Redistribution
Earlier, I wrote about the importance of communication with the composer. The composers I've worked with all have very different approaches, and this can obviously affect how you move forward with the orchestration process. As I said, I find out as much from the composer as possible at the outset, and that will include how comfortable they feel with me not only revoicing chords, but adding new lines and even distributing lines and melodies to different and arguably more suitable instruments.
For example, on a recent job, the composer had assigned a very high melody to the oboe. Some might enjoy this particular timbre but I felt, in reference to the demo's sound, that the real instrument would be too shrill. I made a small change, reassigning the melody to the flute, and it sounded far more musically pleasing. It's hardly ground-breaking stuff, but it's important to recognise situations like this, in which the writing hasn't been as idiomatic as it has the potential to be.
The Lego: The Incredibles video game project was one in which I was given considerable creative freedom — a rare occurrence for orchestrators in today's industry.When I've been granted the power to make such decisions, I'll often take the composer's demo with a pinch of salt — I'll always be on the lookout for anything that could sound strange or could upset the general balance of the music. It's nearly always just a case of asking the composer what they want to achieve, and suggesting an effective alternative. On very rare occasions, the music won't have been quite as fleshed out as in most projects, and you'll be given slightly freer creative rein. Such jobs are harder to come by, but some serious projects do still cater for this technique. For example, not too long ago, I orchestrated Simon Withenshaw's score for the Lego: The Incredibles video game. His mockups were fantastic and very well written, but he made it clear that there was room to adjust anything I felt could be made to sound better with real players. Mostly, this involved revoicing a few chords and fleshing out some of the material, but in a couple of cases (only about two of the 40-ish cues we had in total!) I added a couple of new melodic lines. In this case, the clients were very relaxed about the music — the whole project felt far more relaxed than most — so I was allowed greater creative input than an orchestrator would typically expect. But be aware that this approach is not necessarily the norm.
Mission Impossible?
Some composers can understandably become rather perplexed if they've written a whole string section's worth of harmonics, tremolandi, staccato, pizzicato and legato only for the orchestrator to choose to 'reduce the fat' significantly, to make it work for an orchestra. My rule of thumb is that if you need to retain all of these details but thin things out where there's anything melodic, it's best to leave the tremolandi, harmonics and sometimes pizzicato as samples — these articulations are probably the least recognisable as samples in a mix, and it's better to have the maximum possible number of real players playing the melody/long notes.
I once worked with a composer who'd written about three string sections' worth of material to be played at once, with no overdubbing, and he wouldn't back down about the idea of leaving the pizzicatos as samples. The resulting sound was thin, and the legatos could certainly have been maximised by having higher numbers on them. Still, as orchestrators, it's important to realise that we are hired guns. Yes, we're employed to use our expertise to advise the composer how we think the best-sounding result can be achieved quickly and efficiently — but, ultimately, the composer calls the shots.
Declutter!
Working as a copyist before I moved into orchestration gave me a good appreciation of what sort of bad orchestration habits can irritate copyists and musicians, so I'll leave you with a list of some things I recommend that you don't do. Most fall under the general heading 'over-notating', simply because littering the score/parts with superfluous articulations and technique text can make things harder to read — even if some orchestrators actually think that they're doing the players a favour! A couple of these tips are techniques that I learned from master orchestrator Tim Davies.
Superfluous text makes sight reading harder. In this example there's no need to write sempre l.v. text when you already have l.v. ties attached to the notes.
Don't put an upbow on a string phrase marked as pianissimo — it's patronising. String players naturally play with an upbow at quiet dynamics, so the only time I ever use an upbow or downbow mark is when I'm looking for a specific effect.
Don't write 'sempre l.v.' if you're just going to use the 'l.v.' ties anyway. The example in the picture clogs up the page; use either the text or the ties, but don't use both.
Again, the symbol and the text both mean the same thing — so why put them both there?Don't write 'bartok pizz' or 'snap pizz' as text above the music symbol (circle with a line through the top) for these techniques. Again, you're saying the same thing twice. Since the musicians are sight reading, you're wasting their time.
Don't enter technique text as other types of text in Sibelius (or other notation software). If the copyist needs to filter technique text and you've entered some technique text as expression text, it will make their life much harder. (Always aim to make life as easy as possible for your colleagues, to reduce the chances of mistakes or running over time.)
