MIDI-life Crisis -
(Like your user ID! LOL)
One of my weaker points is not having a large repertoire of orchestral music. I have a modest amount of jazz and progressive rock/jazz music, but not music recording of orchestras. This, obviously, will need to change. When I went to music college (30 years ago), I took arranging courses (mostly for jazz ensembles), a string writing course and a percussion writing course (as well as a fair amount of composition course). But, at that time, there was no orchestration course offered at this jazz-focused music college. Any amount of orchestration that I learned was by ear, by listening to my favorite orchestral pieces and by interacting with a few members on bulletin boards such as this one. In order to meet my compositional needs, I wish and need to learn more about the "do's" and "don'ts" of regular orchestration. It also seems that I also need to get a better hold of the sound engineering part of scoring for the "MIDI-orchestra" as well.
Frodo -
I've seen that one book,"Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer" available on Amazon.com (if I remember correctly). That was one that I was leaning toward purchasing. Does it talk about where to "place" each instrument on the stereo pan, and whether or not to "sub-mix" each section and where & how much to place reverb?? I would LOVE to have a basic templet to start panning each instrument (and section) of an orchestra. I would also like to know whether or not to sub-mix each section. It's what I do now. I sub-mix the strings, wood-winds, brass and percussion. I don't know if this is a good idea, but it definitely goes to creating the sound that I currently make (good or bad! LOL!).
Regarding the Berklee Online course. . . I would LOVE to take some of their on-line courses! I am a graduate from Berklee, by the way! (Graduated with a Bachelors of Music degree, with honors, in "Film Composition" -- Class of 1982!
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
) Back then, it cost about $4,500.00 per YEAR for both tuition and room & board. I recently checked out the cost of the on-line courses that they hold. Oh my gosh!! It costs more to take their on-line courses than it cost me to attend college there 30 years ago!!! YIKES!!!
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
And their regular on-campus course?!?!? WOW!! It's freakin' expensive to attend that music college!!! But then again, it's freakin' expensive to attend ANY college now-a-days. I even checked into attending a couple of music colleges associated with the State Universities of New York. The tuition for these colleges are a bit more financially reasonable. But I live too far away from them to attend their on-campus courses and they don't seem to offer a comprehensive on-line course of study. So. . . it looks like that I am faced with self-learning, which is not one of my strong points. I do better in a class-room situation, especially when it comes to finishing projects.
Anyway, here is an example of one of my most recent works. The name of the piece is "Winter in Mid-January" which I finished in March, 2011. It's about 6 minutes long. I don't expect anyone to listen to the entire thing. It is, however, a good representation of my current abilities with MIDI-based orchestration. I want to have more control with the sound. This will entail more study and research into orchestration. But it seems that this will also involve learning more advanced techniques in MIDI sequencing and sound engineering as mentioned above.
http://www.toolivenurse.com/non_TLN_mus ... nalMix.mp3
I used a combination of Garritan's GPO, JABB and Kirk Hunter Studio's Diamond Orchestra. I'm sure that I need to do a better job of blending these libraries together. I could also purchase those more expensive libraries which do a better job or replicating a more realistic orchestral sound. I know that it's considered the more "lower-end" of orchestral libraries, but I have heard GREAT orchestral mock-ups using GPO alone. So, it seems that a better understanding of orchestration AND mixing everything together will make even GPO sound great. (And despite what others may think, I do think that GPO is a great library.) In other words, my aim is to make the best use of what I already own; to make them sing!
Anyway. . . thank you all for your time. I'm going to check out the links provided (including the links associated with YouTube and slowly work to improve my composing and sequencing chops!
Cheers. . .
Ted
Edited to add:
Cuttime -
I see that you wrote your post most probably the same time that I wrote time. I use very little quantization. If I use any, I weaken it by about 30% or so. My problem is that I'm a freakin' walking metronome! LOL! I guess it comes with many years of practicing the piano with the metronome and sequencing (with that constant beep-beep-beep-beep. . .) LOL. You're points are well-taken and I thank you for sharing them!
Ted