I love John Powell's statement, which you quoted here, which says: "I had to focus less and less on programming, when I just got better at orchestration". That is SUCH a powerful statement, and one that I, as a beginning orchestrator, will take to heart. Thx Oscar!
its true i'm currenlty taking these online courses called Orchestration recipes. highly recommend. i can't recommend these enough. .it's split up in 5 blocks. 50 bux each.. worth a lot more honestly, it's a steal at this price. i have bought many online courses and been struggling. this Orchestration Recipes guy will take you places trust me.
Great video Oscar, thanks for notifying me about your news channel. Exactly the subject I was working on right now. I’m very curious about the reverb and mixing in better detail. Also, curious about if you usually deliver mockups or if your own compositions are eventually recorded? Thank you!
Having different channels for long and short articulations isn't just a mixing choice - it's also to accommodate the different pre-delay offsets for longs and shorts. This is why you'll need to have separate channels for long and short articulations.
Thanks so much, one of the best videos on orchestrion I’ve come across and I have watched a lot, great tips and advice, no fluff, concise and clear. Your passion and enthusiasm really shows.
That's funny. I clicked on the thumbnail of the video because you looked familiar. Than the video started and in a few words recognized your voice: I listened to many of your videos on classical composers and composition tips on another yt channel of yours (hope that it still exist). After this "revelation" I watched your video with curiosity (being someone who really appreciated your previous contents) and you explained literally what I did in the last weeks: even the scores are the same🤯. It's not funny per se, but the coincidence to find your video after literally saving my "Hogwarts template" seems to me a funny cosmic joke. I'm going to follow your new channel with great pleasure 💪
Great video. Your wonderful facial expressions as the pieces play just shows your enjoyment and genuine love. I will definitely be a regular visitor. Thankyou.
Thank you for this! As someone who doesn't use DAWs this is the type of simplicity that works. Also, from what you showed, it looks like the balance of the orchestra is pretty good. So if you are writing for live orchestra, this seems like a pretty realistic way to get a mockup. (Say compared to Note Performer. Which does a great job, but doesn't get the demo to that level.) Thank you!!
Very informative thankyou Oscar and have subscribed. Would be good if you can share more detail about how you went about transcribing the origional orchestral scores. Do you get hold of the actual score or just recreate just via ear alone? I'm in the process of trying the latter method but starting at an age where my hearing is somewhat compromised so am probably missing a lot of the detail of the more subtle elements . Not sure where to obtain scores from for example. However agree a brilliant way of setting out to learn your craft and you channel looks perfect as a resoure to help this. More information on reverb would be good as some composers stack reverbs on different busses, thus have a glue reverb over the section specific ones. But seemed like you don't do that.
Hey, your template sounds absolutely awesome. May I ask how much RAM your PC has? I have also started to make my own template. To get along better with the negative track delay I created Kontakt Mulits for each instrument and loaded the articulations individually in a single Kontakt instance. I don't know why, but I use about 20 gb when I have loaded all the strings. Is it the same for you? Greetings from Germany
In this case, Scheps Omni Channel (I might have to try doing a whole mix with mostly just this one day)... And then I just can't resist the UAD Studer Tape, set to GP9... In this instance I put it at 30 IPS, but 15 IPS also sounds very good, and has potentially less harshness for orchestral, more warm... But in this instance I made a judgement call and said screw it, I like the 30 IPS brightness for Harry Potter!
Great video! Thanks for sharing this, really informative. I would love to get better at Orchestral music composing etc. I have a question though? What would you suggest to do, regarding studying the great scores as you say, if you are someone ( like me!) who cannot read or write music? Having no real music theory knowledge, how would i be able to transcribe a score into Cubase ? What could i do to improve and learn orchestration, and not just programming? Thanks again for sharing, really enjoyed watching your video, even more so as i came across your video by accident? Cheers!
Thanks for the informative vid, really useful and it sounds spot-on! Where did you find the score for ‘Leaving Hogwarts’? Or did you transcribe it all by ear? I’ve been looking for it for years and not found anything yet…
If I may ask, where are you getting your scores from? I have researched John Williams scores and own a few but I don't see "Leaving Hogwarts" available anywhere.
