Dear Tim,
I had a listen to your piece, and enjoyed it. I think you need to clarify whether you intend it arranged for strings or orchestra. If it were my choice, I would avoid arranging it for full orchestra - you would have to be incredibly careful to avoid killing the intimacy of the piece.
I'd recommend this: your piano playing is very idiomatic. I would keep the piano in there (or even move the upper parts over to an acoustic guitar). I would put in place a string accompaniment. The key to this will be in the inner part movement (violas, 2nd violins). Where you have the crotchets (quarter notes) that are effectively sustaining the harmony on the second and third beats of the bar, I would be tempted to have the vla/vln2s noodling (for example in bar 1, I would have the violas playing something like A3 (220Hz) - C below in quavers and perhaps moving around (possibly making use of the implied suspension on the B below middle C - therefore something like A3-C3-A3-C3-A3-B3-C4-A3 for the first bar. To make a realistic string arrangement, there needs to be this kind of inner part movement. I may also be tempted to add a French (or Viennese!) horn into the mix. However, keep it very simple. An alternative might be a wind arrangement, but not too many instruments. I might also think about starting with piano and adding the strings in later in the piece, as these would function to lift it.
Dear Bob,
I thought the problem with your piece was mainly to do with the reverb. I'm not massively keen on oodles of reverb, but I thought yours was far too dry. The problem (unique to sampled performances) is that when insufficient reverb is used, and unless things are very carefully programmed, you can hear the seams between notes, and get this kind of swell just after the beginning of the note, particularly in strings. Use of reverb evens that out, as does very careful articulation selection. My process is to programme with very dry reverb, but NEVER issue without a much wetter setting. I agree with Paul that the sound is a little 2-dimensional. I think there are a few ways to improve your piece:
1) You are not differentiating between the distances in the Z-axis that players will be playing. Physically, string players in most typical orchestral layouts are closer than wind or brass. This can be simulated by using different impulse response distances or the stage positioning feature if you happen to use altiverb. You can further simulate it by applying a very small delay to the buss that you are routing your further back instruments to, and rolling off a little of the high end for the further away instruments (using your EQ).
2) You have mixed the wind very high. Typically, if you had that many string players, the wind would not be quite so easily heard.
3) I'm not sure, but your strings sound pretty loud - in the sense that they are PLAYING loudly, regardless of the overall volume of the track - i.e. their bows are pressing against the string hard. It may be that you have too high a velocity selected on the string parts, and your velocity cross-fader is set too high. Take a look at other articulations as well - possibly chamber strings or the flautando or con sordino arts.
4) Speaking of velocity cross-fading - use it all the time on strings. They swell and ebb constantly, and very seldom stay at the same volume even for a couple of seconds.
5) Part writing - A typical orchestra will (most of the time) have 5 parts in operation - 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, celli and basses. Now your track is quite tender, so you may want to go easy on the basses, or even possibly use the chamber string articulations in the main. However, you may want to give thought to writing consistently in 4 or 5 parts.
6) Idiomatic - each instrument is written for in a different way. For exmple, if you have an intricate melody that is very fast, a piccolo would play all of that and possibly some additional runs and ornaments. A tuba would probably play some of the notes and possibly not the ornaments, due to the amount of time it takes to get a column of air moving through the instrument (Dave TK will probably kill me for saying this). Hence, you write melodies differently depending on the instrument that they are to be played upon, and the best way to understand how to do this is to listen to a) a lot of orchestral music and b) solo music for each of the instruments if you are planning a big solo on them.
There's a kind of weird duality to writing string parts. You must think vertically (i.e. in terms of chords from top to bottom) but you must also think of the individual parts. That's where the contrapuntal writing comes in. Contrapuntal means the same as counterpoint - counterpoint is just the noun; contrapuntal means writing in a manner like counterpoint. String parts (and wind parts come to that) tend to move from note to note quite a lot - really long held notes are not normal. However, in the beginning, you should hum each part through in isolation - if it is easily hummable it is likely to flow as a part.
Regarding the Scott Smalley course - it is a great course. I have been, and I couldn't recommend it highly enough. Scott is very personable and experienced, and has a great outlook and original take on orchestration. If I were in your shoes, I would try and realise a few (short) mockups of orchestral scores (i.e. traditional literature) before you go on the course since, at least when I attended, some knowledge of orchestration was assumed (along the lines of the guidelines above). Then you'll get the most out of it.
I hope all of this is of help. I tend to babble on when a subject interests me.
Kind Regards,
Nick.