SCOREcast 37: State of the Industry

Other Places to Listen

iTunes

To listen in iTunes:

1. Launch iTunes 11.
2. In the File menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
3. Enter — http://feeds.feedburner.com/scopodcast — in the text box and click OK.

Stitcher.com

Episode Description

In this edition of the SCOREcast Podcast Show, we take a look at the state of the film music industry including a wrap up of the recent developments on bringing recording back to Los Angeles, Disney’s acquisition of LucasFilm, and an interesting discussion about the differences between a composer and a film composer. All that plus a tribute to the last great American film critic, Roger Ebert, who played a huge role in advancing not only the art of film but also the appreciation of it.

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Leave a COMMENT below and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com.

In this special “teaser” edition of SPOTLIGHT ON, Eanan Patterson and Johnny Knittle give you the straight dope behind Cinesample’s brand new Cineperc update and show a preview of what’s to come from SCOREcast’s coverage of Cinesample’s entire Cineperc library suite.

Fo more information and to purchase, please visit CINESAMPLES.COM.

If you cannot see the video below, please click here. (scroll down to see the complete update list from Cinesamples)

CINEPERC UPDATE LIST

CORE:

• Bass Drums 1: Re-Denoised, smoothed xfades, removed all clicks and noise floor buildups. Removed one or two lowest velocity regions that were below the noise floor. (New Sample Set Download required)
• Bass Drums 2: Re-Denoised, smoothed xfades, removed all clicks and noise floor buildups. Removed one or two lowest velocity regions that were below the noise floor. (New Sample Set Download required)
• Snares – Concert, Piccolo and Popcorn: Cut the ends of the tails a bit to remove some bad room noises. Fixed the default audio output routing, so cc7 will respond now. Fixed a loop on the Piccolo Snare so there is no more “dropout”
• Snares – Tenor, Military, Metal: Cut the ends of the tails a bit to remove some bad room noises.
• Concert Toms: leveled out the rolls a bit better so they sound more consistent with the hits.
• Orchestral Cymbals: Made the crossfades of the rolls better and releases a bit smoother. Adjusted the layout a bit so there are hits on C1 (copied and pitched from C0)
• Orchestral Cymbals – Scrapes: ADDED patch – took the scrapes from of the Orchestral Cymbals and Tam-Tam to make one patch, no round robins, no velocities – all scrapes are on scrape per key. (NO sample set download needed)
• Gongs and Tam Tam: Adjusted a few tails to remove some talking and bad stage noises. Adjusted the ADSR on the release samples so they fade out a bit quicker. Smoothed out a few of the release samples on the rolls
• Triangles and Mark Tree: Adjustes some of the rolls so they feel better, Moved the “release” of the single hits to from C to F# and C# to G#. This way you can play a “roll” and these keys now now act as a proper mute and will mute the C or C# Group. Removed the voices on B2 tail.
• Xylophone: minor roll tweaks and Volume tweaks on the Full Group (+10db instead of +6db)

PRO:

• Drum Kit – General Midi: Fixed the layout to better respond to the standard mapping, removed all CC cymbal control and Cymbal Releases. HiHat closed now cuts off the HiHat open properly, this is now the basic, slimmed version of the full kit.
• Vibraphone: Completely new sample set. Each sample was denoised, removing as much of the noisefloor as possible and ticks and other room noises. Adjusted a few performance programming to compensate for the new sample set (ie, Volumes, crossfades, releases, etc) (New Sampleset Download Required)
• Orchestral Shakers: Fixed Sample start, added a default value so shakers feel a bit tighter, can be adjusted in the settings under the sample start knob. Added filter control to the rolls via CC1.
• Sticks and Tickies: Fixed Sample start, added a default value so shakers feel a bit tighter, can be adjusted in the settings under the sample start knob. Added filter control to the rolls via CC1.
• Brake Drum, CowBells: Added CC1 filter control to CowBell Rolls
• Wood Blocks: Added filter control to the rolls via CC1.
• Waterphone – Dry: Fixed a few release samples so they sound smoother.

EPIC:

• Ens Full: Adjusted some loops and release samples
• Ens Mid: Increased the sample start time to 100ms so the instrument feels tighter and added a sample start default value.
• Taikos: Fixed Keyboard layout so the soft mallet hits would land on C and D and E instead of A and B (example: Soft hit on A1 would now be on C2 and Rough on B1 would now be on E2). Fixed a few tails to remove some talking.
• Shime Daiko: Fixed Keyboard layout so hand hits would now be on C instead of A.
• 2 NEW PATCHES: Monster Hits and Monster Swooshes. All made from the CinePerc Library, processed on ALL mics, each mic provides a different quality of the hit. See Keyboard layout for more detail. (New sample set download required)

AUX:

• Anklungs: added filter control via CC1 to the rolls
• Ethnic Shakers 1+2: Added a default Sample Start value to make the shakers feel “tighter” can be adjusted back via the settings page. Also added filter control via CC1 to the rolls.
• Ethnic Shakers Extra: added filter control via CC1 to the rolls
• 2 NEW PATCHES: Puili Sticks Single and Groups (new sample set download required)
• Monky Stick and Agogo: added filter control via CC1 to the rolls
• Glass Jars and Water Pots: Tuned the Water Pots and Bottle Blows to ~A440

Howdy, fellow SCOREcasters! The industry we work in demands a lot. Time pressure, the need to stand out, to have a unique voice and most of all the actual need to come up with something good at all means we have to stay on top of our game as best as we can. One piece of the puzzle that has become ever more important in recent years is having a template. This article is the first part of a series dealing with exactly that. We will have a look at what a template actually is and why you should want to have one (or more). We will deal with the technology behind it (part II), some software to make it reality (part III) and how to approach building one for yourself (part IV). The journey does not end here, though. Based on your feedback, this series will continue with additional topics. So, after reading this first part, voice your thoughts and questions in the comments.

What is a template?

You’re sitting in front of your composing desk and have just read a brief. You’ve even managed to get a few ideas how to pull this off. You start up your sequencer, load in an instrument track, add an instance of your sampler, think of a nice patch to start with, load it in and begin playing. No, actually you don’t. Because by the time you have finally loaded everything, you have completely forgotten your brilliant musical idea. Its gone. *He’s dead, Jim!* Does this sound familiar? Hand up, please, everyone who has been in that situation. I sure have.

What if you were able to just play away when that bolt of inspiration strikes? How awesome would that be? That’s what templates are for. Simply put, a template in its most basic form is nothing more than a project in your sequencer which is already populated with a number of tracks containing instruments/articulations that you rely on all the time. So instead of having to create a track, loading Kontakt, searching for that string patch and loading it in, all you need to do is select a track and you’re good to go. Whenever you start a new project, instead of loading an empty session in your sequencer, you load a copy of your template.

What is in there?

You probably have a favourite piano patch. Maybe you even routinely use one when looking for inspiration. Just noodling away on one patch until you a nice tune creeps up is an important part of the creative process. Similarly, you have a favourite string library; that one particular trumpet patch; or even that big whooping bass synth sound that sculpts the low end of your tracks. Especially in the orchestral realm, over time as a composer you will build „your orchestra“ out of the various sample libraries you have purchased. This line-up stays relatively consistent between projects. Just have a look at your music and you will see that you have some preferences. All these patches have their place in your template. Being able to access them without first needing to load them in allows you to be creative the second you sit down at your composing desk. Furthermore, it obviously saves you a lot of time starting with a pre-populated arrange instead of having to load in the same stuff on every new cue.

Do it once, have it for eternity

Saving time actually is one of the main reasons why taking the time to set up a template makes sense: Things like routing, possibly stems, reverb setup and basic post-production are more or less the same on most tracks. If you use samples that need panning to sound realistic, those settings tend to stay the same in different projects. In a regular orchestral setup, the Violins I are panned quite a bit to the left, the Trumpets are more in the back to the right of the conductor. Using these settings you spent considerable time to set up and tweak in other projects not only makes sense, but also lets you be more productive. A template allows you to set everything up the way you need it and create new projects based on that work later.

The same applies to changes to patches. You might change CC assignments to make something work with your wind controller. Or map instrument parameters to knobs on your controller keyboard to be able to control them while recording. Having all this saved as part of your template makes sure it is exactly as you want it every time you begin a new project.

Last but not least, having everything set up in this way also helps with mixing: Different sample libraries have different relative volume levels. If you take the time once to adjust the volume of all patches relative to each other, you won’t need to work your faders so much anymore to get instruments to sound good together. Making sure the relative volume of different instruments is as close to the real thing as possible is an important part of creating realistic mockups.

What is not in there?

That’s an easy one! All those patches you only use on very specific projects are better of being project-specific, i.e. not being loaded as part of the template. This is to save loading time for the whole thing and to avoid having a large number of tracks that you only use once a year. So maybe this (admittedly gorgeous) baroque Viola d’amore patch might be better left out

Manage your arsenal

Having a template ready also is a way to make sure you actually use the samples you’ve got. Ever caught yourself just loading a generic string patch for noodling around and then ending up with that exact same patch in the final version, just because you couldn’t be bothered to look for a better one? A template with a variety of different patches for various uses lets you find the patch that fits best. It also invites you to toy around with instrumentation: How about giving that line to the Flute? Nah, that sucks, Oboe sounds better! Since all instruments are already there and you don’t need to create a new track or change an existing one to try out some other instrument, you can easily test different instrumentations.

Picture a template like a toolset. It provides you with quick access to all the instruments and patches you need, completely set up with your CC assignments, routing, reverb, and so on. In its most basic form, a template saves you time and makes sure you can begin writing quicker.

What does it require?

A template by its very nature contains a lot of tracks, not all of which you will use in every project. All these samples nevertheless need to be loaded, so hosting a large template first and foremost demands a lot of RAM. While it is possible to remove unused samples from memory, the bare patches still need some memory when loaded. But unless you are really low on memory, having a template far outweighs the disadvantages. It takes some time to plan a template and to set it up. We will deal with that part in a later article, but just so you know: This ain’t nothing to be done in a few hours. Some very good news at the end: The monetary requirements are as low as it can get. While it makes sense to use specialised software to host the template, this is not a must – and even if you do use this software, it is not very expensive. We will deal with all that in detail later. You can set up a basic template in your sequencer with no additional software or hardware required.

I hope you found this article interesting. Part II will deal with the technical background of setting up a template and the various approaches to it. Post your questions and feedback in the comments below!

In our newest SPOTLIGHT ON, Johnny Knittle guides you through a tour of one of the most exciting things to happen to sampled drums in quite a long time: Drumasonic 2.1, Drumasonic’s newly updated engine for Kontakt Player, and their newest multi-sampled soundset library Drumasonic Luxury.

SPECIAL DEAL

Get a killer HALF OFF deal on both (!) these products for a limited time by utilizing the code SCORECAST50 when you check out at www.drumasonic.com. The HALF OFF deal is for Drumasonic 2.1 only, but if you add Luxury onto your ticket and buy them both together, you’ll get the bundle for only 129 EURO!! Hurry to get yours before this deal goes away!

If you cannot see the video below, please click here.

Soundiron‘s newest entry into the multi-sampled choir genre — Mercury Symphonic Boychoir — is a whopper! Weighing in at 15.5 gigabytes with over 14,500 samples, Mercury is a beast of a library that will satisfy the most demanding of applications.

Mercury is normally priced at $399 retail, but all of Soundiron‘s full choirs are going on sale at a 20% discount for the next week, making Mercury $319 for the general public…

ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR SCOREcast MEMBERS ONLY

… However, Soundiron has graciously offered SCOREcast regional chapter members an additional $25 off of Mercury, making the library only $294. That’s more than $100 off the regular price for SCOREcast regional chapter members!

If you cannot see the video below, click here.

JOIN A CHAPTER and GET THE CODE

In order to qualify for the additional discount code, you need to belong to one of SCOREcast’s regional chapters.

We have three: North America (Hollywood), United Kingdom, and Germany.

(NOTE: If you live and/or work in NORTHEAST ASIA or any of the immediate surrounding territories, please get in touch with us for a special and unique upcoming opportunity.)

MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS

Admittance to any of our regional chapters requires verification that:

1. You are indeed a working composer (Our moderators *will* check, so please have a website, IMDb credit, or some other way we can verify your work)
2. You have an active Facebook account with up-to-date profile picture. (SCOREcast is a “community” where members are known. Facebook account applicants with no current profile picture will be rejected.)

** Please be advised that you will only be admitted into the one regional chapter closest to you geographically. Admission into more than one chapter is not allowed at this time.
** SCOREcast: Germany is a German-speaking group. You are welcome to join if you live and/or work in Germany and are a native speaker. Otherwise, please feel free to join SCOREcast: United Kingdom.

JOIN TODAY

The discount will be good for one week and one week only. Time runs out at midnight, March 25th.

Follow the links above to the chapter closest to you geographically (note that the German chapter is an all-German speaking group, so unless you live and work in Germany, join our UK chapter) and get yourself involved in SCOREcast — the web’s most thriving global composer community. Once you are inside your chapter, you’ll be given a special code to get started with the single most comprehensive, playable and powerfully sampled children’s choir ever released: Soundiron Mercury Symphonic Boychoir!

Hello everyone and welcome back! In this second article  I would like to talk about some more ways in which Logic can make your life easier when scoring for video such as importing ideas from other project files and using stems.

Let’s assume that the director has given me some extra notes about my cue…happens to all of us, right?

Well it might come handy as well copy paste them in Notes inside Logic (whose quick access you can find in the Toolbar, upper corner right). This feature isn´t exclusive of the Picture template, but it is especially helpful when you want to have quick access to your spotting notes, director´s remarks, latest stroke of inspiration…

I wish I could use some instruments and themes from the previous scene I scored

Wish granted. One of the most useful features in Logic is Import in the Browser of Media (ta-da!)

From it you can import any input/output source, plugin, project settings, content of track etc from any previous project into your current one. This allows you to:

• Import that theme or motif that you used two cues ago. No need to copy-paste!
• Import those strings that you liked so much in that old project from two years ago that would go so nicely in this precise cue
• Build subtemplates of you choice (winds, strings, brass, funky synths, ethic percussion), including plugins (those lush strings with that precise reverb) that you´ll be able to coordinate flexibly as if you were working with modules

Stems, stems, stems…

The stems and submixes that are often required when scoring to picture can be obtained by different procedures. Here we will see the one that should be faster!

It basically consists in assigning whatever channels of similar material you have to a particular bus, that you will later use as an independent track on its own.

Let´s say something in the line: tracks 1-7 go to bus 1 called Strings, 8-9 to bus 2 called Bass, 10 to 17 to bus 3 called Drums…you name it. By doing so you are creating some aux channels in the mixer devoted to stem groups. Now, to record those stems, we shall use the outputs of each of those submixes as input sources of new tracks in the arrange.
So, in the Arrange we create new audio tracks using the buses as input (as many as buses we created and we choose the first and go ascending). Now, if we click Record for the whole length of the track, these new tracks shall contain the stems.

That’s all ladies and gentlemen! Logic is a very powerful program and we have only touched upon very basic concepts but hopefully you have found something in here that can help you get started.

Remember, if you have any tips about scoring in Logic Pro, why not share them below at the comments section???

Part 3:  MIDI Composing

Okay, so we’ve covered the basic features of Studio One, and we know how to make a scoring template for composing.

Now it is time to show you the actual MIDI options and workflow of Studio One for composers.
Before I start, I want to say one thing: Studio One is not designed for film composers, so its MIDI features lack the power of Logic or Digital Performer, because it is a relatively young DAW (Version 2.5).  But, I am pretty confident that Studio One 3 will bring on the “heavy weapons”.

Having said that, let’s get this thing started.

MIDI tracks in Studio One are called Instrument Tracks. You add an Instrument track by right clicking in the light gray area to the left of the project window, and click the Instrument Track option in the drop menu.

If you want to add multiple Instrument Tracks, you right click again in the light gray area, and select the first option called Add Tracks. You can also use the default shortcut for this (T). Once you choose that, a window will open showing you different options of tracks and setups you wish to add. You can add the names of those tracks, the number of tracks you wish to add, types of tracks (in this case its instrument Tracks), color of the tracks, input of the tracks (you can instantly choose which MIDI controller you wish do use), and output of the tracks. Output is an actual MIDI instrument you wish to use with the Instrument Tracks (i.e. Kontakt). Once you’ve made your choice, click OK, and you’re good to go.
The principle of MIDI recording and editing is pretty much similar as in every other DAW out there. You record a track, double click on it, and a piano roll will open (F2 is the shortcut). You can edit almost everything in piano roll. All of the familiar tools are there: point tool, split tool, paint tool (which has multiple options for writing), mute tool and listen tool. Paint Tool kind of resembles of Photoshop paint tool, giving you options of writing freehand, sine wave, line, parabola, square wave etc.

There is also a dedicated Quantize tool with a lot of options (these are called actions in Studio One).

I won’t go deep into the options, but one interesting thing is adding humanization to MIDI notes. Even though the MIDI clip is quantized, adding humanization will change the velocities of the notes and nudge quantization a bit.

All of the options and actions can be added and edited with the pain tool.
Modulation can be hand drawn if you don’t have a keyboard with mod wheel.

Same thing goes for velocity, pitch, and you can add other parameters that you would like to use on the MIDI track.

You add them by left clicking on the three dot tab, on the left of velocity tab.
Once you click there, a new window will open, showing you all of the MIDI parameters you can add to the track. It’s as simple as choosing an option and clicking on Add button.
You can also pick a scale to use for writing. On the left side of the piano roll, there is an option for choosing a scale. Just click on the Root of the scale to choose, and on the snap value to pick the type of scale you would like.

There is one more cool option that Studio One has. Right clicking on the MIDI track in the project window, shows you all of the MIDI options that you can use on the track. I like especially the velocity and humanize options. Velocity option can come in handy.  For example, your note velocities are set like you wanted them, and you have copied a couple of same parts of the MIDI clip. You would like the next clip to play a bit louder than the previous one, but your note velocities are going up until 127. You right click on the clip, and change the velocity percentage of the clip a bit up, so it plays louder than the previous part. Or for example, the instrument is programmed to play different samples on different velocities, so you can use this option to change the velocity of the desired note that triggers the sample. The way I wrote it, sounds a bit confusing, but you’ll get the picture.

And that is pretty much it…

I hope these few posts are, and will be, of help to you in your future exploration of PreSonus Studio One.

Eanan Patterson takes you through a guided tour of Sonokinetic’s new “DA CAPO”, their multisampled follow-up to “Tutti” and “Vivace”.

Scoring to picture with Logic

When scoring to picture, Logic has a template dedicated especifically for this that can come in quite handy (therefore we´ll asume we´re using it already). Additionally, you can customize it yourself as seen in previous articles and speed up even more your scoring to picture!

So I have a movie and I want to score it

First thing obviously will be to import the movie into Logic, and then set up the synchronization with it. In the Global Tracks you can find a dedicated track for the movie where you can import it and see it on the Video Track or you can also import it from File / Open Movie.

For setting up the synchronisation, you can adjust the settings in Project Settings / Synchronisation (frame rate and bar position in reference to SMTPE) and Project Settings / Video (Movie Start field).

It´s always prudent to double check these parameters are well adjusted by checking the burnt in SMPTE code of your clip coincides all along the project with the SMPTE display in Logic (in the transport bar, you can even find an independen giant display)

Now my movie plays smoothly in Logic- how to start scoring?

Once you have those specifications clear the next step is to display in Logic that mental map that you have of how you want to score your scene. How?

One of the major characteristics of writing music to picture is that the structure of the cue shall be shaped by the events in the clip instead of being bar / musical divisions based. This is what will make navigating the project a bit different!

Having in mind what hit points you don´t want to miss in your movie and will shape its structure, the easiest way to keep them and navigate through them is by using Markers. After a spotting session, every relevant event (entry of a cue, change of mood, hit points, etc) can be marked in the exact SMTPE position using markers.

For locating those precise time references you can use the Go to Position key command (/) and write there the SMTPE position you want to locate and press Return; Logic´s playhead will have found that precise spot and there you can create a marker without rounding. This means the marker will be placed at exactly the SMTPE position indicated instead of approximating it to the next bar as it would be helpful when songwriting.

You can create markers without rounding in Option/Marker/ Create without rounding or use a key command for it (will vary on your keyboard, by default all key commands involving Markers tend to include letter “K”).

Once the markers are defined, you can find them in Lists (by default there is a direct access to it in the right up corner). There you can rename them and you will find also space to type any notes regarding that hitpoint that you might need.

However, the most important task now once the markers are conveniently defined is to SMTPE lock them so they will remain unmoved in their position if the project´s tempo is modified. For this you can simply right click on the marker and select “Lock SMTPE position” or use the Option local menu of the Marker List. You will see a little lock icon appear next to the marker, indicating it´s been locked.

A very handy feature here is Detect Cuts, that you can find in the Video Global Track and captures major visual changes and helps you spot potential hit points that your score may want to underline. It will also by default find the beginning and end of the movie. It might help you locate some points and if you´re not happy with them, you can always delete them from the list.

One more thing to make the marker list more friendly: you can choose to show the position of each marker in SMTPE units rather than in using its absolute position in the local menu View/Event position and length in SMTPE units.

Once the markers are well defined and locked, a helpful tip can be to colour them in order to visually find them quicker; as with any other region in Logic, this can be easily done by selecting the marker and using the colour palette by pressing OPT+C and choosing the desired colour on it. The same colours shall appear in the Markers list, making it easy to differenciate them one another.

Now, how to quickly navigate markers?

There are two main ways; one, in the Arrange, using the key commands for it (you can define them as any key commands or choose the default ones in Option/ Markers): Go to previous / next marker, or Go to Marker Number “x”. This will accelerate your navigation of the project quite dramatically, especially because it allows you to navigate flexibly and conceptually rather than using a bar-based grid (which again is great for songwriting but not so much for rhapsodic scoring to picture).

The second way is using the Marker List; you can CMD click on the desired marker (this brings by default the Finger Tool) and the playhead will follow it. Some composers also like to have the Markers List as an independent window (that can be opened by using OPT+M) maybe to be used in a second screen!

I know this month’s theme is about technology and all the hot new gear out there, but I wanted to step back from all that and share a bit of wisdom I’ve learned the hard way: when you’re composing, compose.

Don’t orchestrate, arrange, record or mix at the same time. Writing, orchestrating, recording and mixing are four independent processes which use different skills and different parts of your brain. Trying to do even two of them at the same time is distracting and counter-productive. It takes you out of the moment and diverts you down numerous paths that beckon seductively but will ultimately waste your time and weaken your finished product.

Separate the Processes

Nobody writes their best work sitting in front of a DAW loaded with samples and plugins. It’s simply too easy to get lost in the details. I’ve done it more frequently than I care to admit. Invariably I end up spending an hour trying to make the horns sound amazing, only to realize the part doesn’t fit, it obscures the melody or that I should be using cellos instead. You know the saying about carts and horses? Composition is the horse, and it should always come first.

Nowadays it seems terribly old-fashioned, but I much prefer writing at the piano. The only technology present is either my Zoom recorder or Sibelius running with my three-line piano template. If I’m at the stage where I’m writing to picture, I’ll use Logic with a piano sample loaded. In all cases, I’m working with a diminished sound set and don’t have the ability to orchestrate, choose sounds or effects or make anything sound great. I actually find this liberating—I don’t need to worry about the finished product, I can focus on writing a great melody and interesting chords and rhythms, and leave all of my other decisions until later.

Why use this technique?

Why use this technique? The simple answer is that composition and orchestration are two very distinct activities. Composition is about melody and accompaniment and writing with clarity. While composing, you want to be focused on creating an ear-catching melody and devising an accompaniment that supports it and moves the piece forward. You need to make sure the melody has plenty of breathing room and that none of the other lines obscure it. You want to craft an interesting bass line that anchors both the melody and the harmony while being rhythmically interesting and flattering to the other elements.

Focusing on these tasks is paramount—without great writing you’re going to have a much harder time orchestrating and mixing your piece, and you’re liable to get frustrated in later stages because your piece has problems that are difficult or impossible to fix at the 11th hour. These are often those unfortunate moments where you say to yourself, “Well, it’s not my best work but it’ll have to do.” Wouldn’t it be nice to always write your best work?

The other problem with writing, orchestrating and mixing simultaneously is this: with the plethora of excellent sample libraries, effects and soft synths out there today, it’s easy to make anything sound amazing, even if it’s musically bland. When you write on piano, you don’t have those sonic crutches. It has to be well-written. If not, you’ll know instantly. You need to rely on your sense of melody and harmony rather than amazing-sounding samples to wow your audience. This may seem out-of-date, but I guarantee you, even if you’re writing the most thunderous, Hans Zimmer-like score, a few beautiful melodies and interesting harmonies will make your score 100 times better.

