@timkiel said:

Bob - thanks for the suggestions, I'll see what I can do.  PaulR - thanks for the kind words look forward to any tips you have post decorating...

 

Tim

 

 

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.

PaulR (and others)

Here's the midi version at www.timkiel.com/Piano_Demo.mid - and here's the mp3 version again at www.timkiel.com/Piano_Demo.mp3. If anyone wants to play about and see what they can come up with then feel free by all means.

Cheers

Tim

@bobgrahammusic_29581 said:

I do understand that there are violins1, violins2, violas, cellos and basses... and that the 5 each have a role but I was under the assumption that cellos and basses kind of build the low end harmonys and the violins2 and violas build up the high and mid harmonies and the violins 1 either add to that or take a melody.

Thinking about strings in this way is, I believe, tremendously limiting, and I urge you not to do that.

If you don't already have them, I suggest that you get hold of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, and Vaughan-Williams's Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, both on CD and in full score (see eBay or Amazon for these for a modest price), and study how much the melody and harmony move around between registers, and how much the different string sections come in and out, supporting, complementing and occasionally conflicting with, each other. 

In particular, I hope you'll notice how Tchaikovsky almost leads his melodies on a tour of the string sections, while Vaughan-Williams organizes and uses the strings quite differently from the usual five sections, to wonderful effect.

@bobgrahammusic_29581 said:

Do you recommend scores specifically to learn from? Do you know where I can buy affordable orchestral scores that are a bit cheaper than 100$ each? Also, do you recommend any books on counterpoint, harmony or orchestration?

Answers to all those questions, and more, can be found here.

@bobgrahammusic_29581 said:

Hi Nick,

Secondly, I have a really solid understanding of chords and melody as well as harmony, but I really dont know what contrapuntal means... Are you kind of saying that parts must be able to weave in and out of eachother while maintaining harmony and melody without interfering or being overbearing on each other?Bob

Dear Bob,

You would not be able to use a single articulation 25 times - you would encounter very bad phasing, and it would still sound like a single violin.  To get multiple single instruments you could try using different articulations, or the pitchwheel trick (search on the forum for that one), but not to get up to 25 violins.  You would need to use the groups - orchestral violins, chamber violins, solo violin and layer them as necessary.

In terms of organisation, everybody does it differently.  But essentially, you are adding another line for the additional virtual instrument.  You could also try layering using the parallel cells feature of the virtual instrument.

Kind Regards,

Nick.

Counterpoint books:

I can recommend you "Kontrapunkt" (counterpoint) of a german writer/composer called Diether de la Motte.

As far as I know it has been translated into many languages as it was a big success due to it's innovation in teaching music theory!

It's for experts that are interested in writting original style-copies. I will give you a little summery of it's content:

It starts with the "beginning" of counterpoint thinking and goes chronological through history. The gothic periode, there's the so called "Notre Dame era" and the composer Perotin (and also some others) who have started to write polyphonic music, which means that every voice has the same importance. Before (in medieval music) there was the main melody that was moved in parallel fifths. Or later the famous organum compositions with a superior melody and below accompanying sustained notes.

After the Note Dame epoche happened a lote in the early renaissance periode. Composers like Dufay, Marchaut, Ockeghem, etc. 

De la Motte also speaks about those two epoches a little and it is very interesting how it changed and he also explains how music was notated at these times (rhythmically, etc...)

Then the most important chapter in the book is the renaissance composer Josquin Desprez. As he has revolutionized counterpoint writting that was a "standard" for later masters like Palestrina or even Bach!

The Josquin chapter tells everything about cointerpoint rules how and also about how music has been written at this time (notation, rhythmical,  possible harmonies and keys, etc.) with the aim to learn how to write a "perfect" style copy with all it's typical and stereotypical aspects.

After Josquin comes a short chapter about Palestrina, it's more about what little has changed from Josquin to Palestrina, for example that Palestrina expands the harmonies (for example new harmonies are possible like E major, or harmonies with more sharps)  and for Palestrina the typical "multi-choral" writting. 5 or 6 voices mininum, 2 choirs, etc... instead Josquin makes a lot of use of ony two voices! And that's a fantastic technique how to start. If you can write perfect two voices then the expansion to three or four voices is not a big deal at all.

After Palestrina comes a Bach chapter that shows the difference of the meaning of "counterpoint". When "counterpoint" in the renaissance was more on the linear, melodic part and chords and harmonies where not imporant or happend just by "chance" and the tonality in general was "modal", in baroque (Bach's) counterpoint the harmony has a very imporant role. Often it's called "harmonic counterpoint". You can also hear the difference if you just compare a piece of Josquin and a Bach Fuga, what's different? The strict rules of Josquin/Palestrina are not so strict at all anymore but other things become more important (modulations, sequences, and many more...)

Then there are a couple of other interesting chapters, Haydn/Beethoven and their "motivic composing", Schumann/Brahms and their "inner voices", etc. Wagners "network-technique" how it seems that it's a 11-part composition, but the truth is that they are only 2 or 3 parts transfered on 11 (or more) instruments that switch between the voices (for example the viola takes 2, 3 notes together with the clarinet and then goes for 3, 4 notes with the horn, but rhythmically always a little different and shifted, etc...) it looks very complex and gives a great counterpunctual texture.

And then there's a chapter about counterpoint in music of the 20th century (Ligeti, etc.).

It's really a fantastic book with lots of ideas for practicing. For me the methode of De la Motte's books (also other ones like "Harmonielehre") worked very well and makes really sense! His philosophy is (he writes that at the beginnig of the book) that you don't learn only rules and "dry, boring exercises", you start "MAKING MUSIC" from the first page, the first example and exercise on. It makes really fun! I'm sure it exists also in english.

De la motte is a real "star" of music theory books here in Germany/Austria (he was teaching in Hamburg and Vienna). He still lives but is very old now. He was the teacher of my theory/counterpoint teacher so that's why I'm a little more informed about those books :-)

Have fun!

All the best,

Andie