Hi guys,
Today I paid for and downloaded the hour-long Scott Smalley orchestration masterclass from The Industry Store (
http://www.theindustrystore.com/doause.html).
The extent to which I am surprised and dissapointed is difficult to put into words. In my opinion, it is entirely inconcievable that any orchestration student could extract any applicable information from this lesson whatsoever. If there is any vaguely applicable information in this seminar, you could find it using google in a lot less than 57 minutes (which is the duration of the seminar). Then you could have a donut and a coffee, and you would still have time left over.
Once every twenty minutes (so three times in total), Scott actually makes a reference to orchestration. The rest of the seminar is dedicated to life in general, movie politics, the evolution of the human species, Scott's techniques to stay awake for several days at a time, or how composers are like druids who sing mantras. The first enlightened gem of information is that his score layout has the trumpets above the horns, because, well, it's clearer. The second revelation is that if you put all the instruments in the same tessitura, they blend better. The third and final pearl of wisdom is that he tries to find idiomatic things for the instruments to do, so he would rather give the woodwinds runs than merely double the brass in a fanfare. That, my friends, is it.
I should mention that Scott is currently "pushing the envelope" of western harmony by adding the blue note to the dominant (I assume he means mixolydian) scale. The reason is "because we need more notes". There is no further explanation. Another awe-inspiring spear of knowledge is that you don't have to use only II-V-I's when you write music. You can use chords that move by thirds, like Gerry Goldsmith. He states how this realisation changed his life for ever. There is no further explanation.
Was I expecting an orchestration treatise in an hour? No. Was I expecting, at the absoulute least, a glimpse into the astounding, groundbreaking, 100% unique concepts of orchestration that Scott has built from the ground up, challenging everything we learned at music school? Frankly, I was.
Now, I know Scott is an amazing orchestrator, because I've heard his work. I'm also sure Scott is an amazing guy, and an amazing teacher (well, on some days I guess). However, it is my honest opinion that this seminar is bereft of any interest whatsoever to the field of orchestration. I post this here in the hope of warning others in my position that the concepts Fred Story is raving about are absent in their entirety. Just aswell the two-day seminar he attended was completely different. Such was my surprise that I entertained the idea that there may be two Scott Smalleys.
Leon