Easy Orchestration in a Few Hours 

after five years i’m finally here

The thirds with the melodic line doubled at the octave is a wonderful touch; and when there's a unison on the melodic in conjunction with the previous function is just plain marvelous. What finesse.

Best orchestration tutorial I've seen online! Thank you!

love Dances of The Dolls and love what you've done with it. Your channel alongside Oscar Piston's book have been invaluable for me as I start to get into larger works. You're doing a terrific service for those of us who started late and couldn't receive a proper musical education and are muddling through by ourselves.

Just wonderful Thomas!... Great seeing you explain the process Piano-to-Orchestra, more of this please and thank you!

Thanks, Thomas! That was great to watch, the "inside scoop," as it were.

4 hours??? It would take me 50 years to do this and I’m 61, it ain’t gonna happen. Great job sir

Lets Orchestrate instead of Lets Play?

"The dance of the giant MARSHMALLOW". hahaha

Lovely way to spend an hour. Highly instructive. Thanks.

This great help man. Thanks for your work

Excellent workmanship and explanation. Thank you.

Very helpful; thanks for taking the time to share this.

Always look forward to your new videos! thanks for putting this together, and really learn a lot from this concept. Would be great to see more of this type of video making orchestrations from piano pieces or reductions, even if it's just short segments. Really practical tutorial!

Very nice arrangement, and thank you so much for showing your work procedure as well as explaining how you made your choices! One thing I noticed was that at measure 45 the violas and especially the cellos have to suddenly switch from arco to pizz, as well as jump from the high A# to a (first position) G. This may be possible at a very slow tempo, but as a section leader (perhaps there are only a couple of desks of cellos at most in a typical theater orchestra) I might have instructed the cellists to play divisi, with one half dropping out after the first beat or so of measure 44, in order to come in on the pizz at 45. I note that the first beat is "covered" by the bass and the tuba anyway, so it might not be critical. As a cellist however, this is the sort of thing that leaves us asking "What was the composer/orchestrator thinking?" Some really nice touches: I like the way you "prep" the listener for an approaching change of instrument timbre or range (as that starting at m134 in the flutes); The repeated accompanying 8th note figures added to the score starting at m69 in the viola recall the center section of the piece (starting at m36) and create a subtle contrast with the opening version of the same material (i.e. the beginning of the piece); The scale figure played by the cellos in m72 and afterwards follows the shape of the beginning of the melody and provides a slight feeling of a "round". You've performed a tremendous service in showing us some of your "tricks of the trade". Thank you!

This was a very nice video to watch, thanks so much!

fun and colorful orchestration. Great video

Now Shosty can show us how to do Tahiti trot in an hour!

Reminds me of The Rosenkavalier with this orchestration

I loved ur orchestration. I really enjoyed to listen to it. I think Shostakovich would have orchestrated it in the same way. As a study you could show, how Korsakov orchestrated the Opera Prince Igor of Borodin; this may be a good example of how the Masters did it, maybe there are things to learn from it.

Muy bueno!! Yo aprendo mucho con estos videos. Felicitaciones!

Thank you and congratulations, Thomas! A thing that I found to be helpful and time saving is to look for trustworthy midi files of the original music, of course there shouldn't be any of copyrighted material, but

Hi Thomas, great video. Question, i believe it was this video you mentioned that Tenuto on strings, to think of a "Zoom" sound and thats how it sounds in real life. I think this is genius and was wondering if you had any other ideas/sounds of how tenuto sounds on Brass and Winds and how that differs/compares to strings tenuto. Tenuto has always kind of confused me on the difference in sound and your "Zoom" reference was brilliant for me. Now while listening to Rach's 2nd symphony 3rd movement, I really hear those tenuto markings in the strings. Thanks!

That's gorgeous :clapping:

This is cool, i just think you made a mistake leaving out the 4th horn, let the guy double another horn maybe 8vb or something, as a musician it's terrible getting a job and then knowing that you won't get a part, as a composer i always want to make sure everybody can play and add to the music, even just doubling a part makes a difference in the sound.

