Guide to MIDI Orchestration

[dannthr]

There are only basic fundamentals that can truly be learned about MIDI orchestration as software technology is so rapidly changing, the rest is learning the specific technology you're using to completion--whatever that might be (if you're using East West then you'll use different techniques than if you're using SampleModeling or Wallander Instruments, etc, etc).

Your goal is and always should be to develop a comprehensive and analytical sense of hearing so that you can deconstruct what is necessary to replicate in a real performance and rely on your foundational knowledge of your MIDI software to guide HOW you put it together.

MIDI is the wild-west, there are no REAL rules, there are only the inherent limitations of the protocol itself--the rest is just answering the question: "Does it sound good?"

Writing for traditional instruments, and more importantly, writing WELL for traditional instruments is still the best seed to create great MIDI mock-ups--for all truly great MIDI mock-ups come from a great original composition with an informed sense of instrumentation and performance.

[Meteo Xavier]

Yeah, do let me know how that book works for you, Shrack. My development as a composer has been so random and picking up pieces here and there for the last 7 years that I don't even remember how I figured out what I know now.

I can't continue this way and still expect to do competent work down the road. Now that I have some accolade and experience down, I need to focus it all on a proper way of doing things, that means starting back sort of at the beginning with a beginner-intermediate tool that I couldn't have gotten before - an expensive ass MIDI book. It may actually hold a lot of puzzle pieces I've been missing in my development in ways I can actually learn.

Studying scores and the higher up orchestration like this comes later and I'll definitely look for that Sadler book (one that comes with a CD anyway), but this is where I need to start now. That's just how my body works.

So don't think your suggestions have been in vain or anything. They are things I will do later, I can't start there now is all I'm saying. I need a new starting place.

[PrototypeRaptor]

I can't continue this way and still expect to do competent work down the road. Now that I have some accolade and experience down, I need to focus it all on a proper way of doing things, that means starting back sort of at the beginning with a beginner-intermediate tool that I couldn't have gotten before - an expensive ass MIDI book. It may actually hold a lot of puzzle pieces I've been missing in my development in ways I can actually learn.

Studying scores and the higher up orchestration like this comes later and I'll definitely look for that Sadler book (one that comes with a CD anyway), but this is where I need to start now. That's just how my body works.

There are pretty much no tricks to midi orchestration that a book could tell you unless you are trying to make bad samples sound better - and the best solution is usually to spend more money on samples

Midi orchestration is all about emulating what normal composers do with a pencil; you can learn all you need to know about "midi orchestration" from the manual for the specific library that you are using.

ex: what is the keyswitch for stacatto, where are my legato violins, why is the bassoon as loud as 4 french horns and panned hard left, etc

But, in all of those cases, the knowledge that the midi composer uses stems from a healthy study of scores and instruments, not what a midi orchestration book would tell them.

Until you KNOW that you want the sound of a low clarinet, or a staccato flute/xylophone combo (John Williams anybody) or a gran cassa instead of a timpani, how are you going to be able to translate that not only into music, but then into a complicated series of key-switches and patch changes doing what it takes 3 seconds of notation for an actual player to do?

There is no "midi orchestration," only "normal" orchestration that uses digital instruments that reproduce sound on the spot rather than a drawing that tells human beings what to perform.

Your time would be better spent with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Orchestration-Recording-Package-6th/dp/0130771619/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316459219&sr=1-6

(lots of good recordings of the techniques you are asking about)

Then with the manual of EWQLSO or Symphobia or whatever, to learn how to tell the program to do what you are hearing.

IMO, anyway... hate to see people waste their time

[Meteo Xavier]

So how or why does a book like Guide to MIDI Orchestration exist and get highly recommended in the first place if it's essentially useless when people should be studying straight orchestration techniques anyway?

Thats what I'm not understanding.

[Nabeel Ansari]

So how or why does a book like Guide to MIDI Orchestration exist and get highly recommended in the first place if it's essentially useless when people should be studying straight orchestration techniques anyway?

Thats what I'm not understanding.

By reading the product description, it looks like half of that book is about real orchestration. The next half is about setting up project templates and setting up your computer.

From the product description, it looks like "MIDI orchestration" (note entry to sound realistic) is only about 5% of the book. You want to learn how to write realistic instruments, yeah? It's not something you can get a guide on. And that's NOT because of the "you should learn real orchestration" bs that everyone keeps giving you. They're right, but they're not answering your question.

The real reason is that each sample library is different. You can't ask how to MIDI orchestrate or expect there to be a good book on it, because a big part of that is learning your samples, and a book that covered how to use every sample library would be GINORMOUS. Now, if you asked questions like "how do I get realistic chordal strings using EWQLSO Gold?", you'd be getting a lot more help, because that's what people have experience with.

[Meteo Xavier]

Now, if you asked questions like "how do I get realistic chordal strings using EWQLSO Gold?", you'd be getting a lot more help, because that's what people have experience with.

