Reddit reviews The Guide to MIDI Orchestration 4e
We found 6 Reddit comments about The Guide to MIDI Orchestration 4e. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Reddit reviews The Guide to MIDI Orchestration 4eWe found 6 Reddit comments about The Guide to MIDI Orchestration 4e. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
The Guide to Midi Orchestration
Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer
Hey, I’m kind of a book junkie when it comes to common practice stuff, so I’m gonna throw a bunch of em at ya. The common practice era of composition can be broken down into 3 major fields of study: Form/Composition, Harmony and Orchestration. Form/composition is about how music develops over time harmonically and melodically. Harmony is about how vertical sonorities interact with one another, this is one of the most fleshed out aspects of music theory. Orchestration, usually the capstone discipline, dives into how groups of instruments interact with one another on a harmonic level and a melodic one. Harmony+composition can be studied simultaneously considering there is so much overlap, orchestration usually comes after you have a middling understanding of the other two subjects.
There are a bunch of free online materials on these subjects, but here is my personal favorite:
http://openmusictheory.com/contents.html
There are also a few free books on harmony, orchestration and composition, but most of them were published a very long time ago. As a consequence, you may run into outdated or poorly explained concepts.
Harmony:
Guide to the Practical Study of Harmony
Orchestration:
Principles of Orchestration
Composition:
Fundamentals of music Composition
Exercises in Melody Writing
Most of the stuff with comprehensive+up to date information on these subjects is going to be something you pay for. Here are my favorite textbooks. One thing I value in a textbook is an accompanying workbook and/or some sort of exercise based learning, so I’ll be listing the workbooks (if applicable) as well.
Melody in Songwriting
Craft of Musical Composition Parts One and Two
Models For Beginners in Composition
Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music
Workbook for Harm Practice
The Study of Orchestration
Workbook for The Study of Orchestration
This isn’t an exhaustive list but it’s pretty solid.
Recording orchestras is out of reach for most, so you’ll probably need some good VSTs to use and some knowledge of how to make them sound ‘real’. Building an orchestra template is key to making music quickly and efficiently. It’s a massive headache to have to wait for Kontakt to load and instrument every time you want to add a flute or violin to your score. Here are the basics of what you’ll need:
Woodwinds:
Flutes
Clarinets
Saxophones
Oboes
Bassoons
Brass:
French horns
Trumpets
Trombones
Tubas
“Low brass”
Strings:
1st Violins
2nd Violins
Violas
Cellos
Bass
First chairs of each
Others:
PIANOS
Harps
Choirs
Guitars
Vibraphones
Glockenspiels
Etc
Orchestral percussion
Concert Toms
Taikos
Snares
Concert bass drums
Here are some places to get all of that:
Audio Bro (the ARC system is awesome)
Spitfire
8Dio
Orchestral Tools (my favorite)
CineSamples
EastWest Sounds
Heres a resource to make all of that stuff sound ‘real’. It’s a lot more difficult then you may think.
The Guide to MIDI Orchestration 4e
Staccato is basically short notes (detached), so spiccato is a form of staccato. Where do you draw the line between heavy staccato playing and spiccato (where the bow bounces off the strings)? It's often recommended to use a couple layers of samples with different articulations to get believable-sounding orchestrations.
Here's a great reference book you might want to pick up: MIDI Orchestration
If you're willing to invest some money in, I definitely recommend The Guide to MIDI Orchestration by Paul Gilreath.
Got it myself a few weeks ago and it covers a broad range of related topics.
Try it out. Dive in, see what works, what doesn't. Back it up with theory. I'm fond of these as resources:
Find scores you enjoy, and study those. Harmonics, counter-point, instrumentation, melodic structure, and so on. I'm particularly fond of James Newton Howard scores, and Jeff Atmajian's orchestration work on his projects. Like Ravel? Start there and become really intimate with Ravel and his scores and techniques.
That said, I'm also happy to orchestrate something for you. PM'd you.
The quality of sounds that you're going to get out of built in keyboard samples aren't going to measure up to sample libraries. Buying NI's Komplete is a good place to start, but from there, you'll need to expand based on the type of work you're going to do.
For more orchestral stuff, I'd suggest looking into the following:
LA Scoring Strings/Hollywood Strings/Cinematic Strings for String Libraries
Cinesamples Hollywoodwinds/Vienna Symphonic Winds for your wind libraries
Project Sam True Strike 1 and 2, plus 8Dio, EastWest, and Vienna for Percussion
Hollywood Brass/Cinebrass/EastWest for Brass.
Symphobia 1 and 2 for FX and layering.
However, since it sounds like you're new to working with samples, you might want to look into starting off with East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold, or one of the other packages available at soundsonline.com.
For Synth stuff, Omnisphere is a good place to start, I'd also highly recommend u-he's Zebra as well.
Once you get a selection of libraries to start working with, you should start learning how to program them. The MIDI Guide to Orchestration is a good book to start with.
Also, join V-I Control and become an active member. There are quite a few people on there that are professionals, and most of the forum is quite good with sequencing/mixing/etc. They'll be able to help you get up to speed with your midi programming skills, which are necessary for making your mockups and cues sound realistic.
There are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of options out there for sample libraries/synths/etc. out there. Google around for what you think you'll need based on what instruments you could see yourself composing with (on the computer), and have at it. To help make things simpler, visualize the composing template/palette you'd like to start off working with and purchase to meet that goal.
Best of luck!