Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

From scales and semitones to pentatonics and cadence patterns. It's all about the science behind the expression, here.

Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby ChromaMonster » 07 Mar 2012 08:39

Came across this EXTREMELY comprehensive tutorial to orchestral composition on Youtube. This guy actually goes through every single step of composing a song down to mixing and mastering. Complete with sense of humour as well.

Be warned though, grab a cold drink and a nice fat bag of popcorn before sitting down; Its VERY long.

Composition Part 1: Melody


Composition Part 2: Harmony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDHDvZO8 ... re=related
Composition Part 3: Arranging: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MTfoHsA ... re=related
Composition Part 4 : Orchestration (Strings): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bg_xxdb ... ure=relmfu
Composition Part 4B: Orchestration (Brass): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44o7I0ap ... re=related
Composition Part 4C: Orchestration (Woodwinds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LWtUPvR ... re=related
Composition Part 4D: Orchestration (Percussion): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG9siila ... re=related
Composition Part 5: MIDI 1 (Strings): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrOG3pw- ... re=related
Composition Part 5B: MIDI (Winds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veSWI_4n ... re=related
Composition Part 5C: MIDI (Percussion): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEd5DvGA ... re=related
Composition Part 6: Mixing and Mastering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnwLMojoOg
Last edited by ChromaMonster on 21 Nov 2012 08:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby qJesse » 07 Mar 2012 11:59

Just started part 3; this guy is amazing so far! :D He needs more recognition for doing this! Thanks for sharing, Chroma. <3
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Makkon » 07 Mar 2012 13:41

Oh man.

Okay, going to give this a nice runthrough. Thanks for posting this!
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Wintergreen » 09 Mar 2012 00:38

I might make a separate thread for it, but what's a good way to get decent string/orchestra sounds? I mean, Nexus presets are fine, I guess, but I don't really want 'Fine, I guess', I'd like something that sounds really good. I use FL Studio, but I'd be willing to use something else if only for string synthesis. Also, I'm gonna give these videos a looksee as soon as I get, this could be very helpful.
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Makkon » 09 Mar 2012 02:01

Wintergreen, you weren't at the Salt Lake brony panel! asfkjagkjaebgljag

But I'd suggest using Kontakt (VST) and Symphobia or LA Scoring Strings (sound libraries that plug into kontakt). But Kontakt and FL Studio don't play nice together. Pretty much every other sequencer in existence besides FL works great with it (I'd suggest Ableton or Cubase).

I essentially showcased LA Scoring Strings in Deae Lunae and Celestia Origins Extended Battle Theme, if you want an example of how it sounds.
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Wintergreen » 09 Mar 2012 02:29

No, I wasn't, but I wish I had been able to go.

This truly fills my heart with sorry that Kontakt doesn't work well with FL. Maybe I'll just get Ableton, and make my orchestral-y stuff there, export it as a .wav and throw it into FL. I could also play around with Ableton for turntablistic effects, and making my songs on my album seamlessly flow into each song (hopefully).

Fun.

And it sounded very good, is the answer. In fact, you were kinda the person I had hoped would answer my question. *squee*
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby konsolN » 27 Jul 2012 13:17

Wow, thats exactly what I need Oo

I came across a Free Set of Orchestral Soundfonts and I I tried to make some arrangements myself, but I simply don't know the theory.
The best thing I made was an arrangement of "Art of the Dress" (which can be heard on my Soundcloud XD )

But I jst came on the site today and its berpect for beginners, but I'll have to watch tutorials about a LOT of thing the next few days it seems :)
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Flinckie » 14 Oct 2012 10:44

Oh man, this is awesome!

By the way, the link for Part 4 (Strings) is wrong.
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Seven » 19 Oct 2012 00:39

Ooooh! I remember this one!

Yeah, watched through all the videos (I think) and it's been stuck in the back of my head since. I'd say the it's affected my workflow quite a bit when I think of it. Thanks.
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby XXDarkShadow79XX » 19 Oct 2012 17:55

Even though I don't produce orchestral, I still think I might check this out. Thanks for sharing!
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby GhostXb » 22 Oct 2012 18:09

Wintergreen wrote:No, I wasn't, but I wish I had been able to go.