I HAVE done that. I figured now it would just be easier to try the book I keep getting suggested offhand and see if I can find the pieces I'm missing in my design here, but even a question like "Has anyone read this book and used it?" turns into a discussion on how I'm doing the learning process wrong and I need to do all this other stuff I've already done and haven't found success in yet.

So I don't know what to think. I'm not a natural musician, I can't just figure all this out from "using my ears" and "messing with knobs" like everyone keeps telling me to do, and no one short of the University of Tennessee teaches any of this stuff around here. Video tutorials seem to work ok, but they're so few and far between. So now I want to try a textbook that seems relevant and highly regarded and now that's not good enough. I feel like I'm going in circles and it doesn't make any sense to me.

Not trying to lay down a sob story, but I don't know how to make my position and trying to just find out if anyone here has actually used the book any clearer.

[PrototypeRaptor]

I feel like I'm going in circles and it doesn't make any sense to me.

Welcome to the wonderful world of art, my friend

The reason (IMO) no one ever agrees on a "book to learn how to write music" is simple: composition is entirely self-taught other than technique - and I say that as a senior music composition student at university.

No one can tell you what you want to write - that is the equivalent of someone knowing your thoughts before you do. Only you can pluck the sounds from your head and put them to paper, which is what orchestration books (both midi and not) help you accomplish.

No one was ever taught how to create music, and no book will ever show you how!

I would say (from having been there myself) is that your frustration is coming from a lack of having something to SAY musically... but maybe you do, and if that's the case I really don't know what else to tell you other than to read the manuals for your specific sample library and try to program them as best as you can.

A midi orchestration book will do nothing for you that the manual won't, and having a super clear image of what you want is 1000x more important to mock ups than the knobs are.

So, to try to clarify for myself and others: what exactly are you trying to get out of this book? What is the end goal?

[Meteo Xavier]

Well first off, I got EWQLSO as part of the Composers collection and there was no manual to speak of (though it just now occurs to me it might be on the Soundsonline website, but that site has been kinda broken for a while).

Second - composition is not the problem. My strength is the actual arrangement of notes and I can say what I want to say ok there. I didn't learn composition through any other method than just watching MIDI scores on Fl Studio's piano roll. I could SEE what needed to be where in the context I was going to work with them and my body responded excellently. I could play with it and learn from there. My fundamental was Motoi Sakuraba and Hiroki Kikuta.

What I'm hoping to learn now is Production. Production is art too but there is still a science to it, I know there is. To learn it, I need to learn the general rules of thumb, the fundemental rules and processes. Once I get those down, I can start experimenting and learn further and just work with it until I have my own style down.

From this book, I hope to learn a specific process in making my instruments come off more realistically in the context of the DAW medium and have that be my fundamental. After that, I plan to study orchestration through scores and additional learning like everyone else keeps telling me to do.

Basically, I'm starting over. I have the tools, I have the money and I have something behind me to push forward. I just don't have the process.

[Kanthos]

There are PDF manuals for EWQL that are installed along with the program.

[dannthr]

Dude, you're doing fine.

Music is a temporal art. Sound and music can only exist through the linear passage of time and as such Music TAKES time to develop, to learn, and to work on.

You can not instantly observe music as much as you can not instantly understand music--it is not an instant anything.

So don't worry so much. From my perspective, your musical growth is observable over time, that's a good thing.

What you need to focus on, in my opinion, is developing an analytical sense of hearing. This is not something people are born with as much as people are born like Mozart--this is something that is learned through the practice of listening to music and attempting to break that music down into its smaller parts.

What will emerge in its own good time is your own sense of what works and what does not work in music--in your music. What will also emerge over time, is your skill at analyzing the instrumental performance of another human being and replicating and eventually synthesizing that performance with your own tools.

I would much rather see you study Music Theory and Fundamentals than focus on Orchestration, but there is still much to be gained in a study on Orchestration and I encourage you to acquire whatever resource seems to the most effective for you.

Unfortunately, I can not know which resource will exactly help you. What I can say is that foundational music and instrumentation for traditional orchestra is well over 100 years old and that there are many reliable resources from which to pull information.

Tips and tricks will help you in the short term, but if you don't understand where they come from and where they take you, then it will only help you in the short term. And you will be left unable to pursue the next step.

There is no true deadline for you to learn this stuff, so be patient, have patience in time but most of all, have patience in yourself.

By all means, get the MIDI Orchestration book, if that's what works for you, that's what works, and good! There's nothing wrong with it, I just want to emphasize that the author can't teach specific tips that are useful outside of a very GENERAL sense. There are abstract principles to MIDI programming that are applicable to most situations, which is good to know, it's important to know and understand, and if that book teaches those, then good. But ultimately, your goal should be to develop critical listening skills.

MIDI tips will help you now, but critical listening will help you for the rest of your life.