Final Thoughts

I had a composition teacher once criticize a piece I wrote because the piano sketch was too repetitive. And it was. Of course, it sounded great in my head with all of the orchestration ideas I had, but musically it was monotonous. His point was that the music itself needs to go somewhere. Even if you start with a stripped-down ostinato and gradually embellish it, it will still be much more engaging than the same ostinato repeated verbatim for 24 bars, even if the orchestration is magnificent.

Do I write with a stripped-down setup all the time? No. Sometimes it’s inspiring to start with a rocking drum track or a beautiful synth patch. Some pieces are so reliant on sonics that you need to hear those sounds in order to write. But even with these pieces, I always try to avoid getting lost in the trees and not seeing the forest. I try not to worry about the right reverb, the perfect bass sound or whether to use banjo or mandolin. And sometimes, once I’m inspired, I’ll step back from my DAW and figure out the melody and harmony at the piano where I’m not distracted by details.

Most of us need to spend time as part-time orchestrators, sound-designers and mixers, but we also need to remember that our primary job title is composer, and composing starts with great music.

SCOREcast 36: Charlie Clouser

Other Places to Listen

iTunes

To listen in iTunes:

1. Launch iTunes 11.
2. In the File menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
3. Enter — http://feeds.feedburner.com/scopodcast — in the text box and click OK.

Stitcher.com

Episode Description

In our last show of 2012, Deane and Brian visit at length with Charlie Clouser of Nine Inch Nails fame and composer for the “Saw” franchise and the just released “The Collection”. Charlie goes deep into his composing and production process, his studio rig, and also answers SCOREcaster questions on how he got into the business and how he chooses his projects. The boys also continue their discussion on the effort to preserve work in Los Angeles and take time with Charlie to cover some year-end Top Picks.

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Leave a COMMENT below and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com.

With a shiny new version of iTunes just having arrived from Apple’s secret labs, the timing is just perfect to introduce you to this software as a powerful tool for organizing reference material. iTunes is maybe the most underrated and misunderstood application on the planet. Many people just see it as a way to fill their iPhones. While it certainly is pretty good at doing that, it also can serve as a tool to give you access to music you might want to listen to for inspiration. iTunes also works great for cataloguing your own work for reference, but we will come to that in a future article.

So what are we talking about here? I don’t know about you, but at least I am constantly prompted to cal up this or that film score. People say „I want something like XY did in that film!“. Fortunately, with a big record collection, I usually have that particular score at hand – now all I need is to find it. Also quite often I search for inspiration in my collection. I want to listen to a bunch of horror film scores, but don’t know any particular names of films or composers. Or maybe I remember which year that particular album was from, but not the name. Either way, iTunes can help in these situations, provided that you organize your collection efficiently.

In this article I will show you a number of tips and tricks for making iTunes effortlessly present you with exactly what you are looking for when searching for inspiration.

1) Tag your stuff: It may be painfully obvious, but still most people do not correctly tag their music. Every track should have as much information as possible, including composer _and_ artist(s). If multiple artists (for example soloists) perform in one album, give all of them a common album artist. This will keep your albums together. Also fill out the year and CD number as well as track number tags. These are very important for finding tracks quickly.

2) Use the grouping for combining different sections of a work: The grouping tag is the most important tag for quickly finding tracks that belong together. For classical works, place the composer in this tag, followed by the name of the work. For example „Elfman – Serenada Schizophrana“. You can then just have the title of the movements in the track name and do not need to clutter six or seven tracks with the title of the work, followed by the movement title. This also allows you to at a glance see all the recordings you have of a particular work by just searching for its grouping.

3) Unify names: Quite a lot of names can either be spelled different ways (take Russian composers, for example: Shostakovich vs. Schostakowitsch) or are susceptible to being spelled wrong (for example Bernard Herrmann has had gruesome things done to this first and last name!). This happens a lot even on commercial releases – I have even seen an album in a major music store by „John Wilaims“. At least they were consistent in spelling the poor man wrong in the whole booklet, too. Check this – nothing is worse than frantically looking for that Michael Giacchino album which you absolutely know to have in your library, but not finding it, because the man is misspelled. This is double worse – and embarrassing – when happening in front of a client.

4) Use album covers: Many of us are visual thinkers. Having album covers for every album is a bit of work, especially if you need to scan in covers of rare to find albums, but especially in the light of iTunes 11’s reliance on a grid of covers as the main method of navigating, it is simply a must. Album covers also go a long way to bring as much of the good old vinyl days to the digital age. As artists we should always make sure to include cover art with albums as a token of respect for the talented people who created this artwork.

5) Use the sorting tags: In the track info window (Apple/Cmd-I) you will find a large number of tags that are used for sorting albums. You can use these to influence the order in which your albums are displayed inside the library. Basically what iTunes does is use those tags (if present) for sorting, but will still use the regular tags when displaying the albums. As an example, if you have an album called „X“ and call it „A“ in the Album for Sorting tag, it will appear under the letter „A“ inside your library, but will still be called „X“. These tags are extremely useful when grouping together albums that belong together in a series in a particular order, but would be sorted differently because of their names. One such series of film scores that comes to mind is Harry Potter. „C“ comes before „S“ or „P“ in the alphabet, so the second film (Chamber of Secrets) is sorted before the first (Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone). Just name them „Harry Potter 1“and so on  as the Album for Sorting and you are done. You will find that searching for „Chamber of Secrets“ will still have the album turn up in the search results because iTunes searches all tags by default and the sorting tags do not override the regular tags as far as searching is concerned.

6) Use unused tags: Chances are high you never need that BPM tag. Firstly, the BPM tend to change quite frequently in our kind of music. Secondly, you are unlikely to ever need to play your newest film score at the hottest club in town, where beat-matching is a must. Use this tag for organizing your music. You might for example enter the shelf number that particular CD is stored on, or the hard drive number where the cue is located. Anything that has numbers.

7) Use TV tags: Every file in iTunes can have the tags reserved for TV shows, even if it is not TV show or even a video file at all. Of course when cataloguing music for TV shows it makes perfect sense to use these tags. Enter the season, the episode number and additional information. For all other files, use these tags for other information, like the director of the movie, or the scoring stage the album was recorded at.

8) Be creative with genres: If you mainly have film scores in your library, there is no reason to leave the genre for all of them as „Soundtrack“. Firstly, as we all know, it is sort of incorrect because the soundtrack is everything you can hear, not just the actual score; secondly it makes no sense to have „Alien“ in the same genre as „The Sea Hawk“. Change the genre to „SciFi“ or „Golden Age“ and, voilà, searching for „Golden Age“ will magically pull up all scores fitting that era.

9) Understand the search function: The one basic thing about iTunes’ search to know is that it uses the „AND“ operator by default. So when looking for „Jerry Goldsmith SciFi“ it will pull up all tracks that have these two terms somewhere in their tags. „Alien“ will be in there; „Freud“ not so much. You can also search for ratings: „Alan Menken ****“ will pull up all albums with his name and four stars.

10) Make Smart Playlists: There will be an additional article about some Smart Playlists that have proven indispensable for me, but here’s my favorite: Make a playlist with the condition „Last played more than a year ago“. You will discover tons of great music that you haven’t listened to in ages. I guarantee you will immediately feel inspired to write the next big thing!

I hope these ten tips sparked your interest in iTunes and helped you get your collection up to speed. Stay tuned for more about collecting research material – and let me know what you think in the comments!

Eanan Patterson takes a thorough look under the hood of “CineWinds PRO”, the 2nd volume expansion in the Cinesamples custom orchestral library series suite.

Origins

(this could take several articles, but let’s get slim on the facts and skip but the relevant ones, to avoid you catching some z’s while trying to read this).

Compressors appear in radio from the necessity to solve the problem of sound sources of different levels, preventing the transmitters overload and blow. Before that, the only solution was the radio engineer riding the fader down on loud parts and push it up on soft ones. As you may guess, unless those guys were fast as “Lucky Luke” their success was nothing but short. They need a device that had a peak control to protect the transmitter, (AM at the time) while balancing different material to be broadcast at consistent levels. Those have been called at the time, leveling amplifiers or limiters, but act pretty much like our days compressors. True limiting took “some” years to became as we know it today, with the help of better technology.

The first dynamic compressor made it’s appearance on the public address system at the 1936 Olympics, it was a Telefunken U3.

Studio engineers also adopt compressors to help them in the gain riding of live performances, to avoid distortion when they cut to disk, prevent tapes from over saturation and in digital to get rid of clipping.

Over the years these outboard units improved greatly and still are in use today (for those who can afford the luxury of having vintage compressors racks) from top studios, producers and mastering facilities. Later some mixing consoles manufacturers incorporate compressors in they channel strip desks. Today, in our DAWs, we abuse the use of plug-ins and in this particular case compressors as Seinfeld says because we can !!!

Do we know how to set it correctly or do we slap it on track and go wow cool, it’s loud now.

Let’s find out, first will have a look at the some of the ways used to get compression.

Dynamic controllers

Dynamic controllers modify the dynamic range of a signal

Dynamic Controllers Graphics

Compression

Compressors reduces the dynamic range of a signal, boosting the quieter signals and attenuating the louder ones, making the difference between loudest and softest sounds shorter by “squashing” it.

Threshold: this setting dictates (generally in dB) the level at the compressor kicks in, how loud the signal as to be before gain reduction begins.

Low values will compress most of the signal, with higher values only the peaks (highest levels of the signal) will be compressed letting signals below the threshold unaffected (with hard knee).

(There are some compressors that don’t have a dedicated threshold control /slider, these are fixed threshold units. In this case it’s the input knob that rules, the higher the input the more it overshoots the fixed threshold).

0 dB (calibrated mark) is the highest signal level you can reach in digital before clipping, a threshold setting of – 8 dB tells the compressor to kick in 8 dB bellow 0 dB.

Ratio: controls the amount of compression applied between input and output signals above the threshold.

A 1:1 ratio means no compression is applied, but a 2:1 ratio means that any input signal that overshoots the threshold say 6 dB will leave the compressor with a 3 dB reduction.

( - 6 dB threshold, ratio 2:1, signal leaves at – 9dB a 3 dB reduction above threshold)

Most compressors ranging from 2:1 to 20:1, at this ratio, is considered a Limiter (actually since a 10:1 ratio is Limiting).

Attack: controls the time the compressor takes to react to signals above the threshold (in milliseconds). With (lower value numbers) fast attack times, the signal will be attenuated almost immediately. With medium to fast attack times, it lets the initial peaks pass before the compressor kicks in (this can add a punchier sound with percussive effect). With a slower attack, it lets a sustained note passing thru before the compressor reacts.

Release: controls the time the compressor takes to react to signals bellow the threshold and stop compressing (also in milliseconds). The lower the number, the faster the release time. With very fast release times the compressor stops working immediately as soon it falls bellow the threshold (in most cases, this can sound unnatural). With too slow release times, the compressor may attenuate a soft passage followed by a loud one, simply because the unit had no time to recover.

(some compressors have switchable auto attack or auto release buttons, when those are engaged the fixed values stop being constant and will change automatically according to the level of the input signal).

Hard or Soft knee: Some compressors have the option between hard or soft knee. With hard knee the compression kicks instantly when the threshold overshoots. With soft knee, compression is obtained gradually (curve shape rather than hard angled) on both sides of the threshold, thus more gently and more transparent, hard knee has more compression effect.

 Hard knee  and  Soft knee

Make-up gain: automatic compensates the gain loss in compression relative to the threshold, ratio and attack settings.

Gain reduction meter: displays the amount of compression applied to the signal (in dB). Showing when gain reduction occurs, when it starts and when it stops, a good visual indicator to better adjust helper for attack and release settings. Some compressors have LED bargraph others have needle type meters. Bargraph is quicker to respond, thus more accurate.

Output: self explanatory, allows you to attenuate or boost the compressor output signal.

Side chain: allows the amount of compression be triggered by an external signal fed via an auxiliary output to the unit side chain input. For example to reduce sibilance (in conjunction with EQ) and duking, to name but two.

Stereo linking switch: a stereo compressor is basically a unit with two mono compressors working independently (dual mono mode). This switch allows both compressors to work as two identical ones preventing image shifting.

Today we have the fortune to incorporate most of hardware compression units emulated in our Daws like this Logic plugin.

With third party top plugins those emulations are becoming even better with every new version. Like Waves, Universal Audio, Sonnox, to name just a few excellent ones.

Stay tuned for the following part on compressors operational and other dynamic controllers tips.

As composers we are compelled to obsess about sample libraries. It’s like an illness. We hover around forums, when we should be writing music, seeing what our favourite developers are up to, when they’re going to release their latest mega-library and how we can possibly scrape a few pounds off the recommended retail price via discount codes and promo sales.

Soon it will be Black Friday and we are all sat, hitting refresh, waiting for our favourite sound manglers to reveal how big their sale is, hoping the expensive stuff we can’t really justify buying may be in an utterly implausible 99% off sale.

But, there is another way. A way that doesn’t involve crying, praying and gnawing our finger nails down to the elbow. And that way is buying less expensive libraries from smaller developers.

We are all familiar with the big-hitters such as Cinesamples, 8dio, and Spitfire Audio. We are all fairly familiar with slightly smaller companies like SonicCouture, Sonokinetic and Impact Soundworks. But there are many new companies out there making little specialised libraries that are amazingly cost effective and not lacking in competitive quality.

Embertone
I’m starting with Embertone as they are steadily moving into the realms of the well-known, through their combination of amazing legato scripting and cheap pricing policy. Their Chapman Trumpet, Jubal Flute and now Shire Whistle are slowly finding a place in everybody’s studio. And the promise of an upcoming solo violin library is hugely exciting news. If you haven’t already visited their website, make sure you go there credit card in hand!

Cinematique Instruments
If ‘eclectic’ is what you’re after, this outfit are well worth a visit. Their unique collection ranges from obscure European string instruments (such as the Bowed Psaltery or German Monochord), through to electronic percussion of their Cement and Experimental Box series, via mallets, harmonicas and pianos. When you’re looking for a unique sound to add a little nuance to your work, you’ll find something here.

Cinematique Instruments’ German Monochord

FocuSounds
A brand new developer that has just arrived on the scene quite bravely with that obsession of all composers, solo strings. Their Sweet Cello and Sweet Violin aim to provide an affordable alternative to some of the bigger libraries, without any compromise on quality. If the demos are anything to go by, they appear to have done just that. And for those of us who want to put together string quartets, it’s always good to have another solo cello or violin.

Precisionsound
These Swedish developers offer a little bit of everything. Accordions, music toys, flutes, pianos, zithers, organs, synth textures and trailer tools await the happy shopper. My particular favourites are their European folk instruments. They have the finest kantele and cimbalom I know of. If you have a taste for non-orchestral instruments, you are bound to find something.

Pendle Poucher
This curiously titled UK-based composer has only a few instruments, but they are unique to his site. Dulcitones are hard to come by, but here you will find two! They are exquisitely sampled, as is his Autoharp and Ship’s Piano. The true extraordinary gem in this collection is the Pendleonium, an original instrument put together by Pendle Poucher from a balalaika, a viola, a baritone guitar, a Roland chorus echo, Roger Linn amp and Vermona sing reverb. Madness, pure madness.

AudioThing
More singular instruments from Europe. Italian sample developers AudioThing have an obsession with providing sounds you just won’t find anywhere else. I first became aware of them from their Pong Glockenspiel library, the definitive ‘glockenspiel being played by dropping ping pong balls on it’ library. On their site you will find instruments made from spray cans, toy harps and, most recently, a place called the Temple of Mercury in Naples – which really does need to be read about in more depth to be understood, but is a thing of strange beauty.

AudioThing’s Temple of Mercury

Synth Magic and Hollow Sun
Finally, last but by no means least, not all Kontakt libraries are devoted to instruments – be they orchestral, ethnic or just plain mad. Synthesizers also get a look-in and both Synth Magic and Hollow Sun are the finest purveyors of such rare synth classics as you can imagine.

Synth Magic’s roster includes the Jen SX3000, the Korg Delta, the ARP Quadra and the rather sublime but rare Farfisa Polychrome. Hollow Sun provide a beautifully detailed Crumar Performer, Moog Taurus and a Hammond Novachord. Plus they also make some strange synth instruments of their own that hark back to the days of valve relics and dusty oscillators in their Music Laboratory Machines catalogue.

So, there you go. You’ve no excuse to whine about not being able to afford new libraries any more. There’s a world of Kontakt (other sample players are available) joy to be had for a handful of shiny pennies, and it’s a world that will result in your music being that little bit different from your compadres and competitors. And don’t forget the heart-warming glow of knowing you’ve helped one of the little guys out.

If you have any favourite little developers out there, why not share them in the comments below? We all like a bargain.

I’ve been talking enough about the features; now let me show you the true power of Studio One.
Okay, since all of us at SCOREcast are composers, we all know how important it is to meet the deadline right? And all of us have made our own starting templates for composing, in order to save time as much as we can, right?
Making a scoring template in Studio One is very easy. Traditional orchestral scoring template has strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and if you’re a bit of a modern type, you add choirs and synthesizers. Now, my template is rather simple, since I have a very old PC with small amount of  RAM and not so powerful processor(4GB of RAM and Intel dual core CPU), so I have to make some sacrifices obviously. I have 6 instances of  Native instruments Kontakt, and each of them has 16 outputs that are patched to Studio One’s mixer. So, 96 tracks in total, but I rarely use all of them. Sometimes, if my poor little PC allows it, I add Omnisphere or Trillian to the template. Also rewiring other DAWs like Ableton or Reason is very easy and very useful if you like their instruments. I personally like Reason and I use it as a big hybrid synth that’s being rewired to my Studio One project.

Here’s how my default template looks like when I start the project:

For easier spotting, I’ve marked sections of the orchestra in different collors. They are all sorted out nicely into folders, and great feature in Studio One is that you can select the tracks you want, right click and click the option for sorting tracks into folder, when the drop menu appears.When you’ve created your desired number of tracks and sorted them out into folders, next thing that you should do is patch the instruments’ inputs into proper MIDI channels and route Kontakt patches into proper Kontakt outputs.

Here’s an example of how to route string patches:
I’ve named my string section tracks as „Strings 1 – 16“, and I’ve assigned them to their proper MIDI channels 1-16 to match the channels of Kontakt. I’ve also named the Kontakt instance for string section as “Strings”, so I know that it is only using string patches.

 I rename the tracks properly when I have decided which articulations and which instrument from the section I am going to use for the project. And that varies from project to project. That is why I am naming the tracks as 1,2,3,4 etc. in each section. After that, you need to activate those Kontakt outputs to be heard in Studio One. So here’s how it is done:

You open the mixer window (F3 by default), and click on the bottom of the left side where it says „instr“.

Now the list of all of your loaded instruments is being shown. Click on the arrow pointing down to the left of your Kontakt and click “expand” on the drop-down menu. You have to check out all the channels of Kontakt that you want to use in order to be shown in the mixer window.

The principle is the same for all of the multichannel instruments.

Saving your template is rather easy. You need to click File/Save As Template, and name the template as you want. Every time you start a new orchestral session, you can load your template from the menu that opens up when you’re creating a new song(FYI,projects in Studio One are called songs).

Now all you need to do is import the video that you’re scoring.
Studio One doesn’t have the video track, but instead you load your video into Studio one video player and it is automatically synced. When you click play button in Studio One, the video will start rolling as well. If you want to add marker positions for your video, you have to scroll through the video and place markers on the marker track. I like to keep my transport bar count set to bars instead of frames, because when I am writing music for video, I want to sync my music to it and still follow the proper musical­ beat. To add a marker, you need to find the place where you want to put the marker, and click the “+” button on the left of the marker track, and you will see the marker tagged with a number on the marker track. You can rename the marker by double-clicking on it and typing in a name in the pop-up window. As far as the time signature goes, video is not always in the tempo with the music, and we want to make the scene changes on the music beat. Place a marker on the scene change and right click above it and choose set time signature. The pop-up window will show and you can put your desired time signature. This is useful when syncing music to change right with the scene. For example: if your time signature is set to 4/4 and the scene is not changing exactly on the metronome’s beat, you will need to add or remove a couple of beats to perfect the timing.

Now you have a project set up in place, and you are ready to do some film scoring!!

I hope this article helped you in getting to know Studio One a bit better. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

]]> http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/11/22/scoring-with-presonus-studio-one-setting-up/feed/ 1 http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/11/15/scoring-with-presonus-studio-one-introduction/ http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/11/15/scoring-with-presonus-studio-one-introduction/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:00:56 +0000 Nikola Jeremić http://www.scorecastonline.com/?p=1882

Choosing a DAW is like choosing a new car for you, and each of us has our own personal taste to satisfy. I know how hard it is to start learning things from scratch, and that’s the reason why many composers out there are reluctant to take a new step forward. First time I met Studio One was at a friend’s studio, and, of course, I was rather unwilling, maybe even scared, to work on it.

I have to admit that I was soooooo wrong at first!  First look at Studio One’s interface got me hooked immediately. Sure, maybe it looks a bit sterile because it’s all gray-ish, but I like simplicity. I don’t like millions of colors jumping all over the screen, it just gets me distracted. The second thing that I like about it is that every project that I bounce sounds exactly the way I intended it to sound. In this first part, I will show you some of its features and make a comparison with other major DAWs on the market.

The Birth of Studio One

How did Studio One come to life? There’s a little company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana called PreSonus, and they’ve been around for years making very affordable and high quality audio hardware.

Only recently they have started making DAW software, and they’ve made a smart move to hire ex-employees of Steinberg to work on their first ever DAW called Studio One 1.0.
That happened in 2009, and during the course of two years and a lot of updates, a new Studio One 2 was born.

The Features

Studio One has a state-of-the-art audio engine which delivers incredibly accurate sound, and its Professional version has a 64-bit floating-point version of that engine which automatically switches between 64-bit and 32-bit to accommodate 32-bit plug-ins. It has an integrated Celemony Melodyne pitch correction. Using Melodyne with other DAWs can be a gruesome task due to long latency of transfers from the track to Melodyne, and of course, the fact that Melodyne knows nothing about the edits of the track. Melodyne and Studio One are integrated so tightly, and you can say that Melodyne is practically a part of Studio One. With one click, your audio track is opened in the editor window with traditional Melodyne interface. No other DAW has this feature.

SCOREcast founder Deane Ogden announced today that London-based composer David Saunders will lead SCOREcast’s global community development program. Ogden said, “David is an exceptional leader, mentor, composer and communicator and I couldn’t be happier with him joining our Core team. In the six years I’ve worked with SCOREcast, I’ve never been more confident in an appointment as I believe David possesses the utmost personal integrity, huge respect in the community, and an understanding of what it takes to encourage that same sense of contagious unity across all SCOREcast borders.”

Saunders accepted the position over two months ago, but has worked behind the scenes with SCOREcast community chapter leaders in America, the United Kingdom and Germany to revamp methods of maintaining health and progress in all SCOREcast forums, meetups, and global events. 2013 will see him working with new community leaders in Asia, North America and Europe to develop additional chapters. He is also currently interfacing with the SCOREcast Core team to brainstorm and create even greater opportunities for forum and chapter members worldwide.

Saunders said today, “Over the past six years since its inception, SCOREcast has grown exponentially in both its size and propensity to serve the community. With SCOREcast’s ever-increasing popularity worldwide, we’re on the verge of a new era. I’m both proud and excited to be a part of helping bring this global community of media composers together as we press on into the future.”

To learn more about SCOREcast local chapter communities in your area, watch SCOREcastOnline.com for a new Community section coming this month.

SCOREcast 35: Michael Barry & Michael Patti

Other Places to Listen

iTunes

To listen in iTunes:

1. Launch iTunes.
2. In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
3. Enter — http://feeds.feedburner.com/scopodcast — in the text box and click OK.

Stitcher.com

Episode Description

In our 35th episode, Deane and Brian speak with Michael Barry and Michael Patti, co-founders of Cinesamples, about the recent decision by the American Federation of Musicians union to deny contracts for sample library production. The discussion covers the plight facing Los Angeles-area recording musicians, the volume of work that is leaving town for overseas venues, and what is being done as a grassroots effort to turn that tide.

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Leave a COMMENT below and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com.

Hello again! For all those that missed the first article about the Strings section of the orchestra, please take a while and read through it here. There are some tips and tricks that I’ve covered and I won’t be repeating here. In this article, I’ll be covering the Woodwinds section of the orchestra, what makes it special and how we can process all and each individual instrument. Again I’d recommend you study a little bit of the instrumentation and orchestration theory behind the Woodwinds (this means reading Stellita’s articles starting here). Happy reading!

