainly: if there's some backing pattern running (ostinato, groove, pad, texture, bass) how do I get out of it without dropping the energy? And if I keep patterns going I inevitably end in over-orchestrating because the only thing I can do is adding.
 
So one problem for me was mainly: if there's some backing pattern running (ostinato, groove, pad, texture, bass) how do I get out of it without dropping the energy? And if I keep patterns going I inevitably end in over-orchestrating because the only thing I can do is adding.
I agree, it's a weird paradox to me that it feels like jumping off a cliff emotionally to interrupt a good groove and/or good sounding patch, but the payoff from doing so can be so enormous and you have something to come back to.
 
So one problem for me was mainly: if there's some backing pattern running (ostinato, groove, pad, texture, bass) how do I get out of it without dropping the energy?
There are some ways to do that. In the example below we wanted to get out of the main groove and into some unpredictable developments.
For a completely different B part we simply changed everything: The key (Cm to Am), the mode (C aeolian to A phrygian), and the meter (6/8 to 4/4). There were still a few overlabs in rhythm and timbre to glue it together, but not much. There is also a c part where we go back in aeolian but not in key. First towards the end everything returns to the original key and meter. So it goes like IN, OUT, OUT, IN with the chronology of the parts

 
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