Another opportunity to streamline the score — rather than be prescriptive, why not trust section leaders to determine how best to divide their sections?When using divisi on a string chord, I used to tell players exactly how I wanted them to divide the chord but after a while, I learned that this can slow the session down. It's best just to write, for instance, 'div. a3' if it's a three-note chord. The section leader deals with such situations day in and day out, so leave this matter to them unless you want a specific sound. The numbers after the divisi mean three players on the top note, three players on the middle note and two players on the bottom note. In the pictured instance, there are eight first violins.
There's no point in including a poco instruction if you're going to put the dynamic marking after it!Don't write 'poco' under a dynamic and then state a dynamic after it. The whole point of a poco is that you're instructing the player to change slightly in volume rather than reaching the next dynamic level up or down. In the first example, the poco is redundant because you're instructing the player to go from mezzo forte to forte. Where is the need for the poco? The second example is the correct usage, because you're stating that you want the player to crescendo slightly, but not quite to the next dynamic level of forte.
About The Author
Tristan Noon.
Tristan Noon is a British TV and film composer, orchestrator and music copyist who has orchestrated music for many high-budget productions, including the AAA-rated video game Lego: The Incredibles and ITV 1's flagship drama Endeavour.
He recently orchestrated, copied and prepped the music for synth-pop/electronic legend Gary Numan's UK tour with the Skaparis Orchestra, and his music has been sync'ed worldwide and placed on the Save The Day campaign, directed by Joss Whedon (The Avengers), as well as countless prime–time television programmes around the world.
Tristan has also written an 88-page eBook, From DAW To Score, which is available on his website and explores the role of the modern orchestrator in much greater depth — if this article has left you keen to learn more, why not check it out?
The Composition Process: An Overview
To understand the role of the modern orchestrator in film, TV and game projects, you need also to understand something of the wider music-production process, so here's a quick overview.
Commissioning: First, the composer pitches for and/or gets commissioned to work on the job.
Spotting Session: The composer will then meet with the directors/producers to discuss where they would like music to feature in the production. They'll discuss at which points music should enter and exit and what kind of emotion should be conveyed at that particular time. (Notes are usually taken by a dedicated music editor in high-budget productions).
Cue List: The notes will be logged into some kind of cue tracker or spreadsheet, along with the timecode in and out, durations and cue ID/title.
Composition: The composer then begins to write each cue, sending each one back to the directors/producers for feedback — something that's referred to as 'notes'. Anyone who has experience in writing for this medium will be very familiar with this term; notes can best be described as the bane of a composer's life.
Orchestration: Once the cues have been signed off, they're sent to the orchestrator, who extracts the MIDI data from the composer's DAW session and turns it into notation, ready to be recorded by session musicians.
Copying (tidying the parts): Once the cues have been orchestrated, they're sent to the copyist (on lower-budget productions the copyist and orchestrator can be the same person) and the parts are then tidied and made legible for the players to sight read.
Music Preparation (printing the music): Once the parts have been tidied, the score and parts are sent to the team in charge of music preparation, and these are printed and delivered to the studio. Generally, there will be an A3 score each for the conductor, the composer (who sometimes may prefer A4) and the orchestrator. There are also A4 scores each for the engineer, the assistant engineer, and anyone else in the room who might require a score, such as the music editor.
Tips & Tricks For Composers
If you've ever heard Andy Blaney's demos using Spitfire Audio's sample libraries, you'll know that they sound unbelievably lifelike. This is partly due to his incredible programming, but it's also to do with the way he handles the instruments idiomatically — in other words, he's a great orchestrator as well as a great composer. If you want to take your sample-based orchestral writing to the next level, you need to do the same, and with that in mind, here are some tips and tricks that will aid good orchestration before it even reaches an orchestrator...
Allow For Breathing: It's not particularly idiomatic to write 20 bars of constant notation for the winds and the brass where there are no gaps for the player to breathe. However, there are ways around this. For example, if you're recording the score with real musicians and you know that you have two or more flutes at your disposal, you can dovetail them by having one flute play two or four bar phrases and then have the second flute take over, and so on. There are many different ways to achieve this effect, but this diagram shows one. (A professional session flautist could easily play four bars without a break at this tempo and dynamic; I'm breaking them up every two bars purely for the sake of this demonstration.)
Know Your Niente: No matter what the samples sound like, double-reed woodwinds, such as the oboe, bassoon, contrabassoon, and brass players cannot achieve true niente (the sound or tone gradually fading to or coming from 'nothing'). The Bb clarinet and bass clarinet are probably the best at producing true niente but there is a natural upper limit to niente on the clarinet.