Wow. That sounds really realistic and amazing. How many hours did you spend creating the Midi and expressions? I know that in addition to notes, chords, and the right choice of instruments, it is important to bring the virtual instruments to life with expression and dynamic controllers. How long did it take you to make this track sound so fantastic?👏
If you're applying most of your effects to the master buss (full orchestra), do you put the compression before or after the reverb? I've always put the compression before the reverb, and I want to compress the orchestra, but not the room dynamics. I want the room reverb to apply to the already-controlled orchestral dynamics. Which way round do you think is better? (And yes - I know about "use your ears" - but to me, compression before reverb does sound better.)
i would recommend Stravinsky and Holst, and then Debussey and Joe Hisaishi for piano stuff. Tchaikovsky good too, most orchestral music in history is very obscure melodies and harmonies that i'm not really going to use much in modern composing. Like this guy told me i should study Mendelsson's Fingal's Cave.. yea it's cool but those old voicings and harmonies are probably not something i would use.. Aleatoric music is very interesting tho and can translate for ppl wanting to learn to score horror or suspense. The video game Deadspace is one of the best scores for this.
Hi Oscar, I have 2 questions: 1) Do you use original reverb from CSS (if yes, what percentage) and put convolution over it? 2) How do you manage divisi? I haven't seen separate tracks for them and legato articulation works only with one voice in CSS. Thank you.
Hi again yessimus! I do not use their reverb! In this instance with divisi I just use Long articulations with very soft modulation settings. Not ideal but it depends on how exposed the divisi is. Haven't really found a perfect solution with divisi, so in different contexts might have to make a different decision!
You spent several hours on transcribing? It would cost me days! And where did John Williams use a Serum subbass 😉 Really great video. I agree that orchestration is the most important.
Absolutely - Soothe 2 is at 60% on "Orchestral Fender" - just gently taming that 2-4k range... Gullfoss is actually doing nothing lol, I don't like the sound, I left it on there to test it!
@@oscarosicki Thaks :) And how about negative delay in this template? CSS has a big delay in each articulation - legato the biggest :) How do You handle that? :)
@@symfonik-pl I use shortcuts where I highlight the MIDI - and then use personal shortcuts (in Cubase with the Logical Editor) - I think I have one for Slow Legato, and Fast Legato, and Woodwind legato... and Fast notes... Because blessed Cinematic Studio Series has pretty much equal delays for each articulation (another reason why they're sturdy for me) - so I just plug the notes in with quantization, and then use my shortcuts to offset them. That's my workflow. Others would say do it differently. But for some silly reason I love having one orchestral instrument per track unless absolutely necessary. I guess I still "see it" as composing in an orchestral score, mentally, only it's a different kind of medium (a DAW). Hope that makes sense!
Hello! I bookmarked this video because I can't watch it yet, so sorry if you answered that here: what you call "template", is it simply a Reaper project? Or are there actual tools called template in this program?
He does almost everything himself, gives all the indications for the orchestrators. They basically just have to copy the score on the sheets music for musicians.
Translation: Have money to buy good libraries 😂 I’m joking, but with some sense of reality, I have some freebies, and as much as they are good to start, I miss some articulations and layers of expression.
Thanks. Are you getting film score or concert work as a composer that wants John Williams style? If not, then the temple is useless, right? You need to find what makes you and what people will hire YOU for, because copying John Williams or Hans Zimmer AI has covered. Orchestral template cool.. but no one wants your music sounding like others, do they?
Not combining articulation may be convenient for beginners, but you just can't achieve a convincing sound that way. Your mockup doesn't sound convincing to me, either;
@@davedesigning Any of Blakus (he is the king), a few of my own, some of talented composers like Piotr Musial, Blake Robinson (not Blakus), Yuka Kitamura, Jeremy Soule and many others, a lot from random lesser known youtubers (who are gonna be big if they continue). John Powell also does some pretty good mockups, even though he is obviously doing it only as a reference for the live orchestra, so it it lags behind in some parameters, especially the mixing.
@@davedesigning I don't want to reveal myself on this account :) I might just say, if you follow John Williams remakes, there is a big chance that you have heard / will hear some of mine.