This truly fills my heart with sorry that Kontakt doesn't work well with FL. Maybe I'll just get Ableton, and make my orchestral-y stuff there, export it as a .wav and throw it into FL. I could also play around with Ableton for turntablistic effects, and making my songs on my album seamlessly flow into each song (hopefully).

Fun.

And it sounded very good, is the answer. In fact, you were kinda the person I had hoped would answer my question. *squee*


I haven't used Kontakt outside of FL yet, and there are a few issues, such as samples cutting out during the song. However, it's still workable, and fixable, even if it means rendering the song a few times until you get it right. Yes, it is an annoyance, but if you really want to make orchestral music, and you have a budget, I'd get Kontakt first, and secondary DAW's second. When you open a project, or load a sample library in Kontakt, you need to give it a few minutes to finish loading all the samples, some of them are pretty big. Hell, I get by.

Just a note, loading a bunch of sample libraries to get an orchestral sound is an immense memory hog! I had to run the FL(extended memory).exe version of FL studio, AND load some of the programs in bridged mode (loading the VST outside FL Studio) to defeat the 4GB limit of FL studio. Which means anything less then 4Gb is not a good idea, and more then 4GB is ideal.

UPDATE: I just realized that he posted that like...seven months ago XD! Hopefully what I'm saying is still relevant :lol:
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby Seven » 23 Oct 2012 07:47

GhostXb wrote: A lot about (NI) Kontakt being a memory and CPU hog


The following post is built on my knowledge obtained by research and logic; not from experience. I do not own (nor use) Kontakt by the time this is posted. I plan to in a near future though.

Kontakt is truly a consuming plugin, being a sampler. The samples and sample libraries used take up a lot of power (memory and performance wise) but the program itself too. If you're using multiple instances of Kontakt (one for each instrument) I can imagine it pulling it all down, as it'd have to load up every library, interface, routings or whatever Kontakt does under the shell, for each instance.

Kontakt has a rack-ability with multiple inputs and outputs (even internal mixer). Great for layering sounds, but with the different (total of 64 midi) inputs, I can see only one instance of Kontakt running all instruments (which would be halthy for the computer)

If you're already doing that, well, then I might consider a new computer before purchasing Kontakt. (Hope this post made sense, I'm not so sure myself)
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Re: Concise Orchestral Composition Guide

Postby GhostXb » 23 Oct 2012 14:34

Seven wrote:
GhostXb wrote: A lot about (NI) Kontakt being a memory and CPU hog


The following post is built on my knowledge obtained by research and logic; not from experience. I do not own (nor use) Kontakt by the time this is posted. I plan to in a near future though.

Kontakt is truly a consuming plugin, being a sampler. The samples and sample libraries used take up a lot of power (memory and performance wise) but the program itself too. If you're using multiple instances of Kontakt (one for each instrument) I can imagine it pulling it all down, as it'd have to load up every library, interface, routings or whatever Kontakt does under the shell, for each instance.

Kontakt has a rack-ability with multiple inputs and outputs (even internal mixer). Great for layering sounds, but with the different (total of 64 midi) inputs, I can see only one instance of Kontakt running all instruments (which would be halthy for the computer)

If you're already doing that, well, then I might consider a new computer before purchasing Kontakt. (Hope this post made sense, I'm not so sure myself)


Your totally right, Kontakt does have a rack feature. I'm glad you mentioned it. I knew Kontakt had this feature, I just didn't take the time to explore it until now, and now that I have, I wish I had been doing this sooner XD!

Not only can you load multiple instruments in one instance of Kontakt, but you can route each instrument to a midi out channel, and also route each instrument to a separate mix bus so you can mix each instrument individually. If you want, you can then route Kontakt itself to a mix channel, so you say, put effects on your whole orchestra :)

You can then load Kontakt in bridged mode so you can load the VST outside of FL Studio, this way you can load a bunch of instruments without bogging down FL Studio itself, in terms of memory.

However, this last step is only useful if you have a 64-bit operating system with more then 4GB of RAM. Otherwise, your not gonna get more then 4GB of memory use anyway.
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