For the most part, the Woodwinds section of the orchestra is used as a utility / auxiliary section (since we are mainly talking about modern TV and Film music). What makes it special though, is that from the three major orchestra sections (Strings, Woodwinds and Brass), the instruments that form the Woodwinds section, have the least coherent timbre. For example, we can say that you can’t mistake an oboe for a clarinet as you may mistake a viola playing in the high register for a violin. Their unique character is what makes each one of the Woodwind instruments a perfect candidate for solo passages! Also keep in mind that a Woodwind’s “color” changes drastically relatively to the register it plays (excluding the Clarinet).

MIDI Sequencing and Arranging

Everything I’ve covered about Time and Dynamics during the “Sequencing and Processing Strings” article can be used for the Woodwinds too.

As the name suggests, Woodwinds need air! So give them air to breath during phrases. Try not to overdo it with endless legato passages, as there is a high risk of killing the performer… er… I mean the performance. Don’t underestimate the value of the “rest” in music, especially while writing for solo instruments. Placing rests between phrases will help you achieve a realistic performance; it will let the music “breath” and will emphasize the role of the instrument.

A well thought out arrangement can help you solve many problems that will arise during the mixing process. Woodwinds tend to have lots of low-mid frequencies. If you have a busy orchestration, make a virtual map of the role the Woodwinds play during each section of the track. If they have a supporting role (i.e. doubling the lines of the Strings) keep them in the background (dynamic wise), but when they have a main role (i.e. solo) try to keep other instruments out of the way, either by using good counterpoint, or by using instruments and registers that don’t interfere with the “frequency body” of the Woodwinds (more on that latter on the mixing section).

Woodwinds are a great tool to add depth and realism in your composition, though many composers disregard them as weak instruments and others just forget about them. Going back to instrumentation theory, we can see that Woodwinds are capable of some fantastic effects. Flutter, grace notes, octave runs, falling effect, overblows and trills are some of the most commonly used “weapons” of the Woodwinds family. These effects can spice up your composition and make it come to life. Because some of these effects are difficult to reproduce with MIDI sequencing techniques, many libraries come with articulations of pre-recorded effects. A sure bet if you want to increase the production value of your music.

Now let’s examine one of the most difficult effects to reproduce with standard MIDI techniques, in the hope of achieving a realistic sounding result. Say we want to put a flute octave run in our composition but our library doesn’t have an appropriate articulation. How can we make something close to the real thing without making the result sound cheesy and cheap? Well as we said during the article about the Strings section, to achieve realism through MIDI we need to reproduce the Time and Dynamics of a human performance. With that in mind, we can start placing the notes for our octave run. First we need to make sure that there is no quantization. Allow some of the notes to start a little early and some a little late, while making sure that they overlap each other. Make minor adjustments to the velocity of each not, while keeping the first and the last as the maximum. Bring up the expression (CC11) automation and make a curve that start at the first note, goes down a bit till the middle of the run and comes up at maximum just before the final note. Now duplicate the MIDI track and assign the first one to a legato articulation and the second one to a staccato articulation. Go to the staccato track and bring further down the velocity of the intermediate notes. Mix the staccato track lower than the legato one, as we don’t want to overemphasize the attack of the notes. The staccato track is there, only to support the sound. Listen and adjust the velocity and expression curve accordingly. (Note: With some libraries you won’t need the staccato track as the legato one could suffice if the scripting was done appropriately)

Remember how we said that the Strings section can sound a lot better when combining two different sample libraries together? For the Woodwinds it is very difficult to find two libraries that work well together, so most of the times you would do better with a single one. There is also another reason you should avoid doubling the libraries for the Woodwinds. The number of players that are supposed to be playing in the Woodwinds section, doesn’t consist of the huge amount of players as the Strings (they don’t need to), so when combining two libraries, you may end up with an unrealistic and overpowering sound. On the other hand, because most non-dedicated Woodwinds libraries will provide you with patches of the whole section and not of individual instruments, it is a good technique to mix that kind of libraries as a second layer (lower than your main library) thus providing support to your overall woodwind sound. When you do, be extra careful with the fundamental frequencies the instruments produce. If you have long sustained notes, the fundamentals frequencies might become more prominent than they should and you’ll end up with a sound close to a sine wave. To overcome this problem, lower the velocity of the supporting library or turn it down a few dB from the mixer’s fader. This should keep the fundamentals at bay. If it doesn’t work, you can use EQ to tame the naughty frequency! And with that we jump to…

The Mixing Process

Concepts of mixing include the frequency, panorama, and space placement of each instrument. Last time we discussed about how Strings are placed within the orchestra and how we can use EQ to our benefit. Below I’m going to describe how we can make the Woodwinds “sit” in a classical orchestra and various other tips and trick to spice up your compositions.

Setting Up

Since this time we have more Sections of the orchestra to deal with, I have attached a basic mixer set up to show you how we can organize our tracks.

In this example, we have First Violins, Second Violins, Violas, Cellos, Contrabasses, Flutes, Clarinets, Oboes, Bassoons and a solo English Horn.

The first thing we need to do, is rout every patch and articulation of an instrument to a single track. Current VSTi and samplers, have multiple outputs, so the only thing we need to do, is to select the same output for each patch of the same instrument. Thus the staccato and legato patches of the First Violins, will be routed to output A of the VSTi. The same goes for every other instrument (see picture).

Now that we have a single fader for every instrument, we need to group them in Sections. Create two auxiliary tracks (depending on your DAW, this may be referred to as “Group track” or “Bus track” etc.). Name the first one “Strings” and the second one “Woodwinds”. Now for each individual instrument, go to the output section and select the corresponding auxiliary track (“Strings” for the Violins, Violas etc. and “Woodwinds” for the Flutes, Clarinet etc.). Leave the English Horn’s output to the “Main Bus”. We want to be able to mix it separately from the other Woodwinds as it is a solo instrument and it plays a leading role to our composition.

The last thing we need to do, is add an FX track for our reverb. Create an auxiliary (Group, FX or Bus) track and insert your favorite reverb to the first input.

That’s it. We are now ready to start mixing!

As most of today’s orchestral VSTi have advanced routing options due to the existence of samples from multiple microphone positions, I strongly urge you to read the manual and learn what your VSTi is capable of. For instance, if your VSTi has the ability to rout each microphone position to another output, you might want to take advantage of that, by separating the outputs of your close and room microphones. This way you will have greater flexibility during mixing.

Panorama & Positioning

In the orchestra, the Woodwinds are placed in the middle, between and just behind the Second Violins and the Violas. As always, the bass instruments of the section are placed on the right side (as we look at the orchestra from the conductor’s position) and the ones with a higher register, are placed on the left side. Below I present some numerical values you can use as a guideline.

• 0o indicates the center position.
• A ‘-‘ before a number indicates the left side.
• A ‘+’ before a number indicates the right side.

Flute: -15o to 0 o

Clarinets: -15o to 0 o (behind flutes)

Oboes: 0o to +15 o

Bassoons: 0o to +15 o (behind oboes)

Of course, if you don’t want to replicate the orchestra’s layout, you can improvise with the panorama settings. I gave some guidelines during the previous article (“Sequencing& Processing Strings”), which you can use for the Woodwinds too.

Dynamic Processing

Regarding dynamic processing, refer to the “Strings” article as all the main principles are the same for the Woodwinds too.

EQ

Up until now, there are few libraries that provide individual patches for each woodwind instrument. Most libraries out there have articulations for the full Woodwinds section, something that won’t suite everyone’s needs and especially composers who are after a realistic sound and orchestration. These libraries are better used for supporting reasons. When you deal with full Woodwinds patches or with the Woodwinds group track, consider the following:

• Woodwinds are masters of the middle frequencies. As such, you need to be extra careful when EQing.
• Mixing is about balancing all instruments and all elements of a song. Making the Woodwinds sound fantastic on their own, may result in a bad overall mix. When making EQ adjustments, do so while hearing the overall mix (or at least the so far mixed elements you have worked on).
• Everything here is a guideline. Your ear must be the final judge of everything. Mix is an art too so although there may be some rules… there actually are no rules.
• Between 200 and 300Hz you can find the body and warmth of the Woodwinds. Beware however because too much gain will make the sound muddy and it will mask every other instrument (i.e Strings) on that region. A subtle rise is enough to make the sound more intimate and closer to the listener. (Keep in mind we are talking about full woodwinds patches)
• In the 300 to 700Hz region reside most fundamental frequencies of the Woodwinds. It is the most difficult area to tame, because any boosting or cutting will alter the sound drastically. In there you’ll find all the “boxiness” you’ll ever (not) need and Woodwinds have a tendency towards a boxy sound (especially when there is a bad recording involved). Try to avoid boosting! One other important thing to keep in mind about these frequencies is that (depending on your library and orchestration) you must be extra careful because when cutting, you might weaken too much of the fundamental frequencies. To make my point clear, try a deep cut anywhere between 300 and 650Hz. You’ll immediately think that the sound became clearer, BUT let the Strings play along and you’ll realize that the Woodwinds have gone for vacation somewhere in the back of the stage. While letting the Strings play, AB the Woodwinds with and without the EQ to grasp the difference it makes to the overall sound.
• You might want to use a boost at around 1 to 2 kHz to compensate for any cutting done at frequencies we discussed previously. This is a good region to cut though, when you want a darker and distant sound. Also here you might find irritating frequencies (especially from the English Horn) that you’d like to tame with a notch filter.
• At around 3 to 6 kHz you’ll find most of the important harmonics. Boost with a wide bandwidth if you want a brighter sound or cut to get the Woodwinds back in the mix.
• Between 5 to 10 kHz is the “air” of most Woodwinds. A minor boost with a high shelf will “open” the sound. It might also bring up the noise of the recording or the gust sound from the players mouth so adjust to taste.

Reverb

We covered the basics of reverb on the previous article so I want repeat anything here. I believe in some point in the future there will be a dedicated reverb article for orchestras, so stay tuned.

The Audio File

In the following audio example, I’ve orchestrated the Woodwinds above the Strings track you heard during the previous article. I used two libraries to demonstrate the weakness of the full patch against individual instruments, but also to point out the help it can give as a supporting track.

The first part is the individual instruments exactly as they were orchestrated.

The second repetition is just the full patch library where you can hear (depending on the register the original instruments where written) that the orchestration has changed (oboes have been replaced by flutes etc.)

The third part is both libraries together, where you can hear how the full patch supports the original orchestration if it is mixed very subtly and lower than the individual instruments. Of course this “cheating” tactic is not recommended if you want a faithful representation of the sound.

In the fourth part, the Strings come in. No EQ has been added. It is the final version (final part) of the previous article’s audio file: Two libraries, one with EQ and an algorithmic reverb and the other with stage and room microphones.

During the final repetition I have applied a very wide 4.2dB cut @ 720Hz to the Strings. I did this for demonstration reasons only, so you can understand the mentality of a mixing engineer. Most of the times, to make an instrument stand out in the mix, we need to focus on other instruments. As a fundamental rule due to psychoacoustics, reducing a frequency with an EQ produces a more natural result than boosting the same amount. So what I did in the final part was to reduce some middle frequencies from the Strings where fundamentals of the Woodwinds exist, to make the later stand out.

The levels of the Woodwind’s and the String’s (after the initial fade in) groups stay the same throughout the track. Observe what changes in the Woodwinds when the strings come in and what space each instrument occupies. The 4.2dB cut is too much for an orchestral recording, so I want you to hear what difference the EQ makes in the Strings too. Do you believe that the EQ has helped the Woodwinds stand out? Was it necessary? Maybe with the EQ you feel that the String’s sound was weakened? Does anything sound wrong with the EQ applied? Did the EQ help the overall sound after all or not? Please feel free to comment below!

Conclusion

I hope I was of some help with your exploration of the Woodwinds section of the orchestra and you enjoyed reading the above lines as much as I did writing them.

Be well, creative and experimental!

This article is a guest post by composer Derek Bourgeois

_______________________________________________

Now let us look at how you would do this process using Vienna Symphonic Library.

The principal is exactly the same, but the interface looks very different.   You have to load Vienna Ensemble Pro before you start to create your instance.  You create the instance and link it to Sibelius.

Let’s take my Instance ‘VSL Percussion 1’.  You start with a blank canvas and add instruments one by one except in VE Pro you are able to name them as well. In ‘VSL Percussion 1’ I have a sundry collection of 16 assorted percussion instruments as you can see from the picture below.

You create your instrument by clicking on the little icon bottom left of the dialog. You assign the name and the channel, then you select either the Matrix or the specific patch and drag it into the area top left of the screen.  You can test it in a similar way to the way you tested it in EW Play.

Having created your instance you go back into Sibelius, and in exactly the same way you create a manual sound set for that instance selecting the soundset appropriate for the instance (in this case the soundset is VE Percussion).  Not all the sounds will be definable in preferred sounds because they are not all defined in the soundset that VSL provides (though I am assured that this will be updated soon), so a lot of them have no sound IDs available in the manual soundset dialog and although you can tell  preferred sounds.

Here is the Manual sound set dialog and you can see that a lot of the sounds simply have (none) as their sound ID.

So for the moment I am going to show you various tweaks to persuade Sibelius to play the correct sound.

Let’s start with channel 3 which you can see from the VSL editor dialog is a Bass Drum although it is simply ‘percussion’ to the manual soundset.

You tell preferred sounds that for Bass drum which Sibelius defines as unpitched.drum.low.bass drum.concert.* It must use VSL Percussion 1

The Mixer duly obeys this when you create a bass drum stave having selected it from the Add instrument dialog.  But the mixer has no clue as to which channel to use, because as far as it is concerned it’s just percussion.  So it will very likely pick the wrong channel and the sound will come out as anything found in the instance (in my case it usually sounds like a snare drum which is channel 2 not 3).

The first line of defence is to tell the mixer to use channel 3, and in most cases this will work, but, alas, not always.  Even if it does work, you may prefer to use a particular one of the many bass drum sounds that the VSL patch has loaded.

So the next step is to highlight the stave and go into ‘edit instruments’.  Bass drum should be selected so press the ‘Edit Instrument’ button.  It should then appear as Unpitched Percssion in the next dialog.  Click on ‘Edit Staff Type’ and you will see something like this:

Let’s concentrate only on the first entry which is notehead type 0.

Select Choose Sound and select VE Percussion as your soundset.

What you will see is bewildering in the extreme as you can see below.

You have to select one of the Bass Drum options for your Best sound but in order to decide which one you like best you’ll have to go into the VE Pro editor and try them all out using the keyboard and then remember which note plays the sound you most prefer. Let’s assume this is C#4 which is actually BassDrum secco (although I suspect that plain C4 Bass Drum is more than adequate). Make this selection and save it.  Then go into the mixer and hit Auto for the initial playback device.  This is important, because if you don’t you may well find that the mixer sound test plays a variety of bass drum noises, whereas your stave might sound like anything.  The other day I had an excellent Wind machine sound in the Mixer, and a thumping loud Anvil when the staff played back!

Only if this doesn’t work can you then tell the Mixer precisely what Instance and Channel to use. Having gone through these steps the chances are you’ll get the sound you are expecting.

Sometimes it requires a lot of trial and error to get the Mixer, the staff instrument, and the preferred sounds to agree with each other.  Personally I would very much prefer it if Sibelius allowed you to specify the precise Instance and channel for any particular sound.  This would short-circuit a lot of the problems, though you would still have to use edit instruments to define precisely what sounds you want on which line or notehead.

You may occasionally find, as I do, that sometimes your score overloads any configuration you may have if it has very fast doubled woodwind scales, is full of rapidly repeated notes , trills and especially measured string tremolandos.  The only recourse here is to make a special playback file and thin out all those doublings and duplicates which are not going to make a significant contribution to the playback. This has nothing to do with the amount of RAM you have, merely that you are asking the computer processor to do more simultaneous switching on and off of sounds than it can cope with.  There’s always a satisfactory solution.

Some Extra Hints for East West playback problems

I always find it useful to create a special playback file where you can provide all sorts of tweaks without worrying what the printout will look like. Using East West Symphonic Orchestra beware of the following:

Flute only goes up to Bb6

Do a quick instrument change to Piccolo and back for the very high notes

Contrabassoon will only play up to written Bb3

Double up the second bassoon for the missing notes

Solo trumpet has no mute sound

Do an instrument change to Trumpet Ensemble which does have a muted sound

Muted trombone will not play higher than F4

Do an instrument change to trumpet ensemble for the higher notes.

A sf marking in Trombone only produces a note below C3

Make the sf inactive by using the Inspector and put in a hidden accent

Violins, either solo or ensemble, will not playany note above C7

The only recourse here is to have a hidden staff dedicated to VSL or Sibelius 7 Sounds and put the non playing notes on this staff and hide them (unless it’s a dedicated playback file where it doesn’t matter what it looks like).  Most violin concertos and Brahms symphonies have violins going higher than C7. A serious omission in my view.

Violas are far too loud relative to the other strings

Reduce the mixer volume, but beware of muted sounds where the normal balance is restored.

Welcome back to the third and final article on woodwinds! This time I would like to explore the different ways in which woodwinds can carry the harmony within an orchestration.

I. CONSIDERATIONS

As it has been mentioned before, woodwinds do not possess the blending ability of strings. In other words, when combining instruments of the string section the result is a smooth homogenous sound. With woodwinds, however, due to great differences in tone colour from one instrument to another (and between different registers of the same instrument), it is much harder to achieve a homogenous sound.

The most important characteristic that a harmony part should exhibit is as Rimsky-Korsakov calls it “resonance equally distributed throughout”. In other words, different harmony parts should blend well together without moving the ear’s focus away from the melody parts. When it comes to woodwind harmony, there are a few tricks we can use to make the overall woodwind sound appear more homogeneous to the ear; i.e make the ear perceive all the woodwind harmony parts as one homogenous timbre instead of many different instruments playing together :

• Be consistent in the roles you give to each woodwind instrument. If you choose, for example, to give flute the soprano voice (the top note of the harmony) for the first chord, continue in that manner for the rest of the chords during the given passage where you have decided to have woodwinds play the harmony. This will ensure that each instrument has a smooth horizontal line and each chord flows as seamlessly as possible into the next.
• The safest and most effective way to build woodwind chords is to use the normal order of register; i.e. Flutes on the soprano voice, Oboes on the Alto, Clarinets on the Tenor and Bassoons on the Bass. This will help ensure that all instruments are sitting roughly on the same relative register. If, for example, we placed the oboe above the flute, the oboe would be in its high and strongest register, possibly overpowering the other harmony parts. The only exception to this is vertical dovetailing which we will discuss at a later point in the article.
• Instruments of the same kind or similar timbre should be voiced in consonant intervals (octaves, 3rds or 6ths) instead of dissonant ones. This is especially true for oboes which tend to overpower the rest of the woodwinds if not used properly.

A Note on Bassoons

Bassoons are kind of ‘joker’ instruments and can play several different roles in an orchestration :

1. Woodwind function : where the bassoon either plays the bass line of the woodwind harmony or plays inner parts of the harmony;
2. Horn function : where it is often used as an extra french horn or as a ‘blender’ between the brass and woodwinds.

It is best if you determine the role you want it to play as soon as possible.

II. HARMONY WITH WOODWINDS IN PAIRS

There are three basic ways to construct harmony when we have two of each woodwinds available :

1. Super-position or Overlaying : essentially following the normal order of register 2Fl – 2Ob – 2Cl – 2Fg
2. Crossing or (vertical)Dovetailing : roughly put this means having the two parts of the same instrument ‘separated’ by one part of another instrument. For example, instead of having 2Fl playing the top two notes of the chord and 2Ob playing the bottom, we have Flute 1 – Oboe 1 – Flute 2 – Oboe 2.
3. Enclosure : when two instrument parts of the same instrument are enclosed or ‘surrounded’ by  two parts of another instrument. For example, Flute 1 – Oboe 1 – Oboe 2 – Flute 2. Enclosure is also very effective (in fact, more effective) if the two ‘enclosing’ or outer parts are played by different instruments; e.g. Flute 1 – Oboe 1 – Oboe 2 – Clarinet 1.

Methods 2 and 3 help create a more homogeneous sound by blending different timbres as much as possible.

And now comes the million-dollar question….how do you choose which method to use?

Well, Mr.Rimsky-Korsakov comes to our rescue once again. Here are a couple of things to remember when in doubt as to which method to use :

• First of all, consider the register of each chord of your passage.
• Then, consider the register of each individual instrument you are going to use and be consistent in the choice of registers; combine the weak register of one instrument with the weak register of the other instruments. Combining one instrument in its weak register and one in its strong will result in a non-homogenous sound where one instrument is heard above the others.
• As with string harmony, knowledge of part-writing will help you enormously in creating effective woodwind harmonies. First make sure that you connect the chords as smoothly as possible. This means that some parts will be relatively stationary (held notes) and others will be more active. Assign one instrument timbre to your stationary parts and another to your moving parts and be consistent with it. The ear is very perceptive to movement and if you keep changing instrument roles your harmony parts might even overpower the melody of your composition.
• Avoid widely-spaced chords because when played by woodwinds they do not sound homogeneous. If you have to use open voicings, place them as high as possible because this makes the different timbres less perceptible and the sound appears to be more homogeneous.
• Avoid close four-part voicings comprising of four different instruments; i.e Flute – Oboe – Clarinet – Bassoon. This is most likely to result in the use of a different register for each instrument and make the sound less homogeneous.

What to do when you have three-part harmony?

There are two things you can do to ensure a nice-sounding three-part harmony :

1. Use 2 instruments of the same kind and 1 other instrument in close harmony.
2. Use overlaying, i.e. flutes above oboes, oboes above clarinets and clarinets above bassoons

III. HARMONY WITH WOODWINDS IN THREES

When we have three of each instrument available, the choices are a bit more straightforward.

Three-Part Harmony

The best way to orchestrate close three-part harmony is to use three instruments of the same kind; e.g. 3 flutes or 3 oboes etc.

In the case of open three-part harmony, using three instrument of the same kind will not be as effective. The only case where open three-part harmony will work with three instruments of the same family is by using the auxiliary bass instrument for the bass line. For example, 2 Oboes for the top two notes and an English Horn for the bass or 2 Clarinets for the top two notes and a Bass Clarinet for the bass note.

Four-Part Harmony

In the case of close four-part harmony, the best approach to use is overlaying of parts with three instruments of the same kind and a fourth instrument of another.

Dovetailing and enclosure can also be used but it is a much more complicated approach because you have to take into account the relative registers of all instruments as well as the smooth progression from one chord to another.

Remember that woodwinds don’t work well harmonically in open voicings!

IV. HARMONY IN MULTIPLE PARTS (5-, 6-, 7-, and 8-part harmony)

If the extra parts are chord tensions (9ths, 11ths and 13ths) then close voicings are always preferred using either of the three methods outlined in part II of this article (overlaying, dovetailing or enclosure).

If the extra parts are mere octave duplications of the existing 4-part harmony, then the best approach is to use the principles outlined at my previous article regarding the duplication of woodwinds in octaves, 3rds and 6ths.

Woodwinds in Paris

You can use any of the three methods you wish : overlaying, dovetailing or enclosure.

As a general rule, when you are after a homogenous harmonic BACKGROUND (that stays behind the melody and does not distract the ear from it) the safest approach is to use close-voiced harmony. When using open voicings you can voice your chords according to the harmonic series for a more homogeneous and natural result.

Woodwinds in Threes

The best approach is overlaying when you have close three-part harmony doubled in octaves. Crossing of parts will not be as effective because it will disturb the ‘natural order of register’.

V.HARMONY IN WOODWINDS AND OTHER ORCHESTRAL SECTIONS

In practice, woodwinds are seldom asked to provide the harmony alone. They are usually combined with other orchestral sections in several ways, including :

1. The three upper parts of a 4-part harmony are given to woodwinds alone and the bass line is doubled by double basses arco or pizzicato.
2. The three upper parts are assigned to strings and the woodwinds carry the middle harmony parts, usually in sustained notes.

In either case, each instrument section should be complete in itself.

VI. DIRECT DOUBLING OF WOODWIND LINES (MELODIC OR HARMONIC) IN OTHER SECTIONS

Below you will find a chart of the most commonly used combinations :

CONCLUSION

I hope that you have enjoyed these three articles on woodwinds. They by no means cover everything there is to know about woodwinds but they can certainly form a basis for further woodwind explorations! As a parting gift I have created a summary table outlining the most common uses of woodwinds both as a section and as individual instruments.

I wish you all the very best in writing for this wonderful instrument family! Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to leave a comment below. Also, do not forget that next week, my colleague Asimakis Reppas is going to explore ways in which you can make your woodwind mockups come alive!

Au revoir then!

]]> http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/10/25/orchestrating-your-harmony-in-the-woodwind-section/feed/ 1 http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/10/18/orchestrating-a-melody-for-the-woodwind-section/ http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/10/18/orchestrating-a-melody-for-the-woodwind-section/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:00:00 +0000 Stellita Loukas http://www.scorecastonline.com/?p=1729

Welcome back! Having gotten the technical part out of the way, let’s now explore the different ways in which we can have the woodwind section play our melody.