@@FireF1y644 Tried searching for John Williams remakes and I couldn't find stuff! Is there another keyword? The best one I did with my sound guy is this: ua-cam.com/video/dUBqYnoqwOU/v-deo.html Mostly I use Note Performer and BALANCE-WISE it matches live orchetra pretty well (in my esperience)---especially if there is no interpretation of the music. For example, a Beethoven Symphony sounds better than live than in Note Performer, but that is because the instrumentalists are doing a ton of unwritten stuff, based on tradition. I don't do DAW. Worked mostly on the sheet music side of things. But I quit that. At this point of my life, what I need to be doing is just writing symphonies and arrangments, and I'm fast in Sibelius. But I'm in admiration of people who can mix well. Also... I've had one mixer who's really messed up a lot of my arrangements for live string quartet and orchestra with bad mixes. But the client chooses who does it. And they never consult me about production. Not smart. I know their music better than they do. Haha
I love John Powell's statement, which you quoted here, which says: "I had to focus less and less on programming, when I just got better at orchestration". That is SUCH a powerful statement, and one that I, as a beginning orchestrator, will take to heart. Thx Oscar!
I agree!!! Thanks!
its true i'm currenlty taking these online courses called Orchestration recipes. highly recommend. i can't recommend these enough. .it's split up in 5 blocks. 50 bux each.. worth a lot more honestly, it's a steal at this price. i have bought many online courses and been struggling. this Orchestration Recipes guy will take you places trust me.
Great video Oscar, thanks for notifying me about your news channel.
Exactly the subject I was working on right now. I’m very curious about the reverb and mixing in better detail. Also, curious about if you usually deliver mockups or if your own compositions are eventually recorded? Thank you!
Having different channels for long and short articulations isn't just a mixing choice - it's also to accommodate the different pre-delay offsets for longs and shorts. This is why you'll need to have separate channels for long and short articulations.
So generous with your knowledge! Much appreciated
Thanks so much, one of the best videos on orchestrion I’ve come across and I have watched a lot, great tips and advice, no fluff, concise and clear. Your passion and enthusiasm really shows.
Why doesn't this channel have more subscribers?? Insane. This was fantastic.
There's one more NOW, I'm in!
He will as long as he is consistent with posting videos it’s good stuff
That's funny. I clicked on the thumbnail of the video because you looked familiar. Than the video started and in a few words recognized your voice: I listened to many of your videos on classical composers and composition tips on another yt channel of yours (hope that it still exist). After this "revelation" I watched your video with curiosity (being someone who really appreciated your previous contents) and you explained literally what I did in the last weeks: even the scores are the same🤯. It's not funny per se, but the coincidence to find your video after literally saving my "Hogwarts template" seems to me a funny cosmic joke. I'm going to follow your new channel with great pleasure 💪
This presentation is very well orchestrated (pun intended). Ideas are presented in an organized and orderly way. Congrat's, Oscar.
Bless you, thanks!!
Extremely well organized video! You have an amazing ability to communicate.
Thank you CodingKricket!!!
Great video. Your wonderful facial expressions as the pieces play just shows your enjoyment and genuine love. I will definitely be a regular visitor. Thankyou.
Thank you for this! As someone who doesn't use DAWs this is the type of simplicity that works. Also, from what you showed, it looks like the balance of the orchestra is pretty good. So if you are writing for live orchestra, this seems like a pretty realistic way to get a mockup. (Say compared to Note Performer. Which does a great job, but doesn't get the demo to that level.)
Thank you!!
Nice video ! everything is correct. great work Oscar!
Nice tips ty ! Do you know any thight midi orchestration sources ?
Hi Oscar, where can I get this template? It is really good. Good day! 🙂
Great video, thankyou ! Excellent advice regarding orchestration and studying great composers.
This was amazing, just what I needed.
What’s your advice on combining libraries all from different developers to get a good cohesive sound
Such a good question, I’m also wondering about this.
Appreciate the video. When you suggest transcribing, do you mean without the score on hand?
Could you explain about your harp next time please. Thats something I always struggle with
Very informative thankyou Oscar and have subscribed.