Loved this video! It really helps up. I would love to see other piano-transcription of more complex piano pieces (I enjoyede also the Ravel series)

I enjoy your videos. I will look into the Patreon subscription. Thanks again.

Thanks a lot

Thomas your music is Rich Very Rich

Excellent. Thank you. Question, please You poiunted out enharmonics a few times, like how you used an E# for tuba and an F for timpani (3 bars before C). What was the reason for that, rather than just using an F in both places?

Did they ever make any video of this? I'd love to hear the final product.

Thank you for this, it’s great. Are the celli missing a G# 3 after E?

Shostakovich devotee writing a thesis on his ballet music here. Just wondering why the orchestra decided to commission a new orchestration when the piece in its original orchestration (from the Ballet "The Bright Stream" and later reorchestrated by Lev Avtom'ian for the 2nd Ballet suite and then reduced to piano for Dance of the Dolls by the same arranger) is available. I'd guess that it might not be apparent that Dance of the Dolls is a reduction of a reorchestration of part of a full ballet (with slightly modified last few measures). Anyway, thank you for the excellent videos!

Thanks for this informative video... Are you using Note Performer 1.5 for playback directly from Sibelius in this video demonstration? Cheers, Max

Thank you for a another great lesson on orchestration! And Your orchestration is very good work for sure. I was only wondering if one could let the bassoons play the 8. figures by the rehearsal mark G instead of the celli and violas for the sake of variation and while the staccato character of the figure is very well soothed for the bassons. And I was also wondering if one also could place a drum roll on the last climax before the cymbal splashes. And would it be useful with som grace-notes added to the flute part the last bars from rehearsal mark I just to add a little crispyness along with the triangle strokes? These are just some ideas I had. Your orchestration is truly very spot-on and well suited for the purpose of these comission, it is wise to make it simple, and I am sure Shostakovitsch would have orchestrated it much in the same manner. Thanks again for all your lessons. Very inspiring.

The doublestops non div. on the violas from 5:06 are, in my opinion, unnecesarily risky. I'm curious, why didn't you put them divisi?

How much would you charge to look over an orchestration and comment on it?

Aren't the doll's dances miniatures of Shostalovich's ballet suites? If they are, then there should be an already orchestrated version by Shostakovich himself, so you could have had an easier job

Thank you very much for your amazing videos. I'm starting to arrange and you are helping me a lot. Could you do a video about orchestrating for a Brass Band (the british instrumentation)? Thank you again!

A very nice orchestration. Russian school would probably favour more doubling notes where there are not enough harmony, not just leaving instruments to have rests.

I was wondering: If you really want to go all in on the cliche, why not give the bass part consistently to the Tuba from the beginning?

What microphone do you use for recording your voice? It seems (sounds?) to be of good quality.

They updated the Sibelius sound library? For Sibelius 8? I've tried to find out about that before, but didn't find anything that clearly stated as much on the Avid website at the time. Man, though...it already took up a third of my hard drive. Half would be quite something. Regarding tenuto, what exactly does the marking mean to a timpanist? In a passage that has both tenuto and non-tenuto notes, presumably the tenuto ones will be very slightly louder than the non-tenuto ones, but less so than if they were marked with accents. Beyond that, it's hard to imagine what physical variable the timpanist might manipulate. It's kind of surprising that the triangle sounds aren't amazing. Triangle seems like just the kind of instrument sound sets can usually nail, even if they don't nail anything else.

Can someone please list all the software he is using to do this? Which is the software for orchestration mock up?

Hello! What sound library do you use in Sibelius? I love your job.

what sound template do you use for Sibelius?

In my head i heard something silly...having tuba and bass trombone playing the 1 and the 2 trombones playing the ompapa chords. And the melody in the oboe.

Hi Thomas, I'm an italian composer and songwriter. I learn a lot from your videos, so thank you very much!!! I'm writing you because I need a feedback from musicians at your level, so can I ask you to listen my song and tell me what do you think about, and if you have some advice for me? This would be very helpful… I send you the link in a private message...

that can only be dmitri shostakovich in the image...

hello sir can you please orchestrate hans zimmer or john williams