I. ANATOMY OF THE WOODWIND SECTION

Woodwinds are found in an orchestra in three basic configurations :

1. Solo woodwinds : one of each ; 1 Flute – 1 Clarinet – 1 Oboe – 1 Bassoon
2. Woodwinds in Pairs : two of each ; 2 Flutes – 2 Clarinets – 2 Oboes – 2 Bassoons
3. Woodwinds in Threes : three of each ; 3 Flutes – 3 Clarinets – 3 Oboes – 3 Bassoons

However, many woodwind players are proficient in more than one instrument of the same family (e.g. flutes, clarinets, bassoons etc) and can be asked to double on another instrument if the orchestration calls for it. For example, a flutist can be asked to double on the piccolo at some point during the orchestration (provided that a flute is not required at the same time!). When there are more than one of each instrument available, things are a lot easier of course because we can ask the principal player of each instrument to double on another. Sounds confusing, right? Let’s make it a bit more clear then :

II. MELODY BY SOLO WOODWINDS

When writing solo lines for woodwinds that you want to be clearly heard, there are two basic points to keep in mind :

• Write in the instrument’s best range (see table below)
• Make sure that the accompaniment (orchestral or not) does not fall on the same register and allows the woodwind to come through.

The following table, along with the knowledge of each instrument’s registers and characteristics (presented in my first article about woodwinds), will help you start writing solo woodwind melodies.

We will now look at some characteristic uses of each individual woodwind in carrying the melody. Where possible I have provided a link to a corresponding video in YouTube.

1. Solo Flute

The flute has the ‘lightest’ quality of all woodwinds and is the trickiest when carrying the melody because the accompaniment must be carefully crafted not to overpower it when it is playing at its weakest register (the low one).

A great example of a solo flute melody is Dvorak’s Symphony No9 (“From the New World”), first movement, bars 149-156. You find it here, at 06:50. The flute carries the wonderful theme alone,in its low to middle register, with a minimal accompaniment from strings only so as to be clearly heard.

 2. Solo Piccolo Flute

The piccolo is the smallest instrument of the entire orchestra yet, when playing at its stronger (high) register it can be heard above the entire orchestra! While it does not lend itself for solo melodies easily, it is great for doubling the flute octave above or playing fast staccato passages. It is often used for light passages of comedic nature or for doubling brass and strings in marching band music.

A good example of a solo piccolo flute is Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije, first movement, where the piccolo plays solo with a military drum accompaniment. You can find it here, at 0:35.

3. Solo Alto Flute

Similar in construction to the flute, the alto flute has a longer tube which gives it a mellower and darker tone. Its main purpose is to extend the lower range of the flute. If you have a melody that ‘lives’ in the flute’s lower range, it is best to use the alto flute instead. The alto flute is used extensively in Gustav Holst’s Saturn. You can find a live performance here; it starts with the alto flute. A solo alto flute melody is found at bars 53-62.

4. Solo Oboe

The oboe is the soprano of the double-reed instruments. Its tone is nasal as is consistent with double reeds. It has enormous carrying power and can easily be heard over an orchestra when playing at its strong registers (middle and more so, high). A great example of a solo oboe melody is the opening to the 2nd movement of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7oFdFqtB4.

5. Solo English Horn

The role of the English Horn in a double-reed section is similar to that of the viola in a string section. It can be used to play countermelodies very effectively but it is also a wonderful solo instrument capable of great expressive quality. A good example of a solo english horn melody is the Overture from Berlioz’s Roman Carnival. You can find the solo english horn section here, at 0:26. Listen to the mellow and deep sound of the instrument which is clearly darker but equally expressive to the oboe.

6. Solo Clarinet

A greatly agile instrument capable of anything and everything (within limits of course!). As a single-reed, it has a much mellower and rounder tone than any of the double reeds. You can listen to it playing a solo melody at the opening of the 1st movement of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony.

Aside from classical repertoire, the clarinet is extremely popular in ‘jazz-ier’ settings as well. The most famous example and one of my favourite, is the opening to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, showing the clarinet’s enormous capabilities in performing a glissando.

7. Solo Bass Clarinet

The bass clarinet is an often neglected yet very useful instrument. While it is practically used to extend the lower register of the clarinet, it is one of the most agile bass instruments of the orchestra; it can provide a full and lush bass line in its lower register but can also play a melodic role in its higher register provided that it is not overpowered by other instruments (because it loses its carrying power and tonal color as it moves higher, towards its weakest areas). You can get a pretty good idea of the bass clarinet’s melodic capabilities here.

8. Solo Bassoon

Bassoon is often wrongly associated only with comedic musical passages and cartoon music! However, it is one of the most expressive instruments of the woodwind section and aside from providing a bass line it can also carry the melody perfectly well. Listen to the bassoon opening the 1st movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony.

9. Solo Contra Bassoon

The contra bassoon is the deepest and ‘bassiest’ instrument of the woodwind family. Due to its size (and the amount of air needed by the performer), it is also one of the less flexible and agile. While it has been used as a solo instrument by composers such as Beethoven, Brahms and Strauss, it is most often used to strengthen a bass line and provide a solid foundation in a melodic or harmonic role.

10. Horizontal Dovetailing

There is no rule that forces us to use the same instrument to carry the entire melody. We can start by having the melody in flute, then passed to the oboe, then to the clarinet and then back to the oboe.

In the case of a demanding melody that requires a lot of air and contains difficult passages, we can alternate between the principal and second player of each instrument. For example, we can start with flute 1 playing the first 4 bars of the melody and have flute 2 carry on the next 4 bars, thus giving time to the principal flutist to catch his/her breath!

III. MELODY BY WOODWINDS IN UNISON

Very expressive and demanding melodic lines are best entrusted to solo woodwinds. The combination of two or more woodwinds in unison restricts the players’ expressive capabilities and often forces on of the instruments to play at their weak ranges.

1. Combining 2 of the same instrument

Woodwinds are vastly different from strings. Combining 2 violins in unison will strengthen the melodic line. However, combining two flutes or oboes in unison will present a number of problems; it will not necessarily increase the volume (and carrying power) of the melody and it introduces the possibility of intonation problems. As a general rule, it is best to combine 3 of the same instrument rather than 2. Another way to mitigate ‘out-of-tune’ problems is to combine a pair of the same woodwinds with a string section (e.g. 2 flutes with violins).

2. Combining different instruments in unison

As with strings, it is best to first explore combinations of ‘neighbouring’ instruments in terms of range :

1. Flute and Oboe : the oboe adds fullness to the tone of the flute and the flute ‘sweetens’ the nasal quality of the oboe. In soft dynamics, the flute will be more prominent at lower registers and the oboe at higher ones.
2. Flute and Clarinet : the clarinet adds fullness and volume to the tone of the flute and the flute ‘tames’ some of the brightness of the clarinet. The sound of the flute will be more prominent in the lower registers and the clarinet in the higher one.
3. Oboe and Clarinet : the combination of these two instruments results in a fuller tone than that of each individual instrument. The oboe adds carrying power to the clarinet and the clarinet sweetens the nasal quality of the oboe.
4. Flute, Oboe and Clarinet : a full-sounding combination; the oboe and clarinet add fullness and volume to the flute while the flute and clarinet sweeten the oboe.
5. Bassoon and Clarinet : another powerful and ‘full-sounding’ combination.
6. Basson and Oboe, Bassoon and Flute : rarely used combinations due to the differences in range of the combined instruments. A unison by bassoon and oboe or flute means that either of the two instruments has to be at its weak register and will not result in a particularly changed tone colour than if using them separately.
7. Bassoon, Clarinet, Oboe and Flute : an equally rare combination due, again, to range differences that produces a peculiar sound where each instrument’s timbre is clearly distinguished. It sounds more like the combination of bassoon, clarinet, oboe and flute rather than an amalgam of the four instruments.

3. Combining woodwinds in octaves

Again, the most natural-sounding combinations are those of adjacent instruments (Flute-Oboe, Oboe-Clarinet etc.). However, if none of those combinations are suitable for the effect you are after, there are other choices you can explore. Here’s a list of the most commonly used combinations :

1. Piccolo and Flute
2. Flute and Oboe
3. Oboe and Clarinet
4. Clarinet and Bassoon
5. Flute and Clarinet
6. Oboe and Bassoon
7. Clarinet and Bassoon
8. Flute and Bassoon

Due to the changing timbre of each woodwind across the different registers, combining two of the same woodwinds in octaves essentially means combing two completely different instruments. Again, this combination is best doubled in a string section.

Another point to keep in mind is that melodies that lend themselves to octave doubling are those situated in either the extreme high or extreme low register. If a melody situated in the middle of the orchestral register is doubled in octaves it is likely to ‘clash’ with accompaniment lines and harmonies.

4. Combining woodwinds in 2, 3 and 4 octaves

Once again, the safest approach is to combine adjacent instruments first before exploring more extreme possibilities. Common combinations are :

1. Flute – Oboe – Clarinet in 2 octaves
2. Oboe – Clarinet – Bassoon in 2 octaves
3. Flute – Clarinet – Bassoon in 2 octaves
4. Flute – Oboe – Bassoon in 2 octaves
5. Flute – Oboe – Clarinet – Bassoon in 3 octaves

Combinations of all four instruments in octaves produces a rather stunning and powerful result and should be saved for special effects instead of being used for a long period of time.

5. Combining Woodwinds in 3rds and 6ths

A melody progressing in 3rds or 6ths is a very commonly used technique and it is effective even when combining two of the same instrument. The most common combinations are :

1. 2 Flutes
2. 2 Oboes
3. 2 Clarinets
4. 2 Bassoons
5. Flute and Oboe
6. Oboe and Clarinet
7. Clarinet and Bassoon
8. Flute and Clarinet
9. Oboe and Bassoon

As a general rule, it is best to use two of the same instrument when the melody is progressing in 3rds and two different instruments when it is progressing in 6ths.

6. Combining Woodwinds in 3rds and 6ths, moving in Octaves

When we wish to combine octave-doubled parts in 3rds or 6ths, Mr.Korsakov suggests the following approach :

1. 2 Flutes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by 2 Oboes in 3rds/6ths
2. 2 Flutes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by Oboe + Clarinet in 3rds/6ths
3. 2 Flutes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by 2 Clarinets in 3rds/6ths
4. Oboe + Flute in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by Flute + Clarinet in 3rds/6ths

If we have 3 players of each instrument available, we can employ the following combinations :

1. 2 Flutes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by 2 Oboes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by 2 Clarinets in 3rds/6ths
2. 2 Oboes in 3rds/6ths doubled 8vb by 2 Flutes in 3rds/6ths AND 2 Clarinets in 3rds/6ths

7. Combining Woodwinds in stacked 3rds and 6ths

Aside from using either 3rds or 6ths, we can combine those two and have a melody progressing in 3 parts :

1. Clarinet + Oboe a 3rd above + Flute a 6th above the clarinet
2. Bassoon + Clarinet a 3rd above + Oboe a 6th above the bassoon

 If we want to double each part into 2 different instruments then we can use :

 [Oboe + Clarinet in unison] + [Flute + Clarinet in unison] a 3rd/6th above + [Oboe + Flute in unison] a further 3rd/6th above

Oh dear that was a LOT of information I threw at you! Go take a break, grab a bite or a cup of coffee…you’ve earned it! Let it all sink in for a few days and then start exploring the different combinations on your own so that you can create a mental catalogue that you can later refer to when looking to create a particular orchestral colour. If you have any questions please feel free to add a comment below!

Until next week then, that we will explore ways to use woodwinds to play the harmony. Have a great week!

This article is a guest post by composer Derek Bourgeois

_______________________________________________

In this article I will try and take the user through the various stages of actions needed to use most of the facilities available to create a large orchestral playback using external VSTs and Sibelius 7.

I am confining myself to the VSTs I own myself which are Sibelius 7 Sounds, East West Symphonic Orchestra, East West Symphonic Choirs, VSL Special Edition, and VSL Full Percussion.

Some of the instructions here may well be very familiar to readers, so you may want to select the sections that are relevant to any problems you may be having.

It’s worth saying at this point that to use these libraries successfully you need a fast computer running with a 64 bit operating system and sufficient RAM.  I use 24 GB of RAM, but half that should suffice for most projects.  Also if you have your libraries on a Solid State Drive (SSD) the loading and saving times are dramatically improved.

Sibelius 7 Sounds is different from other VSTs inasmuch as it uses its own playback engine, and allows only one instance to be used because it has built in 128 channels.  The only important thing when the Sibelius Player is added to your sound configuration is to select the correct soundset. To select a soundset double click in the column labelled Sound Set. You should see something like the following depending on which libraries you have loaded.

Sibelius Player does all the rest itself, and if it is the only VST selected you will probably only need the Mixer to adjust playback details and balance.

CREATING AN INSTANCE AND USING THE PLAYBACK DEVICES DIALOG

Using any other VST you have to create an instance using the device that comes with the Library. For East West products this is called Play and for Vienna Symphonic Library you use either Vienna Ensemble, which is free when you purchase any VSL Library, or preferably Vienna Ensemble Pro which is much better because it keeps your instances loaded even if Sibelius is not running and has far more sophisticated features.

An instance is a set of up to 16 channels each of which is dedicated to a particular instrument.

When you buy an East West Library you will also need to buy a Sibelius Soundset for that Library available from the Soundset Project, where you will find brilliant soundset for most of the East West Libraries.  These come with full instructions as to how to create your Play instances that will work with the appropriate soundset for the Library you are using.   the Soundset Project also provides a series of files called multis which load all the sound files that you need for the instance to work.  Basically the first two instances are dedicated to Woodwind, the next two to Brass, the fifth is percussion, the sixth solo strings, and the seventh ensemble strings.  These instances are used by the soundset to activate effects such as mutes, pizzicato, flutter-tonguing and a host of other effects, as well as choosing the correct instance and channel for every normal instrument automatically.

Assuming you will have followed all the instructions correctly you may then want to create additional instances of your own using non-standard instruments that are available in the library. I suspect that most of these extra instruments will be less often used percussion, so I will take you through how to create an extra instance.  You can name your instances by double clicking on the Device name and I have named mine Play 1 through 7 which are  the soundset’s own instances, and an extra one of my own called Play 8.  I will take you through how I created Play 8.

Firstly you have to invoke Play/Playback devices which is brought to the screen by clicking the (very) little arrow in Sibelius 7/Play/Setup You will then see a screen like this (you will see that I have created a lot of instances many of which I will describe later.

To create my Play 8, first you have to invoke the Play setup screen by clicking on the Show button.  You then have to load into Play 8 all the instruments you want in that instance and select a channel for them.  You will see below that my first instrument is a harpsichord, and I selected it by choosing the correct Drive letter where my Library is stored, then selecting the Correct Library (in this case East West Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Instruments) selecting Platinum Strings and then Harpsichord and finally Harpsichord.ewi which is the file containing the necessary data for the harpsichord to play.  I then have the opportunity of loading or replacing the existing entry.

You can test the sound by clicking on the notes of the keyboard you can assign the MIDI channel using the button to the mid left of the screen.  But if you want to do anything cleverer you click on the button on the top marked Player.  You will then see this.

You can see from this screen that you have the ability (if you wish) to fine tune just about every aspect of the sound.  You repeat this process to create all the other sounds you want in this instance (up to 16).

But this won’t work yet.

You have to create a manual soundset using the Manual Sound Sets tab in Sibelius Playback Devices in which you instruct Sibelius what sounds you are going to use for that instance.

You will need to select the Device (Play 8), the sound set (EWQL Play v3).  You have to tick the “Use manual sound set box, select the number of channels you are going to use (in my case 8) then channel by channel you select the Program name from the drop down box.  You can test this to make sure the sound you hear corresponds to what you expect to hear. Then you must apply it.  Gradually you will build up the list that you see on the right of the dialog. (see below)

But you’re not done yet.  The relationship between the Manual sound set and the Sibelius mixer is a very delicate one, and for the sound to have any chance of working correctly first time round when you apply it to your score, you have to tell Sibelius what your preferred device is for that sound ID.  This is where things get complicated because although you can tell Sibelius what instance to use from which VST you can’t tell it which channel.  The preferred sounds and mixer work on Sound IDs and if you have a load of different percussion sounds in one instance, to the mixer these are often just percussion and it’s likely to get the channel wrong, and this is where it can get frustrating at times.  I’ll come back to this aspect later to tell you of the various ways I have found to overcome the problems that I have encountered.

This is a sample of what I have in my preferred sounds.  Don’t overlook this step because it is extremely important for preferred sounds to the bulk of the selecting work for the mixer. (see below)

________________________________________

The second part of this two-part series will deal with integrating VSL Vienna Instruments into Sibelius.

Welcome back to our orchestration series! I hope that you found the strings articles helpful and informative. This time I would like to present to you the underused gems of the orchestra; woodwinds! Following the same structure as for previous articles, I will first look at their ranges, registers, characteristics and capabilities and then I will discuss different ways in which you can use woodwinds to orchestrate your melody and harmony. So, following our tradition, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and let’s get down to business!

I. INTRODUCTION

Woodwinds are probably the most underused instruments within new composer’s circles yet they can add a huge variety of interesting colors, timbres, flourishes and extra layers to an orchestration. While they can serve as excellent ‘fillers’ (providing wonderful runs, trills, rips and all sorts of interesting effects playing behind or between melodies), they are also capable of a vast range of expression when given solo melodic lines and can work wonders in adding ‘attack’ and poignancy to your harmonic material.

What are woodwind instruments?

Sounds like a rather silly question but bear with me for a second. When I was a little girl, if asked what kind of instruments are saxophones I would exclaim “BRASS” without any hesitation. Why? Because I thought that wind instruments were classified into wooden and brass according to the material from which they are constructed. However, I later found out that the distinguishing factor according to which winds are classified is the material from which their mouthpieces are constructed. Brass instruments have brass mouthpieces and woodwinds have wooden mouthpieces.

Woodwinds are further classified according to how many reeds their mouthpiece consists of.

• Single – Reed : clarinets and saxophones
• Double – Reed : oboe, cor anglais and bassoons
• No – Reed : flutes. While flutes do not have a wooden mouthpiece, they are considered woodwind instruments because they used to be constructed from wood. Some piccolos are still made of wood.

The most common woodwinds used today

If we were to explore the entire range of woodwind instruments we would need a few articles just for that! The clarinet family alone has 7 instruments!!! Therefore, we are only going to look at the woodwinds used most commonly in modern music;

• FLUTES : Flute in C, Piccolo flute in C and Alto flute in G
• CLARINETS : Clarinet in Bb and Bass Clarinet in Bb
• OBOES : Oboe in C and English Horn (Cor Anglais) in F
• BASSOONS : Bassoon in C and Contra Bassoon in C

While the saxophones also belong in the woodwind family, they deserve an article of their own and will be covered in the near future!

II. SOUND CREATION AND BREATHING

Woodwind instruments produce sound as air is blown into their tubes through their mouthpieces. Different pitches are possible through the alteration of the tube length with the opening and closing of the different holes.

The first and foremost point you should remember when writing for woodwinds is that woodwind players are humans and not robots. While a note sustaining for 5 bars is feasible in strings or even virtual woodwinds, a real woodwind player will have a LOT to say about that! So when writing for woodwinds keep in mind that players need time to breath! If you cannot sing a phrase in one breath, chances are a player won’t be able to play it in one breath either…unless they are using an iron lung!

Another point I would like to bring to your attention is the relation between instrument size and the air required for it to produce sound; the larger the instrument the more air the player needs in order to produce sound. While a passage may be easy on the clarinet, a bass clarinetist might need much more time to breath in order to execute the same passage. When writing for woodwinds, try to put yourself into the player’s role and provide ample time for breathing and preparation.

Finally, the louder the dynamic, the more air is required and the quicker the air is consumed. Therefore, be extra careful when asking your players to play forte passages.

III. TIMBRE, DYNAMICS AND FLEXIBILITY

Woodwinds are not like strings; their timbre and color changes as they move from the lower to the higher end of their range. In fact, many scholars and orchestration books suggest that one should look at each woodwind as three different instruments : low, middle and high. This is because a flute, for example, sounds completely different when playing at its low register than playing at its middle or high register. We will look at these differences in more detail in the next section. For now, what you should keep in mind is that :

• the middle register of each instrument is the easiest for a player to control (both in terms of pitch and dynamics);
• the high register lends itself for loud dynamics and more ‘intense’ passages, and;
• the low register is more suitable for soft dynamics and more subtle passages.

In other words, woodwind players can do pretty much everything on the middle register but have difficulties executing loud passages in low registers and soft passages in high registers.

IV. INSTRUMENTATION NOTES

Below you will find information regarding range, registers and characteristics for each individual woodwind, presented in a table format for easier comprehension.

 V. TECHNIQUES AND SPECIAL EFFECTS

SCOREcast 34: Peter Rotter

iTunes RSS Link

Episode Description

Back from summer hiatus, Deane and Brian ring in six years on the air with premiere Los Angeles contractor Peter Rotter, whose mile-long résumé features the majority of the last decade’s biggest films. The guys also discuss the shutdown of Sibelius’ UK development offices by music technology giant Avid, as well as a recent Canadian supreme court ruling that targets the future of royalty payments for musicians and composers.

Comments and Discussion

Weigh in on this episode! We want to hear your thoughts—Leave a COMMENT below and participate in the discussion!

On-Air Questions

Have a question or a comment you’d like addressed on-air? Send Deane and Brian an email at scorecastonline@gmail.com.

Eanan Patterson walks you through Sonokinetic’s orchestral performance library “Vivace”.

Most composers rely on custom composing templates for their work. No matter how we set them up, whether simply by feeding back audio channels into our master machine, or using specialized software such as VSL’s Vienna Ensemble Pro – they allow us to have the tools of our trade at our disposal at the click of a mouse. But the bigger these templates get, the more important caring for it and optimizing it will become.

As someone who has had the chance to set up quite a sizable number of composing templates with the help of VE Pro, I’ve had my fair share of bottlenecks that can really bring a template to a crawl. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to make everything work as smoothly as possible. This article is based on Vienna Ensemble Pro 5, but most things mentioned here will probably also work with either VE Pro 4, or a completely different hosting software. You may even be able to use some of the tips when working solely in your sequencer.

A tiny bit of terminology: The machine where your sequencer (Logic, Cubase, Studio One,…) runs on is called „DAW“ in this article, which stands for Digital Audio Workstation. Any additional machines used for hosting instruments or for applying FX are called „Slave(s)“.

1) Planning a template:

Before even thinking about building a template, you need to be aware of what you want to have in there. This is extremely important; not just to save time during the actual process of building the template (we’ll come to that in another article!), but also in making sure everything performs nicely. Regardless of whether you want to use external hosts like VE Pro or have everything sitting in your sequencer, the most important point to think about is load distribution. Spread your instruments over multiple instances of Kontakt/Play or whatever sampler you are using. If using VE Pro or similar software, do not fit everything into one single instance, but spread it a bit so that each instance has a bit to do all the time and not just one single instance working away like mad. If you have very CPU-intensive instruments, it can make sense so spread a single library over multiple instances of the sampler. You might for example want to have all your Violins and Violas in one Kontakt instance, with a second instance housing the Cellos and Basses. This way, the CPU load is distributed across two instances and consequently two cores.

Balancing the load gets even more important when using slaves. Make sure each machine shares an equal workload. It does not make sense to dedicate one machine solely to Sough-East-Carribean Bongo tremolos and other „esoteric“ sounds, unless you really need them daily. As a rule of thumb, I try to have the bread and butter sounds of one section as well as some more special instruments from another section per slave if enough slaves are available. So slave 1 would for example do all the basic woodwinds and some brass effects and the big taikos. Slave 2 has the basic brass sounds and more special woodwinds like alto flute, contrabassoon and some tuned percussion. And so on…  Of course how you spread things totally depends on the available resources and your way of working. Just try to balance things evenly. I know it is tempting to say „this machine does all the strings“, but this is not the best idea: As soon as you have a solo string piece, this one machine needs to do all the work and the rest sits around idle. Slaves give you the unique advantage of doing their own processing – they can be loaded to the brim and the DAW won’t even notice a hit in performance! Again more about this in greater detail in a later article.

2) Using fast drives/SSDs and adjusting the preload buffer:

Most sampled instruments only load a bit of the sample material into the system memory and stream the rest from disk. The amount of what is loaded into memory is determined by preload buffer setting. I have found that it most of the time is set relatively high and can be lowered a fair bit even if you are using conventional hard drives. In fact, I still have a „green“ energy-saving drive in daily use and it performs remarkably well. If you use very fast drives (10.000rpm conventional drives or SSDs), you can set this preload buffer even lower. Lowering it means that your loaded samples consume less memory at the expense of your sampler needing to read much more directly from disk. Toy around with this setting and see what works for you. If you get crackles, pops, lost notes and other issues, raise it a bit.