Would be good if you can share more detail about how you went about transcribing the origional orchestral scores. Do you get hold of the actual score or just recreate just via ear alone? I'm in the process of trying the latter method but starting at an age where my hearing is somewhat compromised so am probably missing a lot of the detail of the more subtle elements . Not sure where to obtain scores from for example. However agree a brilliant way of setting out to learn your craft and you channel looks perfect as a resoure to help this. More information on reverb would be good as some composers stack reverbs on different busses, thus have a glue reverb over the section specific ones. But seemed like you don't do that.
THANK YOU!!! Great job!
The software Divisimate can also help. It can help to double single instruments and the latest version does arp.
Hey, your template sounds absolutely awesome. May I ask how much RAM your PC has? I have also started to make my own template. To get along better with the negative track delay I created Kontakt Mulits for each instrument and loaded the articulations individually in a single Kontakt instance. I don't know why, but I use about 20 gb when I have loaded all the strings. Is it the same for you?
Greetings from Germany
Wonderful as always! I will watch with my son and let him comment as well. So cool you are sharing this! I
Thank you Hollie! Nice to hear from you!
@@oscarosicki Likewise--happy you are adding this channel! The world needs more of you!
Curious - what plugin are you using for saturation?
In this case, Scheps Omni Channel (I might have to try doing a whole mix with mostly just this one day)... And then I just can't resist the UAD Studer Tape, set to GP9... In this instance I put it at 30 IPS, but 15 IPS also sounds very good, and has potentially less harshness for orchestral, more warm... But in this instance I made a judgement call and said screw it, I like the 30 IPS brightness for Harry Potter!
Great summary!
You might add EQ to the mixing part, which is also essential.
Great video! Thanks for sharing this, really informative. I would love to get better at Orchestral music composing etc. I have a question though? What would you suggest to do, regarding studying the great scores as you say, if you are someone ( like me!) who cannot read or write music? Having no real music theory knowledge, how would i be able to transcribe a score into Cubase ? What could i do to improve and learn orchestration, and not just programming? Thanks again for sharing, really enjoyed watching your video, even more so as i came across your video by accident? Cheers!
Thanks for the informative vid, really useful and it sounds spot-on! Where did you find the score for ‘Leaving Hogwarts’? Or did you transcribe it all by ear? I’ve been looking for it for years and not found anything yet…
👌💛 Thank You So Much!🙏💛
...f...g amazing...respect!!
If I may ask, where are you getting your scores from? I have researched John Williams scores and own a few but I don't see "Leaving Hogwarts" available anywhere.
There might be a commercially available score for this. There was an underground for trading complete sheet music scores.
Wow. That sounds really realistic and amazing. How many hours did you spend creating the Midi and expressions? I know that in addition to notes, chords, and the right choice of instruments, it is important to bring the virtual instruments to life with expression and dynamic controllers. How long did it take you to make this track sound so fantastic?👏
If you're applying most of your effects to the master buss (full orchestra), do you put the compression before or after the reverb? I've always put the compression before the reverb, and I want to compress the orchestra, but not the room dynamics. I want the room reverb to apply to the already-controlled orchestral dynamics. Which way round do you think is better? (And yes - I know about "use your ears" - but to me, compression before reverb does sound better.)
Are you willing to share your cubase file to learn from?
What I learned is Cubase has folders for instruments, PC's Emagic Logic 5.5.x didn't have them on both sides of the 2000s :)
i would recommend Stravinsky and Holst, and then Debussey and Joe Hisaishi for piano stuff. Tchaikovsky good too, most orchestral music in history is very obscure melodies and harmonies that i'm not really going to use much in modern composing. Like this guy told me i should study Mendelsson's Fingal's Cave.. yea it's cool but those old voicings and harmonies are probably not something i would use.. Aleatoric music is very interesting tho and can translate for ppl wanting to learn to score horror or suspense. The video game Deadspace is one of the best scores for this.
Hi Oscar, I have 2 questions:
1) Do you use original reverb from CSS (if yes, what percentage) and put convolution over it?
2) How do you manage divisi? I haven't seen separate tracks for them and legato articulation works only with one voice in CSS.
Thank you.
Hi again yessimus! I do not use their reverb! In this instance with divisi I just use Long articulations with very soft modulation settings. Not ideal but it depends on how exposed the divisi is. Haven't really found a perfect solution with divisi, so in different contexts might have to make a different decision!
