Starting a tune...

[mirrored]

Hi there. That may be dumb question for some of you, but... How is your experience with starting or arranging a tune of yours? I ask because I have often difficulties with properly execute the beginning of an orchestral track.
It always gives me pain to make proper start according to what flows in my mind - I try to get those ideas into the sequencer, but there is always something not sounding right. And I spend a lot of time tweaking velocities, changing melodies, articulations and instruments. Now I don't have any education in the orchestration so IMHO that is my main problem. But I have heard that making a cue for piano and orchestrating it is ggod idea. But how that piano cue should look like? Is it just "band" of notes or should it be written properly for a piano performer(s)?
I'll be grateful for any advice in the matter.

[nickysnd]

Keep things separately.

Here is the work flow of my team:
the composer composes (on paper),
then, the orchestrator orchestrates (on paper),
then, the copyist copies and prints the score,
then, the player plays and midi-records each part,
then, the mockuper midi-edits the performance,
then, the recording engineer prints every instrument in audio and edits/mixes the tracks.

Sometimes, those guys are trying to poke their noses in one another's job - that's when I fillip them noses. And now, the best part: those guys are all working for peanuts (and soda) :D

[JB78]

This might help, I've have just skimmed over it but even if it's not exactly what you're looking for I'm sure you'll learn something:)

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=98

Here's a site where you can find several of Coplands sketches:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/copland/

Best regards
Jon

[Kaatza_Music]

I work by myself. For me the process varies. Sometimes it will start with a melody, sometimes with a chord progression. I usually play around with it for awhile on piano or sometimes guitar until I get a feel that I like. Then I start playing in the parts on my controller one at a time. I try to use as little quantize as possible. I don't do a ton of mixing with orchestral samples, the mix seems to develop on its own by the instrumentation and how I play the dynamics of the parts. When I have recorded all of the parts, I draw in any volume, pan changes that I want. Then I start tweaking the EQ and adding effects and reverb. After I do a mix down, I master my mix with Izotope Ozone 3.

[mirrored]

This might help, I've have just skimmed over it but even if it's not exactly what you're looking for I'm sure you'll learn something:)

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=98



I am registered at northern sounds since I am reading those prinicples of orchestration forum lessons, but I have never encountere the link you have provided me. There are some important points there. I guess my main problem is solved now. I just have to change my approach, wchich was wrong in the first place - doing sketch of a tune, main rhytmic patterns, motifs and such. And there I can start to work on details (what I did in even the few first seconds of a tune, from the very beginning). It is quite simply advice, but I must be dumb that I haven't thought of something as simple as that. :) Also the lesson about form has inspired me to make use of motifs that I develop - repeat them, vary them, ... Wow, sometimes I need something get straight into my face, because I am looking everywhere but simple solutions. :) Thank you. :)

[audiochild]

Keep things separately.

Here is the work flow of my team:
the composer composes (on paper),
then, the orchestrator orchestrates (on paper),
then, the copyist copies and prints the score,
then, the player plays and midi-records each part,
then, the mockuper midi-edits the performance,
then, the recording engineer prints every instrument in audio and edits/mixes the tracks.

Sometimes, those guys are trying to poke their noses in one another's job - that's when I fillip them noses. And now, the best part: those guys are all working for peanuts (and soda) :D

so many people on here must have multiple personalities. :P

[nickysnd]

so many people on here must have multiple personalities. :P
That is the cruel reality of our profession - unfortunately, almost everyone in this business have to have multiple personalities. The very few who can afford to not have multiple personalities, they hire people and then they remotely control their media ventures. :p Furthermore, given your signature, you surely are well aware that "a healthy corruption is better than a corrupt health." ;) Is that something well known among German people? Where is that quote from?

[JB78]

I am registered at northern sounds since I am reading those prinicples of orchestration forum lessons, but I have never encountere the link you have provided me. There are some important points there. I guess my main problem is solved now. I just have to change my approach, wchich was wrong in the first place - doing sketch of a tune, main rhytmic patterns, motifs and such. And there I can start to work on details (what I did in even the few first seconds of a tune, from the very beginning). It is quite simply advice, but I must be dumb that I haven't thought of something as simple as that. :) Also the lesson about form has inspired me to make use of motifs that I develop - repeat them, vary them, ... Wow, sometimes I need something get straight into my face, because I am looking everywhere but simple solutions. :) Thank you. :)


No problem, glad I could help:)

Here's a pretty helpful (at least it was to me) part of an interview with Alan Silvestri regarding not getting bogged down in details when starting a cue:

If you're a painter and you make a choice as to the medium you're going to work in, after you've decided the subject, that wipes out tremendous numbers of possibilities. Same thing in music. The moment you begin, every time you make a choice, you cancel a tremendous number of other possibilities. So then, the creative process as I experience it becomes this kind of following along and I think when people get bogged down in trying to do too much too quickly and I've actually tried to short-circuit my process, what's come to be my process.

When I see a scene and I'm actually going to begin to write, I work on incredibly sketchy pass. The mission, the goal, the aim of that particular stage of the process is to get a very, very overall view of the music. I find that if I try intentionally to be more specific than this threshold that I've come to discover for myself, it cuts the energy off and I'm stopped and then I have nothing, because then I'm not doing the task at hand. The task at hand is to develop the overall view. Once that's there, then a tremendous number of possibilities have just been removed, a tremendous number of sandtraps have just been removed from the course. They're not there anymore, I don't have to worry about that anymore. Now I have this here and now within that what I've experienced is that it's almost as thought a different part of my brain is called upon to do these different aspects of this.

