This series has been so enlightening. At first I thought "god, is he just going to play every instrument beside every other", but I quickly realised that I've misunderstood the beautiful sounds I heard from great pieces. Examples like the "colouring" of the trumpets with Cor Anglais etc has made me realise how much variety in tone there is to chose from when designing a piece. It must take years of practice to know straight where to go to for your intended theme, but at least I can start to try and apply it.
Amazing series! The brass and woodwind videos have been so so helpful. You cover all the things i'd have been afraid to ask. Also love the breakdown/secret scoring weapon videos.
Excellent video. I've made for my own use some premade combinations with BBC SO and Logic stacked instruments (low brass + low strings, trumpet + xylo, celeste + harp, etc etc... the usual things), it's very usefull.
Your coverage of instrument voicings in relation to orchestration is superb Paul. I'm not quite so bothered about the tech side. I tend to give each part to a single instrument for my first draft, so I'm just about to embark on thickening textures without making it lumpy. I'm learning to translate your implied judgements - what you call "successful", I'd call conventional or conforming to expectations. Sometimes I want the effect of making a plain chord sound more avant-garde by using unusual spacing of voices. That's not a criticism, just a translation for my own purposes
13:56. Yes, indeed. Whoda thunk it. I always tend to regard trumpets as part of the rebel rowdy faction that have their obvious uses but require careful handling. Interesting. Thanks.
At this particular context the best way is, as you well said, close harmony. But in a situation that you want the brass not to loud the best way is to have the 1st and the 2nd trumpets away from each other and the horns felling that gap between the trumpet. Suggestion: check Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Manuel de Falla, specially the beginning.
Thanks Paul. Big takeaway for me is to let each instrument sing in its own range. No one, in their right mind, would let me sing soprano; so why should force an instrument to sing outside its comfort zone.
Love your tutorial Paul. I am a trumpet player/film composer and really like how you fully explain in all of your videos. Also does anyone know what microphone and pop filter he is using in this video?
Thank you I learned a lot! One thing though, when you said concert pitch, what do you mean and do you talk about that in any of your videos? Are you referring to the A 432hz tuning thing? Are you using that with all the instruments in the orchestration/song?
Thanks! So basically it means slightly different things depending on the context. For tuning it would mean the overall ref which is commonly A = 440hz. However when talking about transposing instruments it means the sounding pitch as opposed to the written. If you are talking about octave transpositions then it means the non transposed version. It’s a bit messy - professional working musicians have expressions that are colloquially understood that sometimes vary from the dictionary or strict academic definitions!
@@PaulThomsonMusic Oh ok cool! If I'm understanding you correctly then, when you said concert pitch you were talking about the second meaning then, transposing to the sounding/played pitch, versus the (original, I'm assuming) written pitch? And I think I know what you mean for the third meaning, I've been transposing root notes of some chords in my compositions lately an octave up or down, sometimes doubling or even tripling from the original non-transposed note - two or three of the same root note, each one an octave apart, don't know how common practice that is, but it sounds good lol. I'll have to re-watch the video to double check, to see if I'm on the same page lol sorry.
Thank you for your insightful videos! Could you show us the score or piano roll (or at least the keyboard from above) with all parts in each example, please? Sometimes it's hard to keep track of where all instruments are...
i guess the closed chord will always highlight better the accent of any phrase when you want this to be harsher. The more space the smoothier will be any chord, thats why is is perfect for sweet atonal chords like those of Berg or Webern. For the same reason lower tones are used with space and in more opened chords. What i think you say is that this position makes especial sense with the trumpets cause they are mostly used to higihligh something and to be "agressive" in orchestral scores
Always used to find it helped when playing two trumpet fanfare figures in octaves to have the 2nd trumpet just a little louder than marked to give the first player something to sit on top of.If the lower octave is even a little quieter it never sounds right in this context to me.
Awesome, Paul many thanks again. Can I ask, do you normally copy midi when working with samples, instead of replaying the phrase? I quite like the slight imperfections, as long as it isn't too sloppy. What do you think?
I enjoyed the tute and demonstration of how the voicing makes a difference in glueing things together for both lyrical and impact orchestration. The photo of the hall with the pipe organ that was shown has raised a question I have often thought about. Do some pipes resonate with given frequencies of certain instruments being recorded?
Spitfire audio: these samples do everything well except read scores I notate my work in Sibelius and transport it to logic Pro X. I’m trying to get BBC Symphony orchestra samples to sound good There really should be some defaults - where BBC Symphony orchestra samples sound good out of the box in reading a score, dynamics, expression markings, and even live velocity midi-data It shouldn’t be that much work on a score of that is already complete!
You appear to be using Kontakt standalone. I typically use Komplete Kontrol in my DAW since I have an NI Kontrol S49 keyboard but I could use Kontakt instead. Is it only possible to load those multiple instruments such that different instruments can be played simultaneously, as you are doing, with Kontakt or is that also possible with Komplete Kontrol? I do have some Spitfire libraries but your videos have me drooling for more even if my pocketbook says otherwise.
Wow those brass instruments sound way better than the Spitfire BBC Symphony ones. I cannot the life of me get good short notes on the trumpets or horns. The brass is just not great on that library, unless I'm doing something wrong.