In Kontakt 5, you will find the preload buffer setting in the options inside the Memory tab. By default it is set to 60kb; on regular 7.200 rmp drives you should be able to pull it back to at least 40 or even lower on pieces not requiring every single instrument to play at the same time.

Vienna Instruments (Pro) has a similar setting in its options, accessible by clicking the little gearwheel icon:

Again experiment with the settings to see what works for you.

3) Switching off unused or unnecessary articulations/mic positions:

Sounds painfully obvious: It makes no sense to have stuff running you never need. If possible, switch off any articulations you do not need. Many sample libraries allow you to unload unused articulation directly within the plugin GUI. If that does not work, use the „Purge all“ feature if such a feature is present in the sampler you are using. Kontakt, for example, has this ability: Click „Purge all samples“ in the purge menu and Kontakt will unload all samples. Samples will then be reloaded while you use the instruments on a „need to“ basis.

If you are using reasonably fast hard drives, or even SSDs, this process should be instantaneous. In any case, it saves you a ton of loading times after reloading the project and you can be sure that only the samples really needed in the project use up memory.

Most libraries also have the ability to unload unused microphone positions. Especially if you are using a 3^rd party reverb quite heavily, switching off highly reverberated samples with lots of room information can not only save you a lot of memory, but also make your mix less cluttered. If you have a rather wet library or microphone position (i.e. one with lots of room information bakes into the samples), after applying a reverb, you basically have two rooms at the same time: The room where the samples were recorded and the room your reverb adds. Especially when using special positioning and reverberation tools such as VSL MIR Pro with 3^rd party sample libraries, it is often a good idea to only use the close microphone position, if one is available. VSL MIR in particular works best with extremely dry samples.

Both tips 2 and 3 do not directly influence CPU load, but they do indirectly: With a lower preload buffer, CPU load will increase a tiny bit because more stuff needs to be loaded. This effect, however, is negligible in most cases. Having less articulations loaded reduces the amount of samples that need to be loaded. And reducing the number of active microphone positions means less samples need to by played at the same time when pressing a key.

4) Only switch on multicore support for one host:

Most hosting applications and samplers today have multicore support. That means that they will intelligently balance their workload over all available cores of your machine. Some also allow you to specify a number of cores for the application to use. While this in theory is all nice and well, the cold harsh reality quickly shows that these multicore balancing features tend to get in each others way. One practical example: If you host Kontakt 5 within VE Pro 5, by default, both applications have multicore support enabled. It is my experience that CPU consumptil will drop noticeably when you either switch off multiprocessing in Kontakt, or alternatively in VE Pro. In my experience, setting VE Pro to use 2 threads per instance and switching off Kontakt’s multicore support works best, but you should definitely try this for yourself!

You can find the relevant settings in VE Pro’s and Kontakt’s Options:

Especially on OSX, if your VE Pro instances consume 10-20% CPU per instance when doing absolutely nothing, this will most likely solve the issue! I have so far not seen any performance impact by switching off multicore support – on the contrary. If you are running parts of your template in the DAW, make sure to experiment a lot with different multicore settings: Having both VE Pro (or any other host) as well as your sequencer running, both of them probably offering support for threads, it might even make sense to deactivate multiprocessing support completely in the sequencer. I have made very good experiences doing that with Cubase, especially on the Mac.

5) Bonus Cubase Tip: Use only 8 MIDI ports for VST3:

This one curiously enough has crept up at least a dozen times in the last two weeks: Many people using Cubase with very large templates have only two or three VE Pro instances, because the VST3 version of VE Pro allows the use of multiple MIDI ports. Consequently, they use a lot of ports – the highest I have seen was 64 MIDI ports per instance.

(Let us briefly hold a minute’s silence for all Logic and DP users out there stuck with just 1 MIDI port as part of the Audio Unit plugin standard. Ok, minute over.)

Cubase users with lots of MIDI ports face the issue that their templates will take ages to load. This is due to a behaviour of Cubase that makes it take a very long time to initialize any VST3 plugin that exceeds 8 MIDI ports. What I have heard is that Cubase somehow initializes all the additional ports and checks their allocations. The first eight MIDI ports are not treated this way. This is why it makes sense to only use 8 MIDI ports per VE Pro instance and in order to be able to have the number of instruments required, use more instances with 8 ports instead of just a few instances with 64 ports.

As far as I can tell, only Cubase shows this behaviour. Users of Studio One (which is also able to use VST3 plugins) can use 64 ports without overly long loading times.

I hope you found this article informative. In due course there will be a second one with some planning advice for templates, as promised earlier. Post your feedback and questions in the comments and I’ll be happy to address it.

After having a look at the fundamentals of chord voicings in Part 1, we’ll have a look at other important factors for good chord voicings.

Another basic element of effective chord voicings are so called “Low Interval Limits” (LIL). The lower you get on the piano, for example, the more tricky it is to find chords that don’t sound muddy. Many people trust their ear on these things, which is basically a good idea. However sometimes you might be mislead by the sound texture, for example of your piano that you compose on, to believe something does sound fine when it actually translates into muddyness on real instruments. For every two notes that sound together in a certain interval, there is a limit how low you can go with them without them sounding muddy. Basically you can dissect every voicing with these limits into every internal interval.

You’ll see a chart of these low interval limits below. However, consider that these are just guidelines. On some occasions it might be possible or even desired to go lower, for example if you want to create a very dark texture. The rule of thumb is, if you follow these limits, you can be sure that your voicing will not sound muddy. Note that very consonant intervals like the perfect fifth can go much lower without sounding muddy compared to more dissonant intervals.

If you create a voicing, checking each interval for violating the low interval limits is actually not needed most of the time. Often, it is sufficient to check the lowest interval for violations.

As an example, the following voicing doesn’t violate any low interval limits (it is actually the 4 Trombones+Tuba voicing from the entrance of the Island Fanfare from JURASSIC Park as heard here:


However, this voicing does violate the LIL.

The minor third between a and c is too low. If you check these voicings on the piano, you will hear how the second voicing has a much more instable and muddy sound even though its root note is more than an octave higher than the “Jurassic Park voicing”, which has way more sonority and resonance.

When you check your voicings for LILs, take every voice into account if it is spread over several instruments or groups.

The important exception here is the case when the lowest note of your voicing is not the root note. In this cases, you have to pretend that the root is present in the voicing as lowest voice and check the low interval limits with it in mind. For example this Am7 voicing looks just fine at first sight:

However, due to the fact that the lowest note is the third of the chord and not the root, we need to presume the presence of the root note to check for LILs:

In this case the lowest third is too low again, therefore the voicing should be revoiced in order to not sound muddy.

At first, it will be a little bit annoying to actually check every chord you write against the table from above, however with a little experience you will memorize these LILs and also automatically sense violations. The important thing here is to get a sensitive hearing for such problems.

However, be warned to think about easily avoiding violations of the LILs by generally distributing any harmonic content in a high register. While there are no “High Interval Limits”, generally harmonic content is best to be distributed more or less in the octave below middle c.

This register has the advantage of being not too low for most intervals and having a high degree of resonance.

If you compare this Emaj7 voicing:

to the very same voicing two octaves higher:

you will hear a very clear difference in resonance. The effect also happens already at one octave difference, however two octaves make it even clearer. The lower voicing has a strong resonance and can harmonically support any melody on top of it. The higher one has a certain harmonic quality as well, however imagining a bass note and a melody on top of it will very quickly make clear that it has not much harmonic supporting power. This becomes an even more important issue in orchestral writing. Many inexperienced orchestrators and composers distribute the harmonic content way too high in their writing leaving a huge “empty space” in the low register which will result in a unfocussed high register and a very empty overall sound.

Another very misleading factor regarding good voicings is the bad influence of hand limitations of piano players. In orchestral chord voicings, the general rule of thumb is to not exceed a distance more than an octave between the single voices of the chord (with exception of the lowest to the 2nd lowest voice which has no limit). Otherwise, the voicing tends to fall apart acoustically and sounds partially detached. The span of the hand however doesn’t allow to follow this general rule on the piano so we often see, play and compose voicings like this on the piano:

While this is not avoidable in piano music, unfortunately many composers/orchestrators translate this voicing directly to their orchestral arrangements ignoring the 2 octave gap in the middle. The result will be a very strange sounding inhomogenous orchestral chord. In order to translate that properly to orchestra it needs the step of ignoring ones own fingers and fill up the gap for example like these 3 examples:



None of the voicing violates the LILs or has voices further than an octave apart. However, every voicing has certain advantages and disadvantages.

Voicing 1 has a fairly open and transparent structure due to the quite large intervals involved. Note that the third of the chord is stated the first time in the octave below middle c. Especially the third of a chord has a strong influence on the resonance so the lower you put it without violating the LILs, the more resonance you will get. Also, note the fairly even distribution between chord tones. We have the root note stated 3 times and the third and fifth two times each. This voicing would sound very good as a string voicing, having a lot of beautiful resonance and an open structure to not sound overly dense.

Voicing 2 looks basically quite similar to Voicing 1, however has a few flaws compared to it. The above mentioned resonant third is stated the first time in the middle octave, losing its potential resonance. Also we have a quite unbalanced distribution of chord tones: 4 times the root, 3 times the fifth and only once the third. This voicing will feel quite unbalanced and you would need to orchestrate it very carefully in order to make it sound good. If I were to decide for one of the first two voicings I would definitely go for the first one.

Voicing 3 basically fills up the gap from the piano vocing with every available chord note in close position, resulting in a 12-voice chord. This voicing sounds very dense and thick which is not always the desired effect, however it would work nicely as a tutti chord with all instruments from the orchestra involved.

Orchestrating voicings specifically for instruments will be dealt in a later part of this series. Next time we will focus on open vs. close voicings and start working with more complex chord structures.

Sonokinetic has released “BAGPIPES – 4 European Bagpipes”, a collection of four bagpipes from various regions of Europe.

According to the developer, the library “incorporates several Sonokinetic signature features such as Intelligent Tempo Mapping, Performance-Articulation combination and tempo-sync bypass options. The bagpipes are recorded as dry as possible allowing for ultimate flexibility with mixing and placement. We have provided an authentic Impulse Response within the interface for a realistic pipe reproduction.“

With over 3000 samples and about 3.1 GB of sample content, BAGPIPES offers four instruments from different regions: Belgium (Muchosa), Lowlands (Doedelzak), Spain (Galiza), and Scotland (G Highland). The library also offers tempo-synced phrases, pitched in every key as well as legato scripting.

Apart from its musical capabilities, BAGPIPES also stands out as Sonokinetic’s first new release to exclusively use the UVI Engine. The company states: “The instrument itself runs in the free UVI Workstation or full version of MachFive. This means that we can present more realistic tempo-synced and timelocked phrases than ever before, utilizing the powerful algorithms of MOTU playback engines.” This release is not compatible with the Kontakt 5 sampler, but instead is exclusive to the UVI platform.

Together with BAGPIPES, Sonokinetic also released a new version of their CAROUSEL fairground organ library for UVI Workstation and MOTU MachFive.

BAGPIPES retails for 79.90€ and is available from Sonokinetic’s website as a digital download. The library requires an iLok USB Key for copy protection.

I was talking with a friend, who, on behalf of his brother, was asking for advice on getting into the industry.  Specifically, his brother is the musician in the family while my friend is a more traditional businessman who sells product. My pal asked me, “How do you determine what to charge? I know that in my industry I have to do an analysis of what a product costs me to produce and how much profit margin I need to make to survive. If a music mix takes a certain number of hours and you can determine its cost to show the client, why can you not get people to pay for that?” This inevitably led to the train of thought that you charge what you are worth — a topic we have discussed here at SCOREcast many times in the past. But upon further discussion, I determined that in advising his brother on how to charge for his work, there was a fundamental problem in their approach. They were focused on selling the wrong product.

What Are You Selling?

Answer this question for yourself. As a composer, what product are you selling? Think about it. Answer honestly in your head before you read on.

…(Queue Merv Griffin’s “Jeopardy” theme)…

Did you answer “music?” Did you answer “a film score?” Did you answer “fully produced tracks?” “Original compositions?” Well… you are wrong on all accounts. What is the product you are selling? The product you are selling is YOU!

It is a fundamental shift in how you look at your business. It’s why some composers can charge seven figures and perhaps you can not — those composers are worth more. But if you are frustrated because you feel the fully produced tracks on your demo are just as polished and unique as those composer’s then you are taking your eye off the ball. It is NOT about your music. It is about YOU. You are the product. ALL of you.

Of course you produce music, but that is only part of it. You also make the director feel like his or her movie was the best thing made this year. You also solve problems with a positive and professional approach that makes people want to be around you for months at a time on a project. You also communicate well and deliver on time and on budget. There is so much more to it.

The challenge in setting a price for your music is really just determining what YOU are worth to the client, rather than what your music is worth. A Blu-Ray can be purchased at the nearest store for about $15-$20 USD. There is a value assessment to that product that the market has determined and can sustain. But with us, our value changes — sometimes overnight. If your movie hits #1 in the country, all of a sudden you’ll be worth more. It is not like your music is any different today than it was yesterday before your film hit number one at the box office, but the value of having you on a future project is now much more valuable to a producer or director. It has nothing to do with your music.

The honest truth: If you are having a hard time getting your fee up it is because the industry does not feel YOU are worth that. If they felt you were worth the money, they would find the money to cover your fee. It also plays into Deane Ogden‘s frequent posts about the culture of free. If we agree to free gigs, we are simply affirming to the industry that we are worth… nothing.

In conclusion, the next time you re-evaluate your business plan and try to determine what your fee is, remember what it is that you are actually trying to sell. Also remember that you are not a composer looking for a job, you are a business looking for clients. It is a subtle distinction but an important one. It shifts the dynamic of where you sit on the ladder with your clients.

The product is not your music — the product is YOU!

[sncallout type="announcement"]Leave your thoughts on this below. I would love to hear your take on what makes YOU a valuable product to your clients. — Brian[/sncallout]

Music recognition for composers

This is my first article for ScoreCast Online. I hope you enjoy!

Yesterday, I stumbled across a very useful tool and thought it might be useful for some of you guys.

A couple of words about my background and why this tool is useful for me: For quite a while now, I’m the composer of the German TV series “Die Fallers”. In the meanwhile I have over 700 cues that I composed for the series. When I receive new episodes, they are usually temped with my own music and from time to time there are themes which might be worth to be used as a basis or be developed further for a scene.  Now the problem is: how to find that single track in an archive with over 900 tracks? Of course I could call up the editor and ask for each single track they used. But usually, they are already busy with other projects. So what could we do to make our life easier? A database? Good starting point. With tags, keywords, descriptions? Well, yes, this might work but the time to create an extensive database with all kinds of bells and whistles would be immense. And there is no guarantee that you will find what you are looking for just by searching for keywords and descriptions.

The solution is (drum roll): a database of audio fingerprints, or to put it differently: music recognition. Think Shazam, SoundHound, etc… but for you very own music library!

I had a hard time to find a tool for this task but here it is: http://music.tyberis.com/

Screenshot of Tyberis Music Database

What you basically do is, you feed the program with your own music (WAV or MP3 but only at 44,1kHz and 16Bit!) and it creates fingerprints for these tracks. Creating the database happens fairly quickly. I added all my tracks within 2 or 3 minutes. Now after having done that, you put a check on “channel active” (this will monitor the audio output, you have to set the right one in preferences) and play back the temp track in your DAW or audio player and it will recognize the played track and show the title in the database, voilà!

As you can read on the website, the program was actually intended for bands who want to monitor radio stations for their songs. You see, there are many possibilities!

The only downside of this great program is that it’s Windows only. But it can be run in Parallels, VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion or in Bootcamp.

By now most SCOREcast readers will be familiar with CineBrass. Like the recently released CineWinds, It was famously recorded at the prestigious Barbara Streisand Scoring Stage at Sony, home of a thousand blockbuster scores, and also for using union, named players. Initially the library was released with just 12 lean, mean, highly configurable patches as a result of a day’s recording session which covered the essentials, then a Pro expansion was released several months later. This second product was the result of 2 days sessions, and greatly expanded both the depth and range of instruments.

CineBrass Core (the renamed original library) quickly established a reputation for a killer out of the box sound like no other commercial brass library. The right players in the right space with the right recording engineers gave that instant hit, from the plaintive solo horn to the euphoric trumpet ensemble, this was truly a “familiar” sound, in the best sense. Turns out that if you record some of John Williams’ players in the space where Indiana Jones was actually recorded, you get Hollywood in a virtual box.

But the library was not without its problems. The solo instruments had only one velocity layer, and several crucial articulations were missing. Also a disappointment was that the legato performance was problematic. However nice the Sony ambiance is, users quickly complained that on faster passages, the build up of it turned a performance into a bit of a mush.

The two-pronged response from CineSamples was to simultaneously improve Core with a revision, and release Pro to fill in the gaps. The latter featured many more solo instruments with multiple velocity layers, mutes, a new 12 horn patch, stopped and fluttered horns and some chord patches. Meanwhile the 1.1 revision for Core also added new features like a very clever double and triple tonging script, layered shorts on sustain high velocities for more attack and drastically tweaked legato which enabled much faster playing. However, the latter came at a price… the mush may have gone, but in some cases so too did a lot of natural ambiance. The rejigged trumpet ensemble worked very well, but the 6 horn legato patch in particular only really worked on p / mf levels. Pushing up the modwheel, the transitions seemed to vanish completely and the ambiance was severely truncated. In that particular case, you could play faster, but it didn’t sound natural any more, even on slow passages.

So the question is – CineBrass Pro may expand the range, but does it fill in ALL the gaps?

Pro Legato

In general, Pro is far more nimble to play than the original version of Core. They’ve clearly reigned in the ambiance on the interval samples to achieve that improved playability, but it avoids the more unpleasant side effects you occasionally hear in Core 1.1. It still isn’t as expansive as Core’s 1.0, but the trade off is that it makes it more versatile. And of course… you can always add more ambiance, but you can’t take away (well, unless you have Zynaptiq’s amazing new UNVEIL plugin…)

Core and Pro come with a sampled Bristacti M7 reverb, with the intent to keep resource use down. A great idea, and it sounds very nice on non-legato articulations, but doesn’t work on the legato patches, as it can’t ring out naturally – again, the scripting artificially truncates it, so you actually make the existing problem worse. So with Pro more than the original release of Core, this library needs a little help from a good additional reverb if you’re playing the legatos in particular. It feels like a bit of a shame that we’re not getting the full benefit of that Sony stage (or more specifically its tail) when using legato, but perhaps the guys have reached the limit that scripting can accomplish.

The solution, therefore is to dial in your plugin or hardware unit of choice to add some tail onto the legato patches. In fact, CineSamples are soon to release an update to the CineBrass range which takes the user interface from the new CineWinds library, and this will have a built in convolution reverb based on their Bricasti settings – a clever touch. And with some non-sampled tail added to the legatos, the net effect is terrific. 12 horns is pretty formidable at the fff level, but it doesn’t sound ridiculous either – indeed the lowest velocities have a beautifully restrained tone. I find myself using it a lot with CC1 dialed low – just sounds sensational – and the interval samples are bang on. In the main it’s also a lot smoother than the original 6 horn patch, which felt quite uneven up and down the keyboard.

The horns do still have one significant flaw, however. Apparently, due to issues CineSamples discovered when scripting and editing, the upper notes in the legato or articulation sustain patch can only sound fff if you’re playing a legato transition. It’s a strange thing – if you play the notes non-legato in the top half octave, you can’t get above an mp. This is a real shame, depending on the phrase, it can pretty dramatically sound like the brakes are applied. It’s a slight irony after the problems with the original 6 horn legato that they got the new legatos spot on, but some of the basic sustains don’t match!

The rest of the library expands the range almost as much as you’d hope, fitting in indistinguishably tone-wise with the original. You obviously have much more range with the solo instruments, and the tuba is exceptionally good, really playable. Needless to say, the versatility is greatly increased with the Pro solo sections, having added 3 velocity layers. However, the original trumpet and horn are still indispensable for quieter emotive parts, there’s still something really special about them, so don’t be tempted to eject them from your template. There is one major omission still from the final combined line up – there is no trombone ensemble legato patch, which is a real shame, since the tone of the ensemble articulations in Core is absolutely superb.

A real highlight of Pro turns out to be the orchestrated chords, an idea borrowed from CineSamples own CineOrch. The horns triads are especially good, with major and minor inversions (audio example), and a separate patch for 7th variations. The scripting on these patches is excellent, highly playable with CC1 control, there’s a palpable air of realism here with the correct voice leading. Well worth taking the time to get around the various configurations of chords on the keyboard.

The library has attracted a little criticism in other areas. You have 3 lengths of short avaiable, and some find this too limiting, while others have pointed out that the dynamic range could be increased in terms of volume (as opposed to the number of velocity layers). A gentle p passage is still relatively loud – perhaps a future revision could add some additional level of dynamic control. I don’t find either of these limitations too much of a problem in practice, in the case of the latter, it’s just a case of riding the volume where needed.

Verdict

CineBrass is your classic flawed masterpiece. First and foremost – the tone is uniformly great. Specifically, in Core the original trumpet ensemble is utterly sublime, the low patches are terrific and the solo instruments absolutely nail the plaintive Saving Private Ryan feel. Pro gives you (mostly) killer horns, exquisite orchestrated chords, versatile solo instruments and a slew of effects. The conclusion regarding which one to buy is perhaps inevitable – most users really will need both. Indeed if you own the combo, exclusive bonus patches that make use of sample sets from both libraries are on their way. If you really can only have one, I’d pick Core.

Even both together doesn’t have the breadth of articulations of East West’s Hollywood Brass, but arguably more than makes up for it in other areas – both are Kontakt player libraries, recorded in pretty much the greatest brass space in Hollywood with the crème de la crème of players scoring today, outstandingly playable orchestrated chords and it’s easy on resources. It’s a real shame that for their latest release – CineWinds – the players’ union, AFM, has decided not to continue their association with CineSamples.  It seems they got cold feet with regard to being associated with sampling – something which is perhaps worthy of a post of its own.  However, CineSamples assure us that they will continue to share the revenue from their products with the musicians and engineers, whether the product has an AFM badge or not.  And major kudos to them for doing so.

Music Libraries : What’s the Deal?

The Pros

Music libraries are a superb entry point and training ground for things to come. Writing for catalogues and agency-based stock means you get to hone in on the styles and genres their clients are requesting. It also means fine-tuning the trends, those sounds and building a working template for these identifiable sounds. When you amass some placement credits from a number of TV-show placements, it allows you to branch out a lot deeper into more commissioned, bespoke projects.

Furthermore, returns can be good. If you hit those markers and get the right music up there, it can mean the potential for a LOT of placements, i.e. credits. As cliché as it sounds, placements mean rewards. You will get experience, the ‘chops’, the contacts and some quite respectable cash returns.

…and the Cons

Writing for music libraries is quite time-consuming. It is a monster that does need feeding very often. The stock music market changes often and trends come and go. It can also seem like a lot of work for little return from the offset but please bear in mind, you are adding this work to your overall plan of action and it is best treated as a supplemental form of income until it shows itself to be a much stronger contingent for your resources and daily attentions.

On balance, I would say that there are more pros than cons if you learn to do this right.

Can I make a living from library music as my main source of income?

This is one of the questions that has no definite yes answer applicable to everyone. There are many variable factors at play and with so many people writing for libraries it is impossible to say with any certainty that this is something you can invest all your working hours in and see the returns you need to survive day-to-day.

A couple of decades ago, music libraries were not buckling under the sheer volumes they are now. The crowd you are fighting with is 100-fold what it was all those years ago. The typical home-PC is now powerful enough to get anyone into a basic position but guess what? This is also available to everyone down to the 16-year old with their dad’s home PC, a MIDI keyboard and a few virtual instruments, a lot of which can be found for free these days.

Therefore, you will need to work harder than everyone else, produce higher quality music than the next guy, be more committed, more focused, do more research and want it more!

If you have an edge or an angle, you have an added asset not everyone has. If you play live guitar and you can sing, you just cut down your competition in half in one swoop. As good as any virtual instrument or soundset is, it is not as gritty, real and organic as the real deal. If you play more than one instrument you have a big arsenal of places you can go where others don’t and when they do, they will only sound half as good as you do.

Make sure you become fast and proficient and you don’t go to pieces when you are asked to do more than 3-4 things at any given time. Be flexible with your time and attitude. If someone wants that extra mix or Mongolian-hairy-yak version of a cue you spent all night writing, then do it with all the edits and 30’’ and 60’’ versions before the morning comes!

Make all those sacrifices. If you need to invest in better technology and tools for your studio then somehow you need to bite the bullet. Doing so will mean that you can take on the next gig and be armed for future encounters.