You spent several hours on transcribing? It would cost me days! And where did John Williams use a Serum subbass 😉
Really great video. I agree that orchestration is the most important.
How you deal with track delay when using expression map instead of tracks for each.
Nudging notes manually or using macros is your only solution
What about Soothe 2 & Gullfoss? These plugins change a loooooooot :) I see it in your Orchestral Mix ;)
Absolutely - Soothe 2 is at 60% on "Orchestral Fender" - just gently taming that 2-4k range... Gullfoss is actually doing nothing lol, I don't like the sound, I left it on there to test it!
@@oscarosicki Thaks :) And how about negative delay in this template? CSS has a big delay in each articulation - legato the biggest :) How do You handle that? :)
@@symfonik-pl I use shortcuts where I highlight the MIDI - and then use personal shortcuts (in Cubase with the Logical Editor) - I think I have one for Slow Legato, and Fast Legato, and Woodwind legato... and Fast notes... Because blessed Cinematic Studio Series has pretty much equal delays for each articulation (another reason why they're sturdy for me) - so I just plug the notes in with quantization, and then use my shortcuts to offset them.
That's my workflow. Others would say do it differently. But for some silly reason I love having one orchestral instrument per track unless absolutely necessary. I guess I still "see it" as composing in an orchestral score, mentally, only it's a different kind of medium (a DAW). Hope that makes sense!
@@oscarosicki Great Oscar :) Thanks! Nice workflow - I have to try one track per instrument - less work :D
most orchestral sample library actually miss a lot of warmth and have thin mixes
Hello! I bookmarked this video because I can't watch it yet, so sorry if you answered that here: what you call "template", is it simply a Reaper project? Or are there actual tools called template in this program?
I thought JW left detailed orchestration to colleagues...
He does almost everything himself, gives all the indications for the orchestrators. They basically just have to copy the score on the sheets music for musicians.
That's really not accurate if you look at his sketches, they're amazingly detailed. Of course colleagues might make small changes
Step-by-step framework? Where? Heck, I was even looking for a "buy" button. Still good stuff, but high level.
Translation: Have money to buy good libraries 😂 I’m joking, but with some sense of reality, I have some freebies, and as much as they are good to start, I miss some articulations and layers of expression.
Thanks. Are you getting film score or concert work as a composer that wants John Williams style? If not, then the temple is useless, right? You need to find what makes you and what people will hire YOU for, because copying John Williams or Hans Zimmer AI has covered. Orchestral template cool.. but no one wants your music sounding like others, do they?
you are only half right about programming.
Not combining articulation may be convenient for beginners, but you just can't achieve a convincing sound that way. Your mockup doesn't sound convincing to me, either;
Curious What mockups sound most realistic to you?
@@davedesigning Any of Blakus (he is the king), a few of my own, some of talented composers like Piotr Musial, Blake Robinson (not Blakus), Yuka Kitamura, Jeremy Soule and many others, a lot from random lesser known youtubers (who are gonna be big if they continue). John Powell also does some pretty good mockups, even though he is obviously doing it only as a reference for the live orchestra, so it it lags behind in some parameters, especially the mixing.
@@FireF1y644 This is great stuff! where do I find your music? It looked like your youTube channel was empty?
@@davedesigning I don't want to reveal myself on this account :) I might just say, if you follow John Williams remakes, there is a big chance that you have heard / will hear some of mine.
@@FireF1y644 Tried searching for John Williams remakes and I couldn't find stuff! Is there another keyword?
The best one I did with my sound guy is this: ua-cam.com/video/dUBqYnoqwOU/v-deo.html
Mostly I use Note Performer and BALANCE-WISE it matches live orchetra pretty well (in my esperience)---especially if there is no interpretation of the music. For example, a Beethoven Symphony sounds better than live than in Note Performer, but that is because the instrumentalists are doing a ton of unwritten stuff, based on tradition.
I don't do DAW. Worked mostly on the sheet music side of things. But I quit that. At this point of my life, what I need to be doing is just writing symphonies and arrangments, and I'm fast in Sibelius.
But I'm in admiration of people who can mix well.
Also... I've had one mixer who's really messed up a lot of my arrangements for live string quartet and orchestra with bad mixes. But the client chooses who does it. And they never consult me about production. Not smart. I know their music better than they do. Haha