Hi fellow CF-ers!
It's been a while since my last post but I've had a shot of inspiration and have decided to write another article on orchestration. This time I'm returning to the woodwind section.
The Current State of Play
I think the first thing to mention here is that my situation with regards to woodwind is different from where it was when I wrote the last article.
Firstly, I now have access to a live woodwind player of amazing capability. She's a genuine world-class player and ha…
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Added by James Semple on November 27, 2009 at 11:05am —
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Well this is just a quick blog post to say "Wow!"
These arrived last night and they are amazing. I'll go into more and more detail over the coming weeks.
In the meantime please take this demo put together extremely hastily. I will be refining it over the next few nights.
http://www.jamessemple.com/music/lassdemo.mp3
This doesn't even get close to showing what LASS can do but at least you get some idea of the rich and…
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Added by James Semple on July 28, 2009 at 4:30am —
12 Comments
Hi fellow Forumlings
Well after
my first action music blog post there had to be the inevitable sequel.
So ... my first post had no aspirations to be comprehensive but it tried to cover some of the basics. In this post I'd like to cover a few more tricks that I've used of late. Again there's no effort to cover all bases but more to open discussion. I'm sure I'll have further posts on this subject.
My latest…
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Added by James Semple on June 22, 2009 at 7:00am —
3 Comments
Well it's been a while since I wrote anything about composition techniques and I thought it was time to post a new blog.
Anyone who reads a lot of these blogs will be aware that one of the main things I've always loved about film music is the specific harmonic devices employed. To date I've already covered chromatic mediants, tritones, bitonality and planing.
In this blog I want to briefly discuss a fairly simple device which is exceptionally effective for giving a sense of otherworldliness. I…
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Added by James Semple on June 15, 2009 at 4:30am —
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Ok, so it's been a while and I've been very busy but I thought I'd try and drop in a quick blog post about writing action/fight music.
A brief overview
Lots of action scenes take place accompanied by major themes from a film or even background songs. This is not really the kind of action music I'm looking at here. What I'm discussing in this post is classic action music - frantic, dissonant and often quite bewildering. Think of everything from Jerry Goldsmith's work to modern films score…
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Added by James Semple on January 19, 2009 at 11:33am —
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In light of my more popular blog posts I decided to really give the game away here and post up some of my favoured mix/production techniques.
A review of my commercially available music (
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=57994&src=compforum) brought to light that the freely available music on my website is not of the quality of my current output. To this end I've decided to write a whol…
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Added by James Semple on October 21, 2008 at 11:00am —
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Ok, I will (at last) be heading to Steven Scott Smalley's world-famous orchestrator's workshop in Manhattan this coming Saturday.
I have very high hopes for this course. Just yesterday I bought the new "Lego Batman" game for the Wii and the music is an arrangement of the Danny Elfman theme. It struck me that although the theme is pretty cool, the real strength of that music is in the amazing orchestration and how the theme is developed and used by the various instruments. As Mr Smalley was one…
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Added by James Semple on October 13, 2008 at 5:18am —
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Of late I've been working on a project where I've needed a sound reminiscent of modern soundtracks such as The Bourne Identity, Batman Begins and Battlestar Galactica, especially with the big percussion arrangements.
So, having pretty much learned from scratch here, I thought I might share my findings with the good members of the forum. I'm really going to talk about un-tuned percussion here so I'm afraid my thoughts on marimbas, glockenspiels, vibraphones, harps and even pianos will have to wa…
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Added by James Semple on July 28, 2008 at 8:02am —
7 Comments
Ok, so I've discussed lots of areas of digital orchestration but today I thought I'd discuss how I get everything working together and what my main "go to" samples and VIs are.
I'll try not to turn this into a big shopping list as best I can.
Hardware
Ok, so I'm using an 8-core Mac Pro with 3 hard drives (system/apps, recording and samples). I've got a Saffire Pro 10i/o as a Firewire audio interface. I'm using E-Mu monitor speakers with the E-Mu subwoofer. For MIDI input I'm using an E-…
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Added by James Semple on July 15, 2008 at 5:31am —
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Well this really is a bold post because (like most people I suspect) I still really have no idea how to use the woodwind section.
I would say that they really are the least liked and least understood section of the orchestra for many modern composers. I also notice that they are often the first section to be omitted in many of the robust, modern action scores. Even Danny Elfman who always seemed to love them in his early works (like The Nightmare Before Christmas) has abandoned them these days…
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Added by James Semple on June 5, 2008 at 9:22am —
4 Comments
Ok, I'm off to the US for a couple of weeks but I thought I'd leave with a quick blog entry on mocking up string sections.