A lot of libraries do not pay anything up front. This can be simply because the budget for music is very low and the producers cannot pay everyone to pitch for the job. The key to making this work for you is to achieve as many placements as you can. This, combined with getting 100% of the back-end royalties will make for a very respectable income in the long run.

Sometimes – as I have done myself in several cases, you might want to sacrifice more of the backend royalties on the basis that I can gain a lot more placements (i.e. credits) by sheer volume and not waiting for the bigger and better deal and having my music sit unused for a long time!

In other cases, I might be able to get 100% on the backend returns but I have had to wait months for my catalogue to be raided and those elusive cues placed.

Another key factor to making this work is playing in various ‘fields’ simultaneously. I play across several, knowing all their methods of working  and frequency of placement etc. according to the shows they work with and rates of pay.

Making a sole living out of this is brutal! You don’t get to drop off the face of the earth for two weeks on holiday, you need to be highly competitive and ultimately take the knocks as they come and move forward. It can take a few years to get the material to bolster your catalogue of works, making extra contacts and establishing a good reputation with those you hook up with.

I have been very lucky to some degree as I write for up-front money as one stream, royalty-free music for another, and just royalty returns for others and I keep them all moving constantly. You maintain what you build. So it is a constant environment of creating opportunities, maintaining what you spend all that time building and striving to be better, faster and more ‘on-the-ball’ than the next guy.

How do you approach potential libraries and what is a good ‘pitch’ strategy for someone yet unproven in this field?

The overall factor that is sometimes bigger than the music itself, is charm and approachability.

If you are nice to speak to and easy to communicate with from the first talk you are on a good road! No one likes working with a smart ass, regardless of how good the music is. You will not get a chance to prove how awesome your music is on-screen and how much money it will make everyone unless you get past the first post!

If you have no earlier history this is not a big an obstacle as you would imagine. Other people’s perception of writing music for TV for example, is a mixed bag; most assume that you are making phenomenal money left, right and center and that you are flying across the world every other day no matter what level you are on this work! However, it is really not like this when you are looking to leave the starting blocks. It is much easier to break into than you would imagine. The shows being produced per week are countless, the amount of pressure the show producers are under is insane and deadlines are cut-throat and relentless.

So, if you submit some cues to a music supervisor or agent who deals with a lot of libraries as a mediator, and it happens that your music is what they need for the next episode of Show X, then that’s your in!!! It can be as simple as that.

I now work with several library companies and each of them are very different in how they work and how an approach worked ‘for them’. In one instance it was pure timing; I scoured the net for opportunities and someone was asking for music for a Discovery network show. A type of tension cue was needed and I happened to have a ton of them literally just sitting there doing nothing. I had nothing to lose by submitting to their call. I was very polite and kept my email short and professional. You are neither begging for the chance, nor you are so high and mighty that they owe you a meeting or a car outside your door! You just take a shot. In this particular case I got an email back within 5’ minutes and was told they would pass these cues over to the library who in turn green-lit these to submit to the music supervisor for the show. He loved the cue and wanted 10 more just like it! And bingo!! Out of the blue came an ‘in’. They had their backs against the wall, I appeared with 10+ cues that filled the brief and that was it.

Working successfully in this line of work is also a matter of constantly doing your homework and researching similar shows as the ones you are asked to write for. You write again and again with your fingers crossed and some of these cues get picked up.

Another ‘in’ for me was a composer already signed to a library that recommended me to them. The owner asked me to call him at a set time so that is exactly what I did. We hit it off within seconds. I kept it short and sweet and just relaxed. What’s the worst that can happen? So just be friendly, be yourself. When you do get to meet or phone these guys make the most out of it! Nothing comes across via email but when you meet or talk, you do get that shot to be charming! So use this for all it’s worth.

Even when you do strike a deal, it is important to keep your ear on the ground, keep looking for those chances and act upon them appropriately. Have a very great-looking website that is very easy to use and make out on all platforms, including mobile and tablet-based platforms. Everyone is looking and listening on the move. So, make sure that those web-based audio preview sites are working!!! Make sure that the quality of your work is good enough for audition purposes and that navigating your site is a pleasure and not a chore! Don’t feel the need to over-animate or clutter what you are trying to show off. How fast do you like to browse and find solutions yourself??? It is the same for your client…Why should they feel any different? If your name above the door looks messy, too busy and half of it doesn’t work, it is not a great first impression and I personally wouldn’t be fighting my way through this to find your music!

How much music should I have online? Should I have different tracks in different libraries? Can I even do that or do the libraries what exclusive deals?

It is a mixed bag with many libraries wanting different specifics to their deal. Some prefer exclusivity whilst the rest can happily work with non-exclusive music.

Should you have your music spread among various libraries? ABSOLUTELY! This is the key to ensuring longevity when writing for varied markets and making sure you cover as wide a base as possible.

Each library/agency, works with a set of clients that are after a specific ‘sound’. After working with a library for some time you will learn to recognize the areas/genres that are ‘performing’ and are making money and you will need to adjust your focus based on the responses you get and the trends you see appearing in the market.

Having the ability to sell non-exclusively clearly gives added mileage to your work but you will find the exclusive deals more lucrative as one-off deals upfront can really make a big impact on your immediate situation. Making money from library music is no easy talk by any means! It is a calculated play on what you thing will sell and sell again, constantly making a small revenue stream against that one-off deal that secures bigger money upfront over a finite period.

Working with several libraries, you adapt to their needs, their system of working and what specific market they are tailored for. For example, you ma find one library agency has a strong ‘band’ and ‘live’ element to their client base. A lot of teen and music network-commissioned shows use a great deal of these cues which are always thin on the ground when directly compared to ‘out-of-the-box’ home-studio VST tracks. So effectively, your mind-set has to perfectly hone in each library’s needs.

A lot of big-network clients do specify exclusivity for the music of their shows. They really do not want to switch on the TV, flip a few channels and hear the same cues placed elsewhere. Some of the bigger cable networks also work this way and prefer an identity to their final output that isn’t being diluted by the same work being heard elsewhere.

In some cases, the network and/or show supervisor works with several different shows and wants to have a specific deal with a music library, allowing them to license a bunch of cues and drop them into the show. In other words, they like to have the ‘exclusive take’ on a batch of cues.

Do you pay attention to current trends when writing? How do you strategize for the highest potential usage of your catalogue?

YES!!! Researching your library/agency is probably one of the most simple but overlooked strategies there is.99% of those big library companies like to brag about who they’re hooked up with. It’s a two-way street as they want strong composers batting for them and the world to know all those big client names they have under there belt. It’s as competitive as you imagine it is.

Trends and fads are transient.They can last a few months, in some cases a year to 18 months and just rarely, a fleeting passing phase. But study and break down everything you hear.The structure, instrument choice, tempo,melodic content or lack therein and understand what is selling over and over. Writing for popular big selling trend cues means working very fast.And none of this stuff is going to have a life span like more safe, tried and tested staple music that’s used regularly .You need to get a batch of this music and hit the ground running.

Places such as Audio Jungle are a perfect proving ground for this. When I first signed on, all I did was listen to the top authors who had sold several hundred of a certain cue.

Sometimes there is just a feel or a magical combination of sounds etc that just works. So break it all down and almost become a little analytical of it. To a degree it helps.It enables you to see inside the machine and what all those cogs and gears do. And then start hitting this yourself.

I know that when I write for certain genres, that some are always going to be reliable and sell. The most popular are the tension/action cues and the comedic quirky cues. But as safe a bet as they are, a 1000 other composers are also playing it safe in your back yard. So you then end up with a saturated market and a genre specific issue.

So, trends can be for that short duration, your ploy to stick your head out of the crowd and break in.

I  have around 600 cues in my catalogue and I would say over 2 thirds of those are signed and published. All of those bread and butter cues will always find a home at some point.It’s a continuous steady stream of traffic and due to the rate of placements I’ve been lucky to get, I’ve benefitted from having a solid reliable reputation.

Your odds of your catalogue being ventured into become greatly enhanced by this. It’s pure common sense. If you’re someone who comes up with the goods time and time again, your catalogue becomes the most important thing you have.

This is why I write at high volume.Your standing and reputation plus the ratio of placements based on this, means you’re batting average is greatly increased, which in turn means more fluid returns over and over. The way to make sure you do get placed over and over? Listen to the brief. It you’re not sure and need more info, ask and ask again. Research as much as possible to placed cues that are in this ballpark. Again, break it down and understand the basic mechanics of why they do work and go for it.

When you start getting briefs that you do nail, you have a happy boss, happy clients, and you’ll move yourself into the prime spot on the shop floor. Same principle as when you walk into a big chain shop and the good stuff is eye height on the best shelves with all the promotion around it. That’s effectively you and this market place. If you sell often and you’re reliable, you move closer to the front of the store and get more exposure, which means more chances of pitching for the bigger gigs.

If you aren’t selling well, you can end up further back in that store, less fuss being made of you and a bigger fight to climb back into the selling region you came to crave and love!

What do we really know about the music that we write? Do we write any kind of music or is there a filter? Can any kind of music be written?

Let´s start with a simple question: why did someone ever thought of writing down music in the first place? Well, very easy: because they couldn´t record it.

What now seems so natural to us, to be able to record and play music at will, is just an innovation that took place not so long ago. Before that, if music wasn´t remembered, it could be lost! Hence the need to be able to write it down.

Meet the Great Great Great Grandmother of MIDI

So how does one write down a melody in the first place?

Well, how would you do it? Let´s say that there is this beautiful song that you have in your mind and you´re away from any recorder (no, you can´t use your phone either) and all you have to try and remember it is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I guess you would write the lyrics first, and then, on top of each word you would need some symbols as to remind you where to go up, where to go down, where to stop, where to breathe. Now, how would you draw these symbols?

A first instinctive attempt could be a line going up and down responding to the vertical movement of the melody and stopping when the music stops. Making sense so far?

Congratulations! You just invented the neumatic notation (the first widely spread music notation in Europe). Pneuma comes from Greek “breath” and every symbol is a neuma, which is defined like “the amount of notes you can sing in a single breath”.

The longer the line drawn, the longer the sound is held. The higher the line goes, the higher the note, and the other way around.

You get the basic idea- what if you want to write down some nuances to your melody? how about adding accents, little commas here and there to underline a sudden stop or that unexpected change?

Did your drawing look anything like this?

I see. Rather don´t answer, but to people from X century it would also seem quite complicated to read your 364 MIDI track arrangement!

Ok, so now that we have our beautiful song properly written down and we know it will be there for us to sing it tomorrow morning we can go relax with the other X century people to the local canteen. Life is good.

A couple of local canteens and songs later, you begin to get the hold of your music writing. The more you use it, the more specific in the writing you want to be because the more you can read, the less you need to sing by heart, and you can free more brain CPU for singing more elaborate stuff and introducing more innovations. So, what would be the next improvement?

If you look closer, you´ll realise we´re indicating when the melody goes up and down…but not how much! Is it three semitones and a half? Two semitones? There is no way to determine it because the symbols are not integrated into a grid that accurately mesures the distance between them (what it´s called non-diastematic notation, literally “notation with no distance”). So, let´s draw some horizontal lines and bring some order to the chaos!

How about this?

Does this begin to look slightly familiar to modern music notation?

Add some more centuries of refining, some more local canteens (monastic refectories to be more precise) and a couple of local writing traditions blending here and there (my improvement in rhythm notation for your improvement in key writing) and by ends of Baroque we would find something that any music student could read nowadays.

And you thought royalty free loops were a modern invention…

Well, no. The same concept was used in centonizaton back in the day! Centonization was the way of composing where you would use pre-made music fragments (sounds familiar now?) to integrate into a bigger work as if it was patchwork. Once they had a nice group of sounds that were sounding nice and were notated already, why not reusing and combining them? They would recycle previous music. Just so you know, originality wasn´t considered an asset in music until Romanticism!

I’m not in the mode for singing….

So, if writing down the songs is so time and energy consuming, we might want to sift a bit which ones are worth remembering and which ones aren´t. So, what shall be the criterion of selection here?

The criterion was ethic and not esthetic.

All the way up to Pythagoras it was believed that music could deeply affect the “ethos” (character) of men and therefore it could be used for good or bad purposes. If exposed to the right music, a man could become strong of character and a good citizen; on the other hand, if exposed to the wrong kind of music, he could become weak and melancholic. The purpose behind this selection was basically creating good Greek citizens, this meaning among other things alert soldiers, rigurous thinkers and submissive peasants.

Initially, the main Greek scales were the tetrachords, a descending sucession of four notes. Why four notes, and why descending? Well, because music was imitating the human voice! There is a very evident musicality in all spoken languages (usually it´s more evident if we hear a foreign language since we don´t notice anymore the musical nuances we do in our own native language). In human voice, the most natural interval is the descending fourth (average interval for asserting something, rather than ascending, which would sound like a question – more on why we use ascending scales nowadays later).

These tetrachords were used in three main music genres (back in the day “genre” meant “mode” rather than a particular music style): diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic. The diatonic genre was based in tones, and therefore easily explainable with mathematics. Mathematics were rationally explainable, hence they were good. So they kept this genre. The chromatic genre added some semitones…which were good for adding some embelishments here and there. Not too many, or it would sound too oriental – and the Greeks were seeking a strong differenciation from their eastern neighbours, that was very evident in the sound of their national music, in the way that was starting to sound more “western”. The enharmonic genre was used mainly by aulos (a kind of flute) performers and in their eyes was dodgy because a) it was using quarters of tone b) couldn´t be easily explained with elegant mathematics (doesn´t show simple ratios) and was thought to have harmful effects on men: would drive them to drink and relax and not be productive for the City (the kind of music you would use in a party but not the one you´d use in the office, so to speak). So, bye bye enharmonic genre, we will not take the time to try to write you down! Hence folklore music didn´t have a written tradition.

This is what has made Western music sound so different from the rest of world music: from Pythagoras, passing through Plato, the Christianism, all music has been written using only two modes: major and minor -and when around Romanticism they began using more chromatic scales it was called something modern!

Therefore, we can only write major and minor, this is, semitones and tones. It´s a vicious circle: we only write what we play, and we end up playing only what we can write! This has affected the whole evolution of harmony, as we mentioned in earlier article about the origins of the orchestra, because only by refining what notes could be played it is possible to coordinate large instrumental ensembles.

So where does our current scale come from?

Aha! Guido D´Arezzo is to blame!

 Guido (circa 995 -1050) was the abbot in Ferrara Abbey and was in charge of both selecting the gregorian chant repertoire for the services and teaching it to new students. Here he did two major achievements that would affect Western music ever after: he dismissed most of the chant repertoire that had chromatic/ enharmonic components, keeping only the more diatonic one, and invented a very effective way of reading music that would perfectly fit this tone-based repertoire.

Instead of making students randomly learn the chants by heart as it had been happening until then, he chose a particular hymn to Saint John in which every next sentence of the text sung was beginning with a correlative ascending note, and chose the syllable starting that sentence to represent the tone being sung. So, the students would associate that precise syllable to a new tone, ever ascending. That was the origin of our modern music scale:

Ut queant laxis
Resonare fibris
Mira gestorum
Famuli tuorum
Solve polluti
Labii reatum
Sancte Ioannes

As you can see, for last semitone SI, Guido put together the initials of Sancte Ioannes, and later on in History the first syllable “UT” became Do because ending in a vowel was easier for singing. Why Do and not Du? Because of being the short of Dominum (Lord) – remember most writing tradition achievements were managed by the Church.

So were they singing all the time? Are you sure there wasn´t any instrumental music?

Of course there were instruments playing, and even chromatic and enharmonic folklore played…but not by professionals, and it wasn´t considered good and pure enough to be written down. There was this kind of music, but would just not get written down. Strange as it may sound now, we have to bear in mind when trying to understand how things happened that however normal it may seem to us to read and write nowadays, this is quite a recent achievement in History, and back in the day, only an elite would be literate. And this elite would very carefully choose what and how to write. Paper was precious, parchments were precious, ink was precious and education for knowing how to use them was even more precious. Hence, not every single tune woud be written down in the same way that not every single subject was written about: there were no notebooks or shopping lists either!

Music (whether we musicians like it or not) was only worth being written when supporting a text, since written word was pretty much sacred. It was the message and not the hedonic enjoyment of music what was important, so it wasn´t until Renaissance (first tablatures) that someone considered important to write down music for instruments (of course, instruments were played, but no one considered they were important enough to write down their parts). So, only vocal music would be written!

So, to sum it up…some more facts to bear in mind

Although we´ve barely scratched the surface here, music notation has been as complex and diverse as the mere evolution of writing.

The Epitaph of Seikilos is widely accepted as the oldest music notation fragment kept, and word has it it was discovered in the house of an old lady that used it as a base for a flowerpot! (really??- yes). You can hear it online if you want, it´s not officially agreed when it was written but for sure was before II century BC!

Another insteresting fact: Western music notation is not the only one that exists!

Feel like knowing more?

Bibliography:

MARTÍN MORENO, Antonio. “Fundamentos de la teoría musical”, from Los Grandes Temas de la Música. Pamplona: Salvat, 1984, pages. 4-32.

BURKHOLDER, J. Peter; GROUT, Donald y PALISCA, Claude V. A History of Western Music. London and New York, W. W. Norton Company.

Image Credits:

http://www.notaquadrata.ca/lexicon.html

http://www.edwardschaefer.net/

http://library.umkc.edu

[Photo by Linus Bohman]

Among the many primary functions of film music, tension is near the top of the list. Wether it’s to generate feelings of suspense, anticipation, or even a false sense of danger, creating tension is a major part of our work as film composers.

In this article I’ll discuss one of the tools you can add to your bag of tricks for creating tension, the technique of stretching out a scale.

Expectation

Tension is aroused when there is a conflict between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. In music one of the easiest ways to do this is to set up an expectation, but then delay it’s resolution.

I’m reminded of the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which the villain is trying to get Roger Rabbit to come out of his hiding place. He knocks out the rhythm to the first part of “Shave and a Haircut”:

“No toon can resist the old Shave and a Haircut trick!”

Roger Rabbit can’t help himself, the tension is just UNBEARABLE! He has to finish the phrase, it’s driving him insane not to, and thus he comes out of hiding and is caught by the throat!

There are many ways to establish expectations in your listener’s ear, including using predictable melodies, setting up common cadences, creating patterns in the music, and using scales. Let’s now take a look at how we can use scales to set up expectations and delay resolution.

Scales

Many people find scales boring because they are so predictable. But that’s actually what is so great about them! We want to take advantage of that very predictability. Being a backbone of most Western music, even non-musicians have expectations about how scales resolve and what they generally sound like.

We already looked at how leaving off an expected resolution can drive you nuts with the Shave and a Haircut example. Consider this even simpler example:

If you’re like most musicians, the lack of resolution to the tonic will really get under your skin!

A scale climbing and not quite reaching home is great for demonstration, but it feels a bit rudimentary in a musical context. A more musical approach, and a very common one, is to stretch out the scale by repeating notes, rising a little bit and then backing back down and starting over. I’ll use a half-diminished scale here for some added darkness:

The tension comes from two different places here. First of all, we expect the scale to just keep climbing in an upward direction, and so when it jumps back down we are a bit surprised.

Secondly, we are never really sure when it’s going to stop, and so tension is created by the uncertainty of just how high this scale is going to go. We keep expecting it to resolve but it never does.

Examples from the Repertoire

Barber’s Adagio for Strings

An example very similar to the one we just looked at can be found in the opening to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

Essentially all he is doing is climbing from A natural up to Eb, but by stretching those 5 notes into 15 he creates an incredible feeling of tension.

He stretches the scale out in two ways. First, he has a pattern of going up a third and down a second:

Then he stretches it out further by repeating each climb up a third before moving to the descent of a second:

Even after the Eb it feels like the pattern could just keep on climbing forever, but he gives us a break and rests on the C. A perfect reminder that all tension and no resolution would soon become tiresome to listen to!

Little Tom Thumb

The second movement of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, Little Tom Thumb, starts off with a similar technique. In this case, however, Ravel manipulates the tension in two different ways.

The first noticeable difference from the Barber is that he uses longer stretches of the scale. Instead of climbing only three notes at a time, Ravel climbs as much as 10 notes in his longest segment.

An even more significant difference is that every stretch of the scale is longer than the one before it. This is an incredibly useful technique for creating tension, as the climbing scale just keeps getting longer and longer and longer, stretching out the climb more and more and never quite reaching a feeling of resolution.

Only after the melody comes in and finally jumps down a third onto a quarter note at bar 5 do we actually feel a moment of resolved tension.

I am reminded of the opening motif from John Williams’ score to Catch Me If You Can. The opening phrase backtracks and develops just a tiny bit further each time. Every little extra development teases us into expecting more and more.

Fawkes the Phoenix

Speaking of John Williams, our last example comes from his cue Fawkes the Phoenix from the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets score. It’s a great example of how to use the climbing scale as a modulating sequence.

The example comes from about 1:22 into the track, in which he uses a climbing scale pattern to take us from A major to C major.

The basic climbing scale he uses is this:

He uses a similar pattern to the “up a third, down a second” pattern that we saw in the Adagio for Strings. It’s doubled in length to be “up a third, down a second, up a third, down a third”:

Notice how the energy increases towards the end when he stops repeating the patterns and moves into a faster climb of the scale.

Finally he adds excitement to the pattern in the violins by embellishing with neighbor and passing tones:

The result is an exhilarating climb that feels incredibly tense until the resolution on C, which in contrast to the build feels quite refreshing!

Conclusion

You may have terrible memories of being forced by your music teacher to practice your scales, and many of you may have resented the seemingly lack of point in the exercise.

But with some simple manipulations, we’ve just seen that the boring old scale can actually provide us with amazing potential for creating, expanding and developing tension.

The Aurora tragedy has sent shockwaves through the filmgoing community, and has almost silenced the filmmaking one. The senseless act that ended the lives of twelve innocent moviegoers and violently and unnecessarily interrupted the lives of dozens more is a staggering and sobering realization that, when you really get honest about it, nowhere in the world is a safe place anymore. Bad things, horrible things, will happen in public places, and will not necessarily be done in the dark alleys and forgotten corners of your city in quite the way they perhaps unfold onscreen in movies like The Dark Knight Rises.

The hours following the tragedy simply had me at a loss for words. There was nothing to say. There was no hopeful thing to utter, no inspirational quip that would take any of the sting away. The atmosphere, both in reality and online, was just too damned dark and deflated to do anything but sit in the undeniable shock and awe of the situation. As a human being, there was nothing to be done but offer condolences to the families who were directly touched by the events.

But, as a movie maker, as an artist, I absolutely do have things to say about these events. I think we probably all do. In no way do I say this to downplay the events or take away from the extreme horror and selfishness that occurred at the hands of the sicko responsible, but the attack was not just a random attack on humanity — It was also an assault against art.

I’m sure that the man behind the masacre never fathomed this far ahead in his convoluted state, but he essentially caused a ripple effect for a lot of people that stikes at the core of the human creative experience. The people who were waiting to see that film weren’t your average moviegoers. They were diehards; in-costume advanced-ticket purchasers who were making a special effort to wait in line for something they’d been anticipating since 2005. The fact that they had made such huge efforts to be there in the middle of the night proves that cinema is still alive and well in this country and that the naysayers have it all wrong. So long as we create something compelling, interesting, and in their minds worthy of being viewed in the sanctity of a movie theater, we are doing our jobs.

An Assault On Art

And that is what I’ve been pondering for the last 32 hours. The peace of the moviegoing experience.

A movie theater has always been a place of escapism. The place where people go to forget about the plausibility of someone quietly entering a room wearing a gas mask and opening fire. The movie theater is an incubator where children hatch dreams (and even a few old people, too). A place where people are free to reflect on the things that broad daylight won’t allow them to. A place where folks can get real and honest with the things they are wrestling with in their hearts and minds and lose themselves in imagination— a 90 minute dream sleep, if you will; a coming-to-grips with certain things that perhaps a film will challenge them on that no other entity in their lives will have the balls to. That is the beauty of the movie theater. It is a place of wonder, challenge, and fearless anonymity.

But what is it now? Is all of that now ruined because some mental case walked into a midnight screening and forced his alternate universe down the throats of 100 innocent bystanders? For some, yes. Definitely. For some, this event has stolen the freedom a movie theater provides them to completely go on autopilot for two hours and simply “enjoy the ride”. That’s not an insignificant concern and we cannot blame those who now feel unsafe and exposed in a plush red seat.

For me, and I hope for every artist and moviemaker out there… I say “Fuck that.” Strong words, I know, and I do not mean any irreverence toward anyone or anything other than Mr. James Holmes and any other savages who would dare take up his cross. To them I say… If you think you’ve downed humanity, you are obviously delusional. We get kicked in the teeth from time to time, but we never lay down for more. If you think you’ve leveled off the moviegoing experience, wrong again. Maybe for a second, but it will bounce back. It always does.

