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Old 07-05-2020, 06:56 PM   #24
Mattheas Boelter
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Join Date: Apr 2020
Location: United States
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragor View Post
Thanks for the feedback, especially from a player's perspective! I have a lot of respect for them, so this means a lot.

In regards to the scoring process, I am not the best at orchestral imagination, so at the moment it's a bit of both. I'll structure it out in Reaper, meaning just the bare basics of melody and harmony. I do it in a DAW instead of a notation program as I don't really want to deal with fixing incorrect notation caused by my horrendous playing; I want to focus on getting ideas down, and figuring out the overall structure. This is the hardest part, as I'll only continue if I feel like the composition has a strong foundation to build upon (I have a lot of sketches over the years which I'll have to go back to one day).

I'll then take those melodies and ideas and try to score it out in a notation program, in this case Dorico. I don't have to do it this way, I could just do a pure mockup, but I do this as an exercise to practice my orchestral imagination. I won't bother if it's trailer/hybrid styled orchestral composition. I'll get to a point where I'll get stuck and can't continue on, which is when I start sequencing what I've written so far which in this case ended up at about 60% of the final orchestration. I'm noticing I'm getting better with each composition and I'm able to finish more of the orchestration before I start the sequencing stage. I mentioned in the video description, I composed this in 2018 as I couldn't figure out the orchestration back then, so I started focusing on shorter pieces first just to get the hang of it.

When I do start sequencing, this is the closest thing I have to having an orchestra play my composition. During this stage, I will start hearing extra lines and orchestration on top of it that I couldn't hear before, and also mistakes in my original orchestration. So it starts to become a back and forth; sequencing new parts and adjusting my original score as I go along. As you can imagine, this is very time consuming, but kind of a necessary process as I'm still learning. As I get better at this, this will probably change. I'm hoping that one day I can make a full, almost complete orchestration filled out, before I start sequencing. I do understand the danger of relying on a sampled orchestra, so I heavily rely on recordings of similar works and try to make my best judgement.

In regards to mixing, yes I agree it could be clearer, thanks for the feedback on this. I tend to overwrite in which there are multiple melodies at the same time, so it's a little tricky getting the balance right. This is really a job for a dedicated mixer to do which I am not, though I do enjoy the process so I'll still try my best at it.

By the way, thanks everyone for commenting! This has been a little overwhelming, I didn't expect this much response, so thank you all!
I'm several days late, but I really appreciate the in depth response! It sounds like you have a pretty solid process. I can definitely agree that it's better for creative flow to at least begin working in the daw. I haven't tried going back and forth between notation and daw, but it's something I'm interested in trying (although most of the music I make is more electronic, so there aren't as many benefits as there would be with orchestral).

Most of my orchestral stuff I make is made only in notation (I've never tried sketch using a daw, although maybe I'll try it sometime), and it's noticeably slower for me to sketch out ideas than when I'm working in a daw. But I find it's much easier to orchestrate and be really intentional about voiceleading and such when working with notation. There are definitely advantages and disadvantages.
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