orchestra compositions

[Newbie dude]

Call me a dork, but I love orchestra parts in soundtracks for movies and even video games sometimes. I've been wanting to get into writing things like these[ I've done one already] and I'm wondering if anyone has advice for writing things like these, or if anyone can point me to a good, helpful website.

[Freddy]

Way beyond my musical ability, but I have absolute respect for anyone who can do that and wish you all the best. No pointers, sorry

[dementedchord]

i'ld think seriously about a book on orchestration.... there are things that most would'nt think of on there own that can make a diff... for instance staying within the natural freq range of an instrument.... most instruments (samples) tend to sound strange when exceded by even just a few pitches...

[fraserhutch]

Agreed, you'll need MANY books. It's a serious field of study. And a firm grasp of music theory.

I can suggest several from my bookshelves if you're interested:

- The study of Orchestration by Samuel Adler is an excellent text, and it comes with a companion set of CDs.

- Orchestration, Walter Piston (not to be confused with our dear Walters here).

- Principles of Orchestration, Rimsky-Korsakov

Also to look for:
- any Paul Hindemith or text.
- Ravel was a master orchestrator, and he wrote a number of texts. I don't have any of them anymore, though.

Hope this helps a bit.

Originally Posted by dementedchord

i'ld think seriously about a book on orchestration.... there are things that most would'nt think of on there own that can make a diff... for instance staying within the natural freq range of an instrument.... most instruments (samples) tend to sound strange when exceded by even just a few pitches...

[Newbie dude]

sweet. i'll look for them at books a million.

[dementedchord]

Originally Posted by fraserhutch

Agreed, you'll need MANY books. It's a serious field of study. And a firm grasp of music theory.

I can suggest several from my bookshelves if you're interested:

- The study of Orchestration by Samuel Adler is an excellent text, and it comes with a companion set of CDs..

i have the others listed... dont know the adler... the others are way cool in my book but are a pretty hard read if your not pretty well versed in theory to begin with....

[DavidK]

The books are fine, but you have to lead the life. The Piston book would be greek to 99% of people if they didnt already have a pretty formidable musical knowledge.

I suggest getting as many classical CDs as you can. Even if your interest is film, you gotta know the classics well and the good orchestrators, the makeup of the orchestra, the zillions of string effects. etc.

If your school has Italian, take it. You gotta know hundreds (thousands) of Italian words like Marcato, Ponticello, etc. You also should have some reasonable keyboard skills. Every composer has some knowledge of the piano.

Get crackin

[Nick_Black]

I'm just gonna state the obvius here (I'm assuming that your using midi) if you are using midi, grab a guitar or piano and learn all the scales and corasponding chord structures and patters, make shure you get a nice basic base knowledge about music before you go into the advanced stuff.

hope this helps.