As for art and creation as holistic concepts? If you think you’ve stopped the proliferation of artistic expression — or even put a dent in it or slowed it down in any way — you are crazier than they are giving you credit for in the press. Art is bigger than you, Mr. Holmes. It is stronger, meaner, nicer, better, worse, funnier, sadder, saner and more delusional than you could ever hope to be or imagine being. Art has built empires and taken down dynasties. It was here long before you were even a twinkle in your mother’s eye — long before the world even thought about giving way to you or the bloodline that produced you. Art has been around for millions of years; since the inception of thought, really. It will be around for millions more. In fact, dare I say that as clever as you might think you are, you haven’t arrived at any original thought here that art hasn’t already beat you to in the pantheon of storytelling.

Good vs. Evil

It is interesting to note that the very nature of the Batman character is the antithesis of James Holmes’. Batman never kills anyone. He doesn’t use weapons to hurt or maim, steal or destroy. Instead, he chooses to fight evil with good and to stand for something most of us are realizing we have less and less ability to stand for on our own: Justice. For us to turn our focus from being a people who love and partake in entertainment to a people who love entertainment but are now unwilling to be entertained would be a travesty, I believe. Instead, it is time to turn our eyes toward the goodness in people, to recognize now more than ever that the prevailing triumphs of art and creativity are what feed a lot of that good to begin with, and to continue on making the most amazing things we’ve ever made. To think less, dream more, and work together to achieve masterpieces. Those kinds of works cannot be toppled. They can never be taken, destroyed, or ultimately even marginalized by anyone or anything.

To say that this event is horrific is to drastically understate the situation. It will never be forgotten and it will never fade from view. For those directly touched by it, it will serve as a terrible reminder of what happens when evil gets through the door unchecked and interferes with those we treasure most. But my hope is that as art has been a healing balm for many of society’s past wounds, the The Dark Knight Rises will and can help us heal from this too. After all, underneath the great costumes, the cool gadgets, the Batmobile and the action set-pieces, what people are really coming to see is the good guy prevail against the bad guy. That doesn’t always happen the Hollywood way — sometimes the bad guy gets his licks in first. But in the grand scheme of the story, we good guys always just keep surging forth, evolving, and staying fierce. As for movies… well… in this ever-changing business, who the hell knows. But somehow we will continue to entertain people, whatever the format looks like in years to come.

For art as an ideal? Not to worry… Art wins. It always wins. It’s too big, too important. It’s the cornerstone of the ecosystem that supports our very existence as human beings. We need it too much to let it die at the hands of even a few, let alone one singular entity. Was the temple defiled? Absolutely. Perhaps in a way that it never has been. But, the temple still stands. It’s a little bruised, a little battered… but it refuses to be moved.

(Image: Barry Gutierrez /AP/msnbc)

Though most of us enjoy the concept of something being free, the majority of the time there are two common reactions to ‘free’ things. The first type elicits the response “I’m not surprised it’s free, I wouldn’t pay for that rubbish.” The second type attracts suspicion: “Why is this free? What’s wrong with it? What do they really want?”

Such derision and suspicion is not always warranted, and this is very much the case in the world of VST/AU effects. You may wonder why, after having spent four figures on compressors and EQs, you would worry about anything that is free. Surely it can’t equal that expensive, shiny stuff that’s just made your credit card buckle?

Well, I think it can. I use a lot of free effects in my mixes and also when mastering – whether it be scoring or electronica. Many of the effects I’ve paid for (although I won’t name names) are often replaced by free alternatives. So, here are some of what I consider to be the best VST and AU effects out there right now, starting with the VST only ones.

VST Only Effects

It is the nature of the beast of developing freebies that they are more likely to be PC-based, simply because of the hardware overheads. Also, the market at that ‘price level’ contains far more PC users than Mac users.

There’s only one place to start when it comes to quality free VST-only effects and that’s at Variety of Sound. Bootsie has been developing quality plug-ins for a few years now and has racked up a solid collection of excellent VST effects. Among the highlights is the new Density MkIII. This brand new incarnation of his mastering compressor is a wonderful piece of software. It’s predominantly designed to help glue all the elements of your mix together as a coherent whole, but has rather an impressive ability to do more than that. Applying to a mix adds punch and depth, a clarity that may have been missing. And whilst it doesn’t aim to emulate any classic gear, playing with the ‘color’ feature adds some nice vintage saturation – although be careful how far you dial it up. I highly recommend the ‘summing’ and ‘non-lin amp’ presets as starting points to discovering what this can do.

Other highlights in the Bootsie/Variety of Sound range include BootEQ MkII, Thrillseeker LA and Ferric TDS. BootEQ MkII provides two modules: the main EQ and also a preamp, allowing you to accurately mould some frequencies whilst also adding a little vintage warmth. Thrillseeker LA is a stereo leveling amplifier/compressor with a subtle character that I highly recommend for use on misbehaving vocals. Ferric TDS is, as you may have guessed from the name, a tape saturation effect. Everyone likes that feel of tape saturation on their tracks and here, via four very simple knobs (recovery, dynamics, saturation and limiter), you can dial in anything from gentle warmth up to track-chomping distortion.

As well as sounding fantastic, Bootsie’s effects have a habit of looking stunning too – the GUI’s being beautiful and simple to navigate. It is worth mentioning, however, that they are only 32-bit at this stage. Anyway, enough fanboi gushing, there are many more freebie treats out there.

An all-time classic, one of the first effects I ever used when I got into computer music, is dblue Glitch. Glitch is a lively and slightly erratic, sequenced multi-effects unit that is capable of some remarkable feats of audio manipulation. There are nine effects, all of which have a dedicated filter: tape stop, modulator, retrigger, shuffler, reverser, crusher, gater, delay and stretcher. Mangle, mangle, mangle. That’s what this effects machine does. Despite its potential to make a vast array of weird and wonderful noises with whatever source material you run through it, it is surprisingly simple to programme, especially with its ability to be controlled by MIDI. It can literally save you weeks of wave editing and is absurdly feature-packed for a freebie. It is Windows-only though. Cry into your mochaccinos…

VST and AU Effects

And now on to those that we can all enjoy.

Audio Damage have a reputation for quirky and original effects units, and they have only one free effect on their site. Fortunately it happens to be brilliant. Rough Rider is not exactly a ‘lite’ version of Rough Rider Pro, it is more of a compressor in its own right, aimed very specifically at that classic New York-style of ‘pumping’ compression. It really comes into its own when applied to any rhythmic material; not just percussion but also basslines, guitar riffs and synth sequences. It can really slam whichever channel you apply it to and is absolutely perfect for making the snare in a drum sequence crack. A one trick pony perhaps, but it does it magnificently.

Another area of effects that freeware handles very well is distortion and amp simulation. Camel Audio, the geniuses behind such treats as Alchemy and CamelSpace, have a little thing called CamelCrusher. Whilst they describe it as a ‘colouring’ effect, it’s forte is adding vintage crunch to whatever you apply it to. There are two types of distortion that you can mix, ‘tube’ and ‘mech’. Tube adds some subtle saturation, whilst mech tries to kill everything in its path with noise. Hurrah for that. You also have a simple low pass filter and a compressor to help shape the sound. Or indeed you can switch off the distortion module and just play with the filter and/or compressor. A clever little tool with a wide range of applications and absolutely no scrimping on the usual processing quality of Camel Audio products.

An honourable mention should also go here for Le Pou and their collection of amp sims. Not only do they sound terrific, but the range is steadily growing and covering a lot of different guitar sounds – Le456 has a particularly nice metal sound. For their quality and price, we can forgive them the rather difficult to navigate Blogger website they use.

Now, have you ever spent money on a spectrum analyzer? Yes? Then you’re an idiot. How rude of me. I’m sure your spectrum analyzer is great and you love it and use it with joy in your heart. But, is it better than Voxengo‘s Span? Probably not. Is it cheaper than Span? Definitely not. Since I’ve been so rude, I should probably explain why Span is so good.

Firstly, it is extremely accurate. You can re-size the GUI depending on the how much screen real estate you have, allowing you to look into every nook and cranny of the sonic spectrum of your track. If you have a smaller screen, it allows you to zoom into the specific areas you want to check out. It also has a band-pass filter that allows you to listen to the frequency band you want. It’s an ideal way to discover where your mix is terrible and to check whether your attempts to improve it are working. All this for free? I know. Crazy.

I have, of course, missed out numerous other gratis gems that I use all the time. Space on the internet may be limitless, but your attention span is not and I’m sure I’ve already run it aground.

Please do share your favourite free effects below and tell us why you love them so much and what highly expensive gear they’ve ended up replacing. It’ll be like Gear Lust Anonymous. Share the pain.

I shall hopefully return with an article on my favourite free synths. More free stuff? Truly, we are living in a new Renaissance.

Eanan Patterson takes you through a detailed look under the hood of Sonokinetic’s newest offering, Sultan Drums. From unboxing to download to DAW implementation and GUI features, this is a unique and in-depth view into the library from the driver’s seat.

If you cannot see the video below, click here.

This is a brief introduction on a series, “Mixing / Mastering”. I’ll be sharing my visions so you can feel more confident improving your mixes and go deeper on your knowledge of the subject along the way.

Mixing may seem an overwhelming task (and it is an art form by itself) but it doesnʼt mean that you cannot learn a few principles along this series to get you confident in trying it yourself and practice on your own compositions. The same applies to a musician or a composer, itʼs great to have a degree, but in case you donʼt, youʼll still be able to compose or play and get better at it. Learn to use the tools needed for the job and tune you ears into it. I hope youʼll take great benefit from the articles and they may give you extra finesse to your mixes.

In the mix youʼll have to recreate a sonorous stage, leveling the volume of the instruments, position in stereo field and give them depth.

Mixing became a necessity when multitrack recorders made itʼs appearance on the second half of the twentieth century, allowing several tracks to be recorded at once or overdubbed. Then a mixing board was needed not only to track them ( ins and outs ) to the multitrack recorder but also to level whatʼs on tape to produce a master.

You have to be familiar with the routing of the signals both on a physical mixer or the one you have “in the box” (the DAW mixer) hence the need to understand the channel strip. It may seem daunting when you first look at the mixer and see all those channels, have you ever thought “Iʼll never get that in my head”… well, that might be a little simpler than you think, forget “all those channels” for now, as the system itʼs modular, you have to learn only one channel as itʼs the same for every other track channels.

In ours DAWs the mixer may be presented in a different order depending on the one you have, ins, outs, aux sends, eq, knobs, solo & mute buttons and faders.

Working inside the DAW you can benefit of record and recall all your moves from automation parameters, such volume, pan, effects, plug-ins and midi control data.

Hereʼs a couple of tips on the listening environment and gain staging:

Monitors are very important, get the best your budget allows, remember that a $2 computer speaker wonʼt translate your mix, go for near field monitors, that allows you to work and mix at a close distance, youʼll find plenty on the market. Position them at your ears level, rotate the monitors towards you making a (60º degree angle) an equilateral triangle.

Since the majority of our home studios doesn’t have proper isolation, mixing at low levels not only avoids too much room reflexions added to the direct sound but also prevent hearing fatigue that will reduce the time you can spend mixing with fresh ears.

However not so critical as in analog, itʼs wise to keep your master fader at unity gain (0 dB) and avoid to clip it at all times, making all the adjustments in the plugins youʼre using at the master if any, at instrument channel faders or instrument outs. That way you keep track of a clean signal without surprises.

Always leave a comfortable headroom for mastering! A good dynamic range is a key word in a good mix, loud doesnʼt mean better sounding! When adding a new plug-in, adjust the output level to peaking at the same value it had on the mix before you add it.

If you having a go for yourself, Multi band compression can be wisely used on the Master, when applied with moderation can be a great plus, avoid auto gain at all costs, as it can send the master fader signal to the roof (clipping) at least + 6dB on that move alone. Not to mention auto gain will send your precious  mix down the drain.  If limiter is you last plug-in in the chain, make sure to not clip its input ever. Also remember to use the most transparent limiter you can find, usually the ones in our DAWs add some coloration, top plug-ins rule in mastering!

Hope youʼve find some useful tips here, stay tuned for the next articles. Comments and other suggestions are welcome. Please donʼt forget to read Les Brockmann’s great mixing articles.

(Special thanks to Stellita Loukas for her support and coordination.)

A running line as an accompaniment is a traditional device in orchestral writing that is very well suited for today’s film score writing.

As an example we will look at one of my favourite examples of running-line accompaniment from Smetana’s beautifully expressive “The Moldau”. Here it is, presented here in a simplified two-part version.

Ex.1

First off, what is the reason for using this kind of writing? As a composer, arranger and orchestrator, you should always use the tools at your disposal with a specific end in mind, so this is an important question to consider.

It creates a feeling of activity that may not be present in the melody. For this piece it represents the running waters of the river Moldau in what is now the Czech Republic.

Here the dynamic is quite soft and played in the strings, so the sound is perfect to represent the water. But this is a flexible technique and not limited to this usage. You can play it loud for supporting action or heroic passages and any other place that you need a sense of movement. It does not need to be under the melody but can also be above to create a shimmering effect. Don’t limit yourself to the present musical context.

How to approach writing something like this quickly.

After all, when writing for film you must write quickly, that’s a given. So here my main tips for this.

Important thing to note is that the running line should be written after the melody so it supports it contrapuntally, rather than the other way around.

Know what harmony your running line should delineate. You running line will work 100% of the time if it clearly articulates your harmony on the strong beats.

Second, set up an outline for your running counterpoint just at the important rhythmic and metric points. Here’s what that would look like (you can jot it down as you see here, or have these notes as markers in your mind as you work.)

Ex. 2

The dotted eighths in the bass “guide tones” for the running line. With a basic knowledge of counterpoint this can be done very quickly.

All the notes in between the guide tones can then be decorated with our running line. The dissonances that happen on metrically weaker positions are not that important, especially at faster tempi, but you should still be aware of your counterpoint, so keep an eye on it.

Here is the filled out line based on the guide tones above.

Ex. 3

Once you have your running line pattern, don’t go crazy and change it for every measure afterwards. Keep it going, just changing it to follow the harmony. Developing and repeating the material you already have is better composition and will take less time as well, so you win on both counts. Go back to the first example to see how the running line follows the harmony.

Once you have your two main elements laid out: your melody and the running line, you can add some extra materials to the arrangement/orchestration.

• Doublings in octaves, 3rds, 6hts and chords.
• Held chords, a.k.a. “pads”
• Bass notes
• And of course assigning your instruments and breaking it up to get the final result.

Ex. 4

This is also a simplified version by the way, for the sake of clarity and brevity!

And there you have it, a few simple steps to your own running lines. Apply this up in the high registers above your melody or down below, fast or slow, hard or soft, its uses are limited only by your creativity.

We would love to hear how you develop this concept, post your results here in the comment section below.

(Special thanks to Stellita Loukas for taking the time to do the mock-ups of the examples.)

[Photo by Esparta Palma]

Writing about sequencing software inevitably generates two emotion-laden responses. First, nearly every time it degenerates into a “mine’s the best” tit for tat about whose sequencer is superior. Second, the promise of features in an upcoming release muddles the discussion – how soon will the release roll out (including the question of how soon any bugs get ironed out) and how good will the new features be?

To the “my sequencer’s best” crowd I would gently remind all of us that we’ve heard very good music produced on just about every sequencing software set – and rubbish as well. Similarly, it’s worth noting that what some piece of software didn’t do three or four years ago may well have been addressed, so old saws about what “doesn’t work” in a competitor sequencer may now be inaccurate and out of date.

For Digital Performer, on the cusp of a major release (the upcoming DP 8), it is unavoidable to talk something about the promise of new features, though I’ll keep that to a minimum.

Key Features That Distinguish DP

From my perspective as a film composer, there are a number of areas that I think are outstanding about DP. These are areas that are either unique or “best in class” / second to none:

1. Clippings – you can easily grab any combination of “stuff” – midi tracks, audio tracks, conductor info – and place it on a clipboard, ready to drag into another cue.
2. Tempo, meter, and conductor track manipulation is fabulous and generally regarded as the best available. This includes an excellent tempo calculator and the ability to readily move barlines to fit a performance you’ve played in with free tempo, rubato, etc.
3. Direct export to QT format of a cue with audio (including dialogue and SFX if you like).
4. Chunks – think of it as being able to put multiple cues in one file, saving the time of reloading samples, using the same track list for similar cues and otherwise duplicating effort already expended. So if you want 4M5 to sound a lot like 2M2, you can save the 2M2 chunk and write 4M5 right away with virtually no interruption in workflow.
5. Pitch correction is easy to use and works very well. Will do pitch to midi (pitch correction is a “very good” feature – no longer unique but so easy to work with that I put it on my Outstanding list).
6. Consolidated Window – you can place as much as you want on a single window called the Consolidated Window. This may sound trivial but is a big deal when working fast. You can include or exclude – drag on/off or set in the preferences what parts of your sequence you want to see in this master window.
7. Streamers and punches – you can program streamers and punches into your sequence to assist with conducting (and soloists).
8. “Film Score” notation, that includes timings for film music, including markers on the score for dialogue or key moments (“ka-boom” for example).

Cool Stuff about DP

In the next rank are features that are not unique to DP but cool nevertheless:

1. Very good note transcription – allows transposition for non-concert-pitched instruments like French Horn, Clarinet, or Trumpet. It corrects well for parts that are not played strictly, almost magically figuring out whether what you played in to the sequencer was intended as an eighth note (quaver) or a sixteenth note (semiquaver) followed by a sixteenth (semiquaver) rest.  Tuplets are handled very well too.
2. Complex click tracks – I have yet to dream up a click track that you can’t program into DP.
3. Extensive list of plugins / FX / guitar chains and other sound manipulation gadgets. These include a very good leveller, EQ, delays, and guitar stomp box emulations.
4. Lots of audio capabilities (pitch correction, editing, slicing, stretching, etc.).
5. Customizable interface – it is almost indescribable how many different ways you can set up your windows and tools in DP. Different colours (“skins”), different tool sets and working groups. It’s superb.
6. Mix “takes” that allow you to keep various versions of mixes.

Things Looking Forward to in DP 8

1. 64 bit (hooray!)
2. Windows 7 Compatible
3. 15 new plug-ins
4. Support for VST plug-ins
5. Full 1920 x 1080 HD video hardware support

Things I secretly wish for in DP!

1.  Articulations menu in notation
2. Percussion note-heads and the ability to use “let ring” ties

]]> http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/28/digital-performer-101-why-choose-it-for-film-scoring/feed/ 5 http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/18/chord-voicings-part-1/ http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/18/chord-voicings-part-1/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000 Robin Hoffmann http://www.scorecastonline.com/?p=1525

There is not doubt strings form a very important part in almost anything you might want to do in an orchestral piece. They can deliver soaring lines, doubled in octaves, play rhythmic accents, provide background textures ranging from fragile harmonics to a brooding tremolo and, last but not least, they are capable of a huge array of special effects. That’s quite a bit. It is no wonder strings have been very well represented in the sampling world from day one, so to speak. When looking at what the market has to offer, we may group the available libraries into two factions: „All but the kitchen sink“ and „special intentions“. The first group of libraries has everything you might wish for. Special articulations, con sordino, harmonics, runs, trills – you name it. The downside of having such a high number of articulations and bells and whistles usually is a large number of patches, making it hard to harness the sheer power. The other group is focused on special purposes, like a specific sound, or to provide mainly runs or other effects. These usually score with their ease of use and are perfect tools for what they are intended for.

One library category I find most interesting is what I call a „workhorse library“. Such a library should provide basic articulations for the kind of tasks a composer encounters all day long. There are quite a few of these in the string world, the most famous probably being AudioBro L.A. Scoring Strings with a host of features, divisi and lots of other goodies. And then, there is L.A.S.S Lite, with a single microphone position, no divisi, but the real L.A.S.S. sound. What, to me, was missing up to now is a big symphonic library suitable for laying out tracks live, accessible without complicated programming, yet powerful enough to really be the foundation of a track. But there’s a new kid on the block – or rather a kid that has been living here for quite some time, sometimes without even being noticed. This is the all-new Cinematic Strings 2.0 Kontakt Player-powered library – let’s see how it performs!

Overview

Cinematic Strings wants to be a „realistic mockup tool, and an inspiring instrument – which will save you from all the hassle and wasted time spent tweaking parameters, modifying CC data, or applying drastic EQ and reverb effects“, says the website. This perfectly fits my „workhorse library“ idea: Lay down tracks for mockups in real time with no need of spending ages tweaking CCs. A bold statement – and one most libraries put on their packaging. But indeed Cinematic Strings has a pretty unique approach to organizing the content of the library: After installing and registering the library in the Native Instruments Service Center or in the Kontakt 5 Player, you end up with a single instruments folder containing exactly five (f-i-v-e) patches, one per section. There are no multis and no single-articulation patches, just one patch each for 1^st Violins, 2^nd Violins, Violas, Cellos and Basses. We will look at the included articulations in greater detail later on. There are three mic positions (close, stage and room) as well as a pre-mixed position which is great for saving memory. Having just one patch per instrument makes a great UI an absolute must for the library and I have to say I was absolutely stunned by the beauty and functionality of the UI.

The interface is the same for all sections, as are all the features. Let us have a look at the 1^st Violins. Upon loading a patch, you are greeted with a beautifully clean tabbed interface. The „Matrix“ tab is displayed by default, which houses a list of the available articulations. You can deactivate any articulations you do not need and they will be unloaded from memory. Creating your own patches for individual articulations is as easy as unloading everything but the one articulation you want to have and saving the patch under a new name. Switching between articulations is done via keyswitches for all loaded articulations. Neat thing: When you unload an articulation, its keyswitch will vanish from Kontakt’s virtual keyboard. This is very handy for seeing at a quick glance which keyswitches are actually in use. Shift-Clicking on any of the keyswitches allows you to reassign it with a list of current assignments displayed:

Cinematic Strings offers a monophonic legato mode with recorded legato transitions between notes. If you want to play chords, you need to deactivate this mode with the legato switch (assigned to A0 by default). The Live mode inserts „imperfect“ samples while you play, making the performance sound more natural. Players are slightly out of tune or miss a beat and things like that. Of course you can deactivate this if you wish. The matrix tab also hosts a knob for selecting the playing position (for sustained samples) or the note length (for short notes). On the staccato articulation, this dial lets you make the staccatos even shorter (staccatissimo). The playing position dial is a great way to shape your sound: The string a note is played on really makes a big difference in terms of sound! Finally you have a dial for the included reverb.

The left side of the interface hosts the volume sliders for the individual microphone positions. You can load and unload additional positions or solo a single position. There are panning controls and of course you can adjust the individual volume of each position.

In the Advanced tab of the GUI you can adjust sustain and release lengths for all short articulations (staccato, staccatissimo and pizzicato) individually with dedicated sliders. This makes it possible to program custom patches for specific purposes, like a very short staccatissimo patch with very quick release for lightning-fast playing without the sound becoming muddy. The Advanced page also lets you switch on or off the Staccato overlay (while playing sustain, higher velocities trigger a staccato sample – more about that later), the vibrato control as well as toggling on or off the use of release samples. Last but not least, you can assign CCs to Velocity and Vibrato Crossfade here as well as control the intensity of the live mode (how much „wrong“ playing is inserted in your performance).

As far as VI GUIs go, to me Cinematic Strings is the best I have ever seen. The clean and concise layout of the interface makes accessing all features a breeze and really sets this library apart!

Use

Having just five patches, CS heavily relies on scripting and keyswitches to get the job done. Just as it is with the general UI, the patches are all used in exactly the same way. So before finally looking at how the library sounds in the next section, will now deal with how you get Cinematic Strings to play what you want.

You choose between different articulations via keyswitches, with some of the articulations having what may be called „sub-articulations“, supplementing the actual articulation. Here’s what you get:

Arco: By default this is set to play monophonic legato, but you can deactivate the legato mode to play polyphonic, resulting in (to my ear) a loss of presence and character in the sound. For any monophonic lines you should activate the legato mode. The arco mode has a special feature that once was very popular with sampled instruments: Staccato overlay. If activated, higher keyboard velocities will trigger a staccato sample when playing any note. This is extremely useful for playing lines with mostly legato notes, but also some shorter notes. General playing velocity is controlled by the modwheel (assignable, if you wish so), so you can adjust the general velocity with the modwheel and play staccato samples as needed simply by pressing down the keys on your MIDI keyboard a bit harder. It works beautifully and when I tried it out I really wondered why hardly anyone else is doing this, too. As shown before, there are keyswitches for the live mode, legato, staccato overlay and release samples. There is no controller defined by default for the playing position dial, but you can assign a CC via MIDI automation. To me, the greatest feature of the arco articulation is the controllable vibrato. Assigned to CC2 (breath controller) by default, this lets you set the strength of the vibrato by morphing through a number of layers. Neat thing: The library actually only loads the layers when you need them, saving resources.

