I wrote a 60-second piece in the style of a magical Disney parade
but I kept it limited to simply a piano sketch.
I then sent that sketch over to my friend Christopher Siu,
a talented composer and fellow YouTuber who shares my love for that cinematic orchestral sound.
Chris took that piano sketch and orchestrated it for a full
orchestra and then we hopped on a call to discuss how he approached
working from someone else's sketch, how he captured that Disney orchestral sound,
how he decided when to use my ideas and when to follow his intuition, and add his own ideas
and his thoughts on orchestrating for virtual instruments in the era of digital composers.
Before we get into our conversation let's take a listen to that original piano sketch.
So I'm curious, when I sent you this sketch and said "Here orchestrate this," what was step one?
Yeah so step one I basically brought the sketch into Logic.
I decided what melodic instrumentation I wanted first and that probably took the longest because
I didn't want to use brass the entire time, right, given it's a heroic thing or whatever.
And I knew I wanted french horns, I knew I wanted trumpets in the higher registers,
but in the middle we also know that strings are really good at performing these sorts of
themes that are more up-tempo and exciting.
So I decided, like, which instruments I wanted to play the melody and then that
kind of informed the harmonic and rhythmic decisions for the rest of the orchestra.
So it's always the melody first.
Melodic instrumentation, figure that out and then figure out what
complements that melodic instrumentation fittingly
and then move on to the rest of the details like the textures the runs and all of that.
So you orchestrated this based on my sketch, which was limited information, but those runs
when I heard them I almost thought that they were in my sketch because they make so much sense.
They seem like just the obvious thing.
Do you have any thoughts on how you just knew to do that without me telling you to?
That's a great question.
I think it started off with trying to decide how faithful I was to
your sketch versus how much I wanted to add on my own right?
And I believe that we put all of the information from your sketch into the
final product because I wanted to use that as a foundational base, right?
And I actually think it's a positive that you didn't put everything in because then we can
kind of exercise our personal experiences, like how we want to orchestrate certain things, right.
Were there any ways that you knew this is a moment where we need more than what's on the page?
To kind of kind of figure out what holes are currently there,
it could be harmonic holes, it could be melodic holes or maybe it just feels like something
that there's just a gap in the music right.
Snd so those moments you want to just
close your eyes listen back, and this is literally what I do every single second.
So i'm listening to a passage but then I ask myself
"could this be even more interesting?" right.
So I find myself starting to put melodies and additional textures,
when maybe the melody's holding a certain note and the harmonic instruments maybe
are more sustained but there's not much rhythmic activity going on there.
So maybe that requires some rhythmical aspects.
Maybe it's a little snare drum.
Maybe it's I know timpani or something.
Maybe the melody is holding something but the rhythmic section is super active but it
sounds like there's not much harmonic material going on in the mid-range.
So maybe that's cause for a more pad stuff in the middle.
Maybe that means there should be a counter melody in there to
enhance what's already happening in the melody.
I think a good rule of thumb is whenever you have
a sort of gap in harmonic information or rhythmic information use that opportunity
to put in something that complements what's happening in the main theme.
The working title for this on the sketch was Magical Fanfare ,so
as an orchestrator are there certain colors, especially in this kind of Disney
context that we were going for, what are the colors that say Disney magical fanfare?
I feel like the Disney style uses quite a lot of strings and woodwinds and whatever they do,
if it's a typical orchestral score and not just brass because a lot of trailer pieces type
you know that style doesn't really focus too much on the woodwind section.
I literally have a student who refuses to touch woodwinds.
Giving a nice balance to the entire orchestra, giving each section a chance to
shine like give it its own function where it can very clearly you can define what it's doing.
I think that is something that Disney excels at with their orchestrators because
they appreciate the entire orchestra and they try to use
you know like we said each section very deliberately in certain ways.
Do you have any any thoughts on how to develop a vocabulary and kind of know
who gets the chords who gets the melody and what just makes sense?
Honestly I think listening, you can treat it as like 80 of your learning process.
Just listening and then writing down what you hear, what you enjoy about it.
Like oh it feels like maybe the violas were doubled with the violins,
they're an octave apart and what effect did that create?
It strengthened the melody.
Or the brass are playing this really short ostinato.
Are there other brass in there?
Like is it trombones as well.
But yeah listening is so so important and then score study as well right?
Like take a look at what has actually happened in a published material.
So if you have the score on hand
then you can always refer to it just to double check if you're correct you know.
and even if you can't read notation that's totally fine,
like you can get a general sense of who's playing where because notes are obvious.
See where the black dots are.
You see where the black dots are!
Yes so I would do that for maybe 20 30% of the time.
But at least for me personally I think listening was the the number one thing because you just
develop the inner ear of understanding how it how the orchestra sounds and what things can do what.
I know you have a lot of libraries. I know you have a pretty good collection.
Was there any consideration at any point any limits of what you maybe weren't able to do?
Or kind of on the reverse, knowing your libraries was there any choices that
you're like "oh I want to use this because it will sound really great with xyz samples"
Yeah yeah that's a great question.
I mean the most direct example I can think of is for the very beginning brass lick actually,
because not a lot of brass libraries have really good punchy staccato modes right?
And because it's a quicker tempo the overall piece like there's you gotta make that sound convincing.
I was using CineBrass at first because I really wanted that Sony tone in the in
the samples and but I realized like the short stacatissimos weren't actually short enough.
So I actually had to turn to Cinematic Studio Brass to do that function and I
used the shortest short note, it was like I think they call it the repetition short.
I basically use the short patch there to go but then I use CineBrass to hold that note so
"duba" for Cinematic Studio Brass and then "dun" for CineBrass right.
And then I tried to mix it in a way where it sounded somewhat
cohesive and you can't really tell the difference between those two libraries.
So you're not worried about keeping one trumpet sound the whole time.
You use what sounds good for the moment.
I use what sounds good for the moment but of course you still want to keep in consideration
if it's going to sound convincing as that same player throughout the entire time.
So maybe that means it's a similar dynamic, or you have to choose similar mic positions right.
Or do similar eq moves or something to make it sound that way.
When we're working on film and video game music where the ensemble is virtual, can we separate the
orchestration process from the sample libraries or do we need to really be conscious of both?
Yeah I guess it really depends on the the end goal right?
Like if you know that it's going to be entirely virtual then the
sample library selection is a lot more important.
One of the giveaways of an amateur mock-up is just having the instruments
not feel like they're in the same location.
So one of the one of those things is just figuring out which microphone positions
are consistent between your different sections.
So you might want to find like a mix mic position you like from one library.
Let's say your strings library has a mixed
position that sounds great but the woodwinds sound too close.
So you might have to blend the close with more of the tree or the omni mic and
you know compare those back and forth.
And just close your eyes and say like "do these instruments feel like they could be
in the same room" and if the answer is yes then you can move on and so forth.
That skill becomes trivial when you listen to lots and lots of recordings.
And I always think it starts from a good understanding of how those timbres work, how the
dynamic ranges are playable ranges etc.
And then figuring out what sample libraries can actually do that and go from there.
So now let's listen to Chris's final orchestration and mock-up of the full Disney fanfare piece.
Chris and I also talked about how I approached the original composition
of that piano sketch and how I used motives
and form and harmony to capture that Disney fanfare as the foundation of the piece.
To learn about how I approach the composition side of that track
you definitely want to check out this video on Chris's channel here.
Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one!