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.