Orchestra piece progress 001

Posted by mazz on Thursday, July 23rd 2009

I’m up to bar 50 but the piece is still kind of like a checkerboard. I’ll work ahead with a section and then fill in behind it. I haven’t written the intro yet, the music currently starts at bar 18. I’ll probably leave at least one blank bar at the beginning for controller setups, initial keyswitches, etc.

Due to the time constraints, I’ve decided that the piece will ebb and flow by changing the textures of the rhythmic chords. It starts with horns doubled with woodwinds and then moves to brass and then strings and low brass (while the trumpets play the melody) and then down a bit with the strings and then adding the brass and then everyone will be playing big fat chords while the voices take the melody.

Right now the mix is a total mess with everything too loud and after I get the parts in, I’ll go back and add the more subtle controller tweaks and begin to refine the mix.

The good thing about having a roadmap laid out ahead of time, is that the foundation is already down and the execution can be done more efficiently. Of course, things will change as the sketch is filled out, but it’s way less hit and miss because the path forward is clearer before the computer ever gets booted up and the samples loaded.

Back to it!!

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Sketch of orchestral piece

Posted by mazz on Wednesday, July 22nd 2009

Well, below is a sketch I am going to start to put in to the computer, hopefully to meet a deadline on Friday, which is very ambitious. It’s a TAXI listing, not a gig deadline, so if I miss it, it’s not the end of the world. But I’d like to challenge myself to come up with a big orchestral piece and have it be big and powerful yet not over complex orchestrationally.

So, briefly, here’s what I’ve done so far:

I set up a form and a harmonic structure and played it in to the sequencer roughly using a piano patch.

Then I printed out some sketch paper with the piano part on the top and 4 staves below.

I already knew that I was going to use strings, brass, percussion, woodwinds and voices.

I’m going to distribute the accompaniment amongst the brass and strings, starting with the strings and then moving to the brass later and then the combined “band” doing punches with the voices doing a simple long melody. I think that will be dramatic and will allow for good opportunities to build, which is one thing the listing mentions. It looks like the strings won’t be doing much melody on this one.

As far as woodwinds go, I’ll probably use flutes, clarinets and oboes and probably will have them doubling each other playing three note chordal melodies because I’ll need the power. I may have them do some trills or flourishes near the end if it doesn’t make the texture too complex or make the sequencing take too long!

That’s all for now. Time to go boot up the Mac and get rolling!

See the pages of the sketch below (there’s two page 7′s, oops!)