It's more difficult for me, always, to derive that first very vague version of the music. The first thing I work on is a four-line sketch. Sometimes I may only write one line, it's just very vague. But that's always the most taxing. That's what I feel is the essential creative part of my job. Once that's done, I feel that I can unplug that part of my brain and then I plug in another part that starts to elaborate and chisel and highlight and bring this into some kind of relief and make it happen. It is far less painful, for lack of a better word, than this original. And it stands to reason, in a sense that, the first process is something coming from nothing. There's blank paper -- there's nothing there. I have to come forth. Once you come forth with something, it is no longer something from nothing. There is something there.

The very fact that it's there now has all of its own life. It's got things that it can do, it has things it can't do. I mean if I've established key relationships, those are there, they will be adhered to. I don't have to worry about all the other keys now -- they're gone. It's just from here to here to here -- whatever it is, harmonies, a melody -- that becomes the law and it's not every other melody that could be written I have to be taxing my brain with. That choice has been made. It's done. Not that you won't refine it and do things, but something exists now, so it's a whole different energy to work on something that exists, I guess is what I'm saying, as it is to work on something that doesn't exist.

AS: It was so vivid to me -- and this is not that long ago. I was working on a project where we were getting squeezed pretty bad for time and it was because of that that I thought I would try to short circuit what had come to be my process and I thought that just to save time I'll go right to something that's more detailed than normally and I spent one of the most horrid days writing than I had experienced in ten years. And I fell for it. That's what was interesting. I was like a crazed person, you know, negative and couldn't write and "I have no ideas" and kvetching and all, and it was not until the end of the day that I realized what I had done that I had confused the issue. I had forgotten the process and kind of didn't have any respect for it. I thought that I could somehow willfully change it, but those pieces don't go together. Before that experience, I would not have been able to articulate what we've both articulated in our own way today, but this was a first-hand experience of it. Of course, the idea to do it that way was abandoned and I got up the next morning and it came out all at once. The whole cue came out all at once, so it's pretty remarkable. It's difficult, probably, to communicate that and if you're attempting that, I think it's an incredibly worthwhile effort because even short of experience, I think people who have not come upon a kind of meshing with the creative process will certainly have come upon the effects of not being in step with it and the frustration. That will all be very recognizable.

: That's what translates into writer's blocks. That's what behind some of that, that there is a process that is natural for you and you've ignored it, no matter what it is. There might be people who have a process just the opposite of yours but that's natural for them and it works.
AS: And that's what we need to find -- how my organism derives and develops material. I think that's very worthwhile because nothing can grow in that confused environment. It's almost like the initial concepts are moving so quickly that they can't exist in this heavier air of development. And so, if you have two different atmospheres, living environments, that both of these energies have to function in and you can't expect one to exist in the wrong environment and so the job is to kind of do some gardening here.

JB: I always hate someone to come and say, "You know, I don't think I'm doing this right," as though there really is a right way to do it, "because I know somebody else who does it differently and I just can't so maybe I'm just not happenin'." And to destroy their confidence because they don't operate the way somebody they admire operates and they think it has to be done that way.
AS: I had a piano teacher who used to call that "insipient leprosy." And here's where the story came from: I walked into his place and I had been doing some counterpoint exercises and of course, I didn't do any of them this week. And I went in to see this guy and I had this meaningful pitch, because I'd really come to something, which is exactly what you've explained. I just don't know if I really should be writing and I don't know if I can really do this. There seem to be people [who do it better].... and he listened very attentively while I poured my heart out to him about the difficulties of writing and he sat way back in his recliner, with his cigar, and said, "Yep! Insipient leprosy!" I was in the middle of this confession and he said that ... and he explained, "Well, ya know, that's kind of how it starts, and then you're going to find like in a couple days your arm's gonna drop off, your right arm. And then in a couple days, your left arm will drop off and then it will happen with your left leg and your right leg, and then that's it." I remember just being kind of riveted by the guy, it's hard to communicate the emotional aspect of it, but if I had to look back on it, the adolescent attitude is not acceptable and it's not what any of us wish for ourselves. The excuse-making process has got to be seen for what it is, by us personally, for something else to appear. This was an instance of pure shock value, the way this old timer shocked me into sitting there in my filth, in a sense, and having to take a look at it for what it was. When anyone can do that for us and assist us, I think that's really what living is all about. We need to get some kind of view of our captivity and creativity, although it may rhyme with captivity, is really on the opposite end of the spectrum ... almost not even in the same world. It's a different world. That's why we want to be more free and clear to let things happen.

You can find the whole interview at www.johnbraheny.com

Best regards
Jon

[audiochild]

That is the cruel reality of our profession - unfortunately, almost everyone in this business have to have multiple personalities. The very few who can afford to not have multiple personalities, they hire people and then they remotely control their media ventures. :p Furthermore, given your signature, you surely are well aware that "a healthy corruption is better than a corrupt health." ;) Is that something well known among German people? Where is that quote from?

multiple personalities could be such a fun if only they could communicate with each other!

replace "corruption" with "perverseness" the first time, the second time with "ruined" and you got it :p
only makes sense in german because of the double meaning.

that quote comes from a [female (they are the worst)] friend of mine.
the perverseness shouldn't be understood as a bad questionable perverseness but as a (as the quote says) healthy life-enrichening perverseness. LOL does that make any sense?
at 3 am it does. :D
hey, you asked me.