Tremolo, Half Trill and Whole Trill do exactly what it says on the packaging. Again sampled with four dynamic layers, as is the case with all articulations, they morph through these layers with the modwheel. You cannot choose a playing position for these, but live mode and even legato transitions work great! Having real legato for these articulations to me is a big plus for realism.

On the „shorts“ side, you have Staccato, Marcato and Pizzicato. The Staccato articulation lets you play staccatissimo by moving a dial and, as mentioned before, you can adjust the attack and release of those samples in the Advanced tab. Velocity if controlled by key velocity here. Last, there is the Run mode articulation, intended for playing very fast string runs. In this mode, notes connect together very well when playing fast, so most of the time you can get away with it for runs quite well.

Using a combination of keyswitches the modwheel/key velocity and a few CCs, for example for vibrato control, it is possible to play almost anything in real time. All patches work in exactly the same way, so you do not need to learn different controls. When loading a patch, it takes quite a while for Kontakt to find all the samples. But there is a very easy fix for this: Just “batch resave” the library once and subsequent loading will be instantaneous. This, by the way, works with about every library on the market. Memory consumption is about 470 MB per section with all articulations of the Mix microphone position loaded. That means loading all patches at once will use about 2.2 GB of RAM, which is pretty good considering what you get. If you load a patch more than once (for example the arco articulation with legato switched on in one Kontakt slot and with legato switched off in another) the two patches share the sample pool.

There sadly are no harmonics or con sordino samples. Cinematic Strings also does not have divisi capabilities.

Sound

Now the interesting stuff you have been waiting for: the sound. Cinematic Strings really sounds cinematic, just as it says on the box (of course there is no box, but you know what I mean). Here are some short demos. As usual in my reviews, this is 100% live — no editing, no extra effects apart from some compression. Just the pure sound of the library. For polished demos and whole pieces check out the demos on the official page. The composition of the pieces alone is worth a listen.

Our first example is a short Violin I arco phrase. Legato is switched on, as is the live mode. CS’s own reverb is used, no third party processing whatsoever. The legato line is followed by a short tremolo phrase. Note that the dynamics react very strongly to any movement of the modwheel – a tad too strongly for my taste.

The second violins have graciously agreed to play a short run for us in the next example. This is a dedicated articulation which plays note transitions between notes. It works quite well, but obviously real recorded runs sound still better. The staccato articulation has a nice bite to it. I chose a short rhythmic pattern with some dynamic variation. Again everything out of the box, the ambience you hear is in the samples, though if you want to you can use the very dry close mics.

Here is a single long note played senza vibrato with the vibrato gradually being introduced. The rate of the vibrato is fully controllable via a MIDI CC. At the end of the mp3, there is a short line played with varying amount of vibrato.

The Viola section demonstrates the huge different in sound the legato mode makes. The same line is first played with the legato switch set to „on“, then a second time with it set to „off“. The MIDI data itself is absolutely identical, the difference in sound really only comes from the absence of legato samples the second time.

Finally, the Cellos prove their versatility with a short staccato phrase, followed by some pizzicatos. I liked the pizzicatos very much. They cut through the mix, but still sound very much like the real thing without being overly bright or harsh.

Final Thoughts

The sound of Cinematic Strings 2.0 is superb. The cellos in particular have a very nice bite and work in all possible situations. The one thing that really drives this library home is the ease of use. One patch per section, all articulations and controls immediately accessible. The interface is a joy to look at and makes every function very clear. If I really wanted to find any downside to Cinematic Strings, it would be its limited set of articulations. You really only get the essential stuff: No con sordino, no divisi; but then the direct contenders (mainly LASS Lite) do not have divisi, either.

In practical use it boils down to this: If you need (another) great sounding string ensemble library with a great sound and put ease of use over having tons of articulations, then this one is for you. If you have everything you could want in term of strings, I still think you might benefit from having the „Cinematic Strings sound“ as you go-to package for quick mockups and sketches. For divisi and con sordino you will need to look elsewhere, but for all the basic stuff, CS will serve you extremely well. Unless you specifically need special articulations in your score, there is nothing at all in the sound that would make you want to replace your CS-powered lines anywhere in the process. As a string workhorse library, Cinematic Strings is for me the best you can get when looking at both sound and usability.

Composer Dirk Ehlert takes you through a first look at Eduardo Tarilonte’s newest creation, ERA Medieval Legends — a unique sample library featuring a huge set of historical instruments covering the Medieval, Renaissance and Fantasy production genres. Dirk deconstructs a demo track using ERA and shows you how to build new worlds using this unique and exciting library.

If you cannot se the video below, click here.

ERA Demo Tracks

Hello and welcome to our first digital tour of the orchestra. In this series of articles, we will follow a path that starts at the score sheet and ends in sound. In our first part, we explore the most important section of the orchestra… the Strings! Although this article doesn’t require extensive musical knowledge, I strongly recommend you read Stellita Louka’s article on string instrumentation and orchestration. You can find it here. The better we understand how the string instruments work, the better decisions we can make on matters of realism and playability. Sample libraries and MIDI give us the capability to sequence things that are not viable in a live orchestra. This kind of “cheating” is common amongst TV composers were the end product is coming straight from a DAW. Of course I don’t criticize this (I actually use it), but I believe we need to know the boarders and when (and why) to cross them. So go read Stelita’s article… now!

Alright then, now that we’ve understand the ins and outs of the string instruments and we’ve composed the perfect passage, it’s time to… hear it. Putting down the notes in MIDI is easy, making them sound real though needs a bit of tweaking.

The first thing you need to do is learn your libraries and what they provide. Many modern libraries have pre-recorded passages and techniques which are difficult to reproduce from scratch. For example, clusters and tens risers won’t sound natural if reproduced with the combination of sustained and tremolo patches. So if your library has dedicated patches for this kind of passages, there is no excuse for you not to know about it. Know your libraries inside out, it is the same thing as knowing how an instrument works. You must be able to make the best of what you have in order to achieve the best you can.

Note: The harp although a string instrument, is intentionally left out of this article.

1. MIDI Sequencing and Programming

To achieve realism, our performance needs to have human feeling. The two main things that are responsible for this are time and dynamics.

Time

Although often we import a MIDI file to our sequencer (for example one that we’ve just scored in Sibelius), the best way to implement MIDI is to record the notes using a mother-keyboard with weighted keys. Even if you are not the best piano player, the results can be far superior than importing a quantized MIDI file. The weighted keys help retain the dynamics of your playing. If there is a passage you cannot play, lock the MIDI track to tempo, lower the BPM on your host DAW and try again, then bring the BPM back to the original tempo. The slight time variations you get from the recording, will give a more natural feel than the one you get with quantized notes.

If we have highly rhythmical parts and especially if there are other instruments involved (percussions, staccato brass etc.), the best approach is to quantize the notes after the recording. This way we maintain the human feel of the dynamics while the instruments “groove” with each other.

The most common time related problem with string instruments, is when we want a legato passage, that starts with a slow attack note, is sustained for a while and then the next note needs to blend seamlessly (legato) with the previous one. If we use one simple slow attack patch, there will be a gap between consecutive notes (and thus there will be no legato feel). If we use a legato patch, we won’t have the slow attack intro note. Depending on the patches we have available from our library, there are various workarounds this problem.

• Using a slow attack patch: A common MIDI technique for string instruments is to bringing the attack (start) of notes within the ending of the previous note. Thus blending the decay of one with the attack of the other. A little trial and error is required to find the perfect mixing of the two notes.
  

  Quantized VS Non-Quantized

• Using a legato patch: You can always fake the slow attack of the Strings by altering the volume (CC7) or the expression (CC11) controllers. Bringing the attack of the notes forward just inside the ending of the previous notes is still recommender though, as most libraries use this to switch to legato mode.
• Using a patch with keyswitches: Finding a patch that combines a slow attack articulation with a legato articulation, can overcome this problem. Use the first “keyswitch note” just before the first note (slow attack) and then for the remaining notes use the legato one. Remember that when using keyswitches, it is best to apply the “keyswitch note” just before and not exactly together with the actual note you want to hear.
• Using two patches: An alternative to the keyswitch solution is the use of two different patches. Assign the first note to a MIDI track with the slow attack patch and the remaining notes to another MIDI track that plays through the legato patch.

Conclusion

That’s all! I hope you enjoyed this article and found a thing or two, to help you in your work. I’ll see you again when we’ll take a look at the other sections of the orchestra. Until then, be creative and don’t stop experimenting!

]]> http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/07/sequencing-and-processing-strings/feed/ 7 http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/04/value-studies-a-painters-technique-for-composers/ http://www.scorecastonline.com/2012/06/04/value-studies-a-painters-technique-for-composers/#comments Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000 Ryan Leach http://www.scorecastonline.com/?p=1557

[Thank you to David Kessler for permission to use the fantastic images and the initial inspiration.]

Visual artists have it great. The number of books, techniques, methods and overall resources for developing your craft as a painter or illustrator are astounding. The available resources for learning how to compose music feel almost non-existent in comparison. (I’m not talking about the individual skills of harmony, orchestration, etc. I am referring to a comprehensive method for actually putting it all together.)

But although the methods for painting and composing are not perfectly relatable, we can borrow many of the lessons from the visual arts and adapt them to writing music.

The “value study” is a technique I learned about recently and I immediately wondered about how the same principle could be applied to our craft.

What is a Value Study?

A value study is a middle step between a sketch and a finished work. Artist David Kessler has written a fantastic article on the subject and I strongly encourage you to read it to get a thorough understanding of the concept.

A “value” is a degree of shading, with different values referring to different degrees of light and dark. The idea is to take color out of the equation and focus on the more fundamental aspects of contrast. Before getting all fancy with colors and textures, you work out the focus points of the composition and check for a good balance between the different shades.

I’m a big believer in sketches and working out fundamental elements before moving on to details, and the value study is a great way to consciously work out your basic structural points before getting bogged down with surface level details.

What does this have to do with music?

The main principle to borrow from the artist’s value study is not literally “light and dark”, but the absence of color. In our case, we can consider orchestration and timbre to be the equivalent of a painter’s color palette.

When you strip away the color of instrumentation, you are left with your bare elements. Melody, harmony, form. Variation, unity. Do they hold up? If your big orchestral piece was played on solo piano, or even by a synth with a sine wave patch, would it still be compelling? When you take away that repetitive ostinato pattern in the background, is it still interesting?

Dynamics as the Composer’s Value

A near cousin to light and dark in music is loud and quiet; our version of planning the shading is planning dynamics.

In his example, David Kessler used four values of light and dark:

1. White (or light)
2. Light midvalue
3. Dark midvalue
4. Dark

For our purposes, I suggest we use five dynamic layers:

1. p
2. mp
3. mf
4. f
5. ff

We can take a slightly different route from painting. Rather than using white as the base and darkening in from there, I think it makes more sense to start with mf, a middle dynamic, as our starting point and then going up or down from there.

A Composer’s Value Study – Step By Step

Here is a proposed step by step approach you can use to apply the concept of the value study to composing music. Bear in mind that every composition is unique, and obviously the more complex the piece the less basic this process might be. But take this general idea as a starting off point for approaching your own work.

1. Take your bare-bones sketch of the composition, perhaps just melody with chord changes or a basic accompaniment, with the entire piece at mf.
2. Decide on your next level values, meaning decide where you want things to be quieter and where you want them to be louder. Place f and mp.
3. Decide on your extreme values, ff and p. Keep in mind that your extreme levels will shine brighter the more sparingly you use them. So perhaps find just one special moment for each extreme.
4. Finally, add nuance and subtlety . Crescendos, decrescendos, sfz, etc.
5. Of course not every piece requires every shade of dynamics, and some pieces may even be better suited for no dynamic changes at all.

Conclusion

To quote David Kessler’s conclusion, “Remember this is not a finished painting, only a tool. Don’t spend time “staying inside the lines”. Concentrate on distinguishing the shapes and developing contrast.”

The same principle could be applied to texture quite easily, with varying degrees of density. Perhaps a piece could be assessed by the number of voices present at any given time.

However you apply the idea, taking time to zoom out and look at the big picture is always a wise move.

What do you think? Have you ever noticed similarities between painting and writing music? Or do you think they are too distantly related to share meaningful lessons? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Speeding up your workflow

Today writing great music unfortunately isn´t enough- you need to write it fast!

Therefore, to increase as much as possible our writing speed is absolutely pivotal. As we were discussing in the previous article, navigating the project is what consumes most time from our tasks, and that is when customizing Logic can really save precious instants that by the end of the day will have spared us much time and creative energy.

We should speak about THE TEMPLATES (oh, no!!)

Yes. They might be Templates but we are Logic Crusaders. All is good, all is fine.

Ok, a quick reminder here: we are not talking about templates including loaded instruments (which of course can be created too), but Logic project templates in terms of having a customized work station (shortcuts defined, interface set up for easy navigation, etc). The use of instrument templates accoriding to genre, etc. remains a choice for every composer.

Logic has some custom templates for some typical projects that can be useful (for working to Picture for example), and it´s worth giving them a look, even if just as a starting point to create our own perfect template (or ideally, different templates according to what kind of project are we going to tackle). You can find them when opening a new project, by choosing the option “open from template”.

So, how to set up a template of our choice? What basic aspects to consider?

The main guideline should be ease of use and quick access to the tools / features you know you´re going to use the most. This includes for example customizing the zooming and choice of tools for every window, defining what features to show (if we´re going to use them often) and which ones to hide from quick access, etc.

 Focus, focus, focus!

First of all, you should try to use all screen space available to avoid zooming in and out. To have to reach out for your target continuosly consumes most of your time. Think of it as having your wardrobe tidy: you can find easily what you´re looking for if you can see it properly.

Unless one has an enormous screen, usually real estate makes a big difference. You can choose the exact degree of zoom you need for your window of choice, you can remove the Inspector if you don´t need it, or hide the tool bar. Anything you need to make your navigation more comfortable.

Am I properly armed? Do I have my tools at the ready?

We all know where to find the tools we need, but having to access them by navigating with the mouse from one corner of the Arrange to the other simply is not efficient. We need to have our more commonly used tools / keyboard shortcuts easily accessible, and decide which ones we are going to use in which sections of our project.

For example, if you´re going to work mainly with audio in the Arrange area, you might need to have quick access to the Flex Tool, so it could be handy to have it in your Tool Bar. As well, if you need to trim audio regions often, you can choose as alternate tool (right click on your mouse) the Marquee tool so you can both select and trim without practically moving your right hand from the mouse. If, on the other hand, you decide to do that audio editing in the Wave editor, you might consider creating a screenset (wait, don´t panic, they can be cute!) inside your template dedicated to your Wave editor, instead of opening and closing it everytime you need to access it.

Another example: you´re going to work mainly editing MIDI – in this case, you might want to have a dedicated screenset for the Piano Roll, and use as alternate tool the one you will be using most (velocity or pencil tool for example).

So, in our template we can edit different screensets. Hmmmm.

Screensets. (eerie music here)

What are the screensets? Is it true that they bite?

Yes. But we are fierce composers and we fear nothing.

Screensets show a customized window and settings for every number of the computer´s keyboard. This means that you can set up your arrange window just the way you want it (including zoom options, region shown, tools choice, etc), assign it to number 1, and go back to that working environement whenever you wish by pressing 1 at any time. Alternatively, you can choose showing both arrange and piano roll for example in another screenset, or just piano roll, or just the mixer, or mixer and score….you name it.

You do the choice, Logic keeps it under a number in your keypad and you can summon it at any time. Just like Gandalf.

Now, something very interesting: screensets can be locked or unlocked. You will know a screenset is locked if it shows a bullet by the number and unlocked when it doesn´t. This basically means that if the screenset is locked, any edit you do to it (zooming in and out, changing tools, adding new areas) will not remain once you leave the screenset. For example, if I edit locked screenset 1 and then use screenset 2, whenever I press 1 again I will find the locked initial version of screenset 1, and all edits done will have been ignored by Logic. Whether it is useful for you to have your screenset locked or unlocked will be up to you to decide: for example, when editing can be advantageous to leave it unlocked (since you might change your mind about the zoom degree) and if you dedicate your screenset to a global view of your project, you might prefer to keep it locked so you can go back to it at any time and see your whole arrange with just a quick look.

Locking / Unlocking a screenset is very simple: in the screenset tab menu, you toggle between unlock / lock and apply whatever changes you wish.

How to set up Screensets?

Very easy; just press a number of your keypad and check what happens in tab Screensets in Logic main menu (between Window and Help). You will see that your chosen number appears in this tab and the interface as you had it displayed is your starting point. Now, according to what you want your screenset, customize your interface and you will have by default that result as an unlocked screenset. If you wish to keep it precisely like that, remember to lock it so you can go back to it in that precise state anytime.

Hmmm…much to consider….any practical examples?

Sure, here it goes a very simple suggestion for getting started. A template that mainly consists of three simple screensets according to the three areas for a given project I tend to use the most: Arrange, Piano Roll and Mixer.

Screenset 1: A big arrange window, most space visible possible, for a full vision of the whole track (no inspector, no tool bar, all the screen devoted to your beautiful project!). This allows you to keep in mind the whole picture.

Screenset 2: Arrange / Piano Roll for editing MIDI. A small instance of the Arrange in the upper part and a bigger Piano Roll window for easy MIDI editing. Something useful to be edited here can be having the alternate tool in the Piano Roll assigned to velocity or Pencil tool so one can edit quickly any note.

Screenset 3: Arrange / Mixer following the same spirit – Arrange acting as a small guide and the whole Mixer shown. Note that zoom has a limit in the Mixer, but even this little bit helps a lot.

Of course you can do many others depending on your area of interest; for example using Score, already preparing scores for printing, etc. Showing the Environement, for complex routing, etc. Can you imagine the possibilities?

Ok, I got the customizing of my dreams. Now how do I keep it as a template?

Now that we´ve spent some while (come on, it wasn´t so bad!) customizing our template, we simple go to File / Save as Template and give it a name. We should name it something epic, we are so proud of our little baby!

So, where are my templates kept, and can I use them elsewhere?

Yes, you can! You can save them and take them with you, even if you´re going to work in someone else´s Logic (so you don´t have to start all your customizing from scratch!).

Templates are kept in User / Library / Application Support / Logic / Project Templates – voilá!

If you just feel like importing a particular Screenset that you liked from another project, you can also just import it using Settings / Import Project Settings.

Hope this helps you to work a little faster and with less effort so you can fully concentrate on your music.Questions, suggestions, any more thinking about this is more than welcome. Please don´t hesitate to get in touch if you have some tips after your years of experience using Logic, it can be very helpful for others!

Logic users of the world, share your tips!

When it comes to film scoring, size definitely does matter. The trend in big-budget Hollywood films has been toward a bigger and bigger sound—enormous string and brass sections and 20-person percussion ensembles, all backed by massive beds of synths and samples. But often, especially with indie projects, what’s required is a much smaller, more intimate sound. Even a modestly sized orchestra might be far too large for a quiet drama about a family, a couple or a child.

It’s important for a film composer to know how to match what’s happening onscreen not just musically, but also in terms of size, feel and scope. Scoring The Avengers with just acoustic guitar and flute would clearly be wrong, just as using the orchestra from Pirates of the Carribean to score Juno would have also been a mistake. In this set of posts I’ll explore various ways to get your cues to sound really huge or really tiny. I’ll start this week with making things small.

Contrast

One of the easiest ways to make something seem small is to juxtapose it with something huge. I’ll discuss bigness in the next installment, but for now being armed with this knowledge may help you build contrasting sections in your piece. Place a solo instrument or a small ensemble side-by-side with a full tutti section to maximize the impact of both. Contrast a delicate acoustic guitar solo with a maxed-out, amps-at-11 heavy metal jam to give both more impact.

Limitations

If the characteristics of big are more, louder, and heavier, it would seem obvious that less, softer, and lighter are good ways to keep things small. Limiting yourself is one easy way to keep a composition compact. Let’s look at some of the ways to do this:

Instrumentation

Restricting the size of your ensemble is a great way to shrink a piece. Instead of an entire orchestra, use a chamber ensemble or a string quartet. One important thing to remember is that the strings make up the bulk of an orchestra and they contribute more than any other element to the feeling of size one gets from hearing an full orchestral recording. When smallness is required in the midst of a larger piece, limit yourself to just the first chairs or a small divisi group from each string section. This will create a lightness that you can’t get from a full orchestra. Much like reverb, which gives our brains subtle cues about the location of a sound, small string sections sound smaller than large ones, even to untrained ears.

If you need something to be really small, try using just a solo instrument. Solo piano or guitar can be quite versatile because they can play both melody and accompaniment and yet still sound like one instrument playing alone. For an even tinier effect, using something like flute or violin that can only play a melody will have a very compact, lonely sound. This can be especially striking when surrounded by more fully-orchestrated sections that really cause the solo to stand out.

Another element to consider is doubling. While it may be useful in some contexts it will by its nature increase the number of players and undermine your attempts to make your piece seem compact. A lone oboe playing the melody will naturally give a smaller impression than the same melody doubled on flute.

Range

Limiting the vertical range of a composition is another way to shrink its size. Using only one or two octaves for both the melody and accompaniment can make a piece seem compact and contained. Conversely, music that spans all the octaves of the keyboard will sound immense. Be especially wary of doubling the melody or the bassline at the octave. Not only are you expanding the number of players, but you’re simultaneously increasing the vertical range of the piece. Needless to say doublings can be beautiful effects, but if your primary goal is to create something small and intimate you may be working at cross-purposes.

Keep in mind that that in general, the bigger things are the heavier they are. This generally means more bass. Audition a few drum samples in Stormdrum or Evolve Mutations if you have any doubt. Their massive-sounding drums are absolutely loaded with bass frequencies. Small things, on the other hand, are generally lightweight and wouldn’t generate much in the way of bass frequencies. Steer clear of the bottom two or three octaves of the keyboard, and consider rolling off any frequencies below around 150 Hz just to make sure no stray rumbles are sneaking through. Small things don’t necessarily have to reside at the very top of an instrument’s range, but eliminating as much bass as possible will help a cue to sound truly tiny.

Volume

Another factor to consider is volume. Small things are often quieter than big things, and this effect is easy to accomplish musically. Solo instruments and small ensembles are naturally quieter that full orchestral tuttis, so some of the volume issues will be accomplished for you by shrinking the number of players. In fact, this effect was common during the Classical era. Mozart, Haydn and their comrades often created crescendos and diminuendos by expanding and contracting the number of players rather than notating dynamics. Of course you can also enhance this effect using quieter dynamic levels or reducing the volume during mixing.

Ambience

Be sure to consider the location of your recording, whether it’s real or artificial. Going back to the Stormdrum example, the other notable property of many of those drum samples is the enormous amount of reverb. Stadiums, cathedrals and airplane hangers have a tendency to make sounds seem bigger since the setting is so obviously vast. Steer clear of gigantic spaces to make your piece sound more compact and intimate. Be sure to use this guideline with a grain of salt though. A piccolo alone in a giant concert hall has a lonely, forlorn quality that a close-miked piccolo doesn’t, and this may be just the effect your piece needs.

Very small ambiences (or no reverb at all) can make a soundsource feel so close that it’s literally in your face. Ambiences like this have a naked, intimate quality, as though the subject is sharing its innermost secrets with you. Again, this won’t necessarily make your cue sound “small,” but it may add an upfront, personal quality that the moment needs.

The long and the short of it is that your choice of reverb and ambience may not be as cut and dried as some of the other size-related issues, but it will most certainly have an impact. Context will likely be the deciding factor. Pay close attention to where you situate your sounds and make sure that the location supports the mood of what’s happening onscreen and in the music.

Other Effects

Think about the subject you’re trying to represent musically. What traits does it have? If you’re writing the theme for a field mouse, describe it’s characteristics. Mice are lightweight and somewhat fragile. They make high-pitched squeaking sounds. Their movements are quick and darting, and they’re difficult to catch.

You can exploit this in your music in various ways. In the case of the field mouse, you might use a violin playing spiccato high in its range to imitate a mouse’s squeaks. Its quick movements could be represented by a fast melody containing leaps and frequent changes in direction. Another great example is using a flute to imitate a bird, as Prokofiev did so expertly in Peter and the Wolf.

Conclusion

As with all film scoring, the most important consideration is that the music match what’s happening onscreen. All of these ideas are meant merely as guidelines. Pick and choose, and use the ones that best suit the cue you’re working on. Analyze the subject matter and choose the techniques that fit the best. Toss the others out. Write great music that fits the film like a glove and you’ll be working for many years to come.

[Photo by Brian J. Bruemmer]