Again before I start, I don't pretend to be an expert on this subject but it is something that I've spent time working on and I'd like to trade ideas with the people on this forum.
As everyone probably knows, mocking up string sections can be very difficult and the results can be somewhat disappointing. They manifest a number of problems from sounding 'synthy' to having a…
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Added by James Semple on May 21, 2008 at 4:31pm —
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Well... actually this is about real horror stories and the distinctive music written to accompany them.
I've been writing some horror music for a while now but the more I dig into it the more I realise how distinctive this field of music really is. I make no claim to be an expert here and as always I'm really hoping to open the floor for others to offer their opinions.
Now horror music often shares ideas with many other genres. In many forms of horror there is a strong romantic element and as…
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Added by James Semple on May 7, 2008 at 9:30am —
10 Comments
Ok, in today's strange installment I'm going to look at using the IV and V chords in composition and some possible substitutions.
Let's use C as the root of our one chord and we'll work in major and minor keys.
So, starting with the basic major key I-IV-V we get C F G. This is the basis of Western Harmony so I'm not really giving away any secrets here.
For the minor key we have Cm Fm G.
This chord progression is generally interchangeable with the I-II-V (i.e. C Dm G), often with the II chord…
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Added by James Semple on April 30, 2008 at 5:30am —
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One of the joys of my home studio is having the opportunity to create virtual orchestral scores. This really is a pleasure and something that would not have been available to many people as recently as 5 years ago!
Anyway, given that I don't have any formal orchestration training, I have been learning how to orchestrate with virtual mockups and lots of books on the subject (and a lot of scores!)
During this time (and I'm still learning, I have no illusions there) I have learnt to divide up the…
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Added by James Semple on March 31, 2008 at 4:38am —
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Well, it's a few months down the line from my first WIVI post and I thought it was worth writing a sequel.
A few things have happened since that first post: -
- Wallander released WIVI woodwinds!
- I bought a breath controller
- I wrote a few more pieces using WIVI
...so I thought it was time for an update.
Using WIVI
Firstly, I'm going to talk about using WIVI for the last few months. Like every piece of software or tool you learn new tricks and techniques and you develop a favourite…
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Added by James Semple on March 12, 2008 at 12:42pm —
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Given that my 'Film Music Chord Change' proved to be quite popular, I decided to write another post in a similar vein. I may even get the chance to expand this into a vague series of sorts.
This post is about certain kinds of techniques, harmonies or whatever that have been used in specific scenes and as a result they have become an important part of the 'language' of film music. Very often film music has to fall back upon existing music to meet audience expectations and therefore I feel it is…
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Added by James Semple on March 11, 2008 at 9:44am —
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A couple of weeks ago I bought a new Mac Pro. Great, a really amazing machine. Since then, nearly every waking moment has been consumed with the momentous task of moving my Cubase setup from my PC to the Mac.
Now, I'm a complete Mac OS newb so this has been quite the learning curve. Also I'm aware that I'm trying to get a lot of software working together.
So Cubase 4.1 should be my first install but it isn't really because before I can do that I need to install the Syncrosoft Licence Control C…
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Added by James Semple on March 3, 2008 at 10:59am —
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Well I've been writing orchestral music for around 18 months now and of late I've been working on some really nice pieces but they've been generally quite introspective and low-key.
I decided that it was time for me to write a real 'adventure' piece of music, drawing on influences from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.
So, without further ado I present Night Escape. This piece is a real homage to some of my favourite adventure scores. You can download it from
…
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Added by James Semple on December 3, 2007 at 5:52am —
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Yep, that's a bold title no doubt about it. I apologise upfront to all the composers who will find this very basic stuff but this was a real discovery for me.
I've been writing rock and pop music for many years now. I've been a fan of film music for far longer... probably dating back to the first time I saw Star Wars.
Anyway, 2 years ago I was sitting at the keyboard and playing around on a strings patch when I suddenly played a chord change that I'd just never really focused on
…
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Added by James Semple on November 1, 2007 at 11:46am —
27 Comments
Well I'm sorry if this comes across sounding like an advert but I'm currently going through the happy honeymoon period with my new Wallander Instruments Visual Instruments player.
I'm sure many others are like me: we want to write orchestral music with samples. We buy the libraries and start writing but soon we realise that we are going to have to learn about mixing and production ... and so it begins... before we know it we're messing around with frequencies and buying stereo panners
…
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Added by James Semple on October 2, 2007 at 9:19am —
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