Avoiding The Organ Effect: It's not recommended to double the middle register too much with relatively long notes; it begins to sound 'organ-like'.
Consider The Instrument's Projection: Be careful of scoring an instrument such as the flute in its lowest register if the texture is dense — it'll be a wasted force because of the poor projection of the instrument in this range. The flute doesn't begin to sing/project well in a thick texture until around an A above the stave.
Unison & Doubling: A nice combination for a big soaring melody can be the use of flute and violins in unison above the staff, with the trumpet doubling an octave lower.
Tessitura: When you want a more intense quality to the sound, voice a lower instrument higher in its tessitura (the range in which a given type of voice presents its characteristic timbre) so that it 'speaks' with more intensity and power.
Flautando Versus Sul Tasto
When composing with samples, you'll often find a sound you like with an articulation that's not quite what you intend. For instance, Spitfire's sul tasto patch sounds great and is a contender for the title 'most used orchestral patch in history' — but sul tasto is often not the articulation that the composer intends. Sul tasto essentially means the performer should play with the bow over the fingerboard. The resulting sound is soft, warm and delicate. But I've found that composers who've chosen to use a sul tasto patch often actually want flautando. There's a tiny difference between the two, to the extent that it's likely that the conductor will just fine-tune the sound and make it work on the day. It's advisable, as a general rule of thumb, that sul tasto parts should be written at the dynamic mezzo piano or lower.
Flautando (flute-like) uses a much quicker bow, and sounds light and airy, with a slightly more icy quality than sul tasto, and the faster the player moves the bow the more airy the sound becomes. The bow is still played slightly over the fingerboard (like sul tasto) but the sound differs subtly. I often listen carefully to the demo to judge which playing style would sound better in reality. The context is incredibly important to making such decisions, and it's hugely important to trust your ears.
A Composer's View: John Lunn
John Lunn.Photo: Phil WatkinsRather than have you listen only to my side of the story, I thought it might be helpful also to offer some thoughts about the job of an orchestrator from the point of view of a top-class composer. So I put a few questions to John Lunn, who has received two Emmy awards and a BAFTA nomination for his superb contribution to the music industry, and is one of the most sought-after TV composers in the history of television music.
TN: How long does your orchestrator usually have to orchestrate each episode?
JL: Well, supposing there was a two week turnaround, the first couple of days I would probably do five or six cues. Then I'd send them off to get approved by the director, and luckily they're usually quick at giving feedback, so generally 60-70 percent of those cues will be fine and they'll be sent off to my orchestrator immediately. From there on, every day he'll receive new cues to be working on, because as soon as I know the cue has been signed off I send it off to him.
TN: Have you ever had a situation where the cue has been signed off and you've sent the cue to be orchestrated, but the clients change their minds and request changes?
JL: I usually make it clear to the client that once it's been signed off and has been orchestrated, no more changes can be made. There have been a couple of times where whoever is in charge of approving the cues has been uncontactable for one reason or another and I've sent the cue off to be orchestrated because we can't hang around forever, and then the cue has come back and they've asked for a few small changes.
TN: Do you make any changes to the music during the recording session?
JL: The only things I generally make changes to in the studio when we record are dynamics, and I don't usually encourage the clients to come along to the session because it's not the best environment for them to hear the music in. They'll be aware of the dialogue but they can't hear it in the studio because we don't play the dialogue track whilst we're recording, for obvious reasons. I suppose you could play the dialogue alongside the music upon playback to hear how they're sounding together, but it doesn't really make sense to do so because the music hasn't been mixed yet.
TN: What do you send to your orchestrator in terms of files?
JL: I send over the Logic file because that's the DAW that I write in, and that has all the MIDI data in it, so that he can extract that and turn it into a score. I also send over a QuickTime file of the cue so that he can see the picture whilst he's orchestrating. This essentially means that he can tailor the dynamics to the dialogue and what's happening on screen, but I'll have written the dynamics with the dialogue in mind in the Logic file as well. The benefit of sending him the footage means that he can orchestrate to the picture.
TN: How do you go about the process of signing off the orchestrations?
JL: Alastair, my orchestrator, will usually send me the score as a Sibelius file... and I'll usually just send an email back with a couple of notes on a particular cue. Then, when I've received the scores, I go through them in Sibelius whilst looking and referring back to the picture. To be honest with you, the notes that I send back to Alastair are so minimal, so there's never very much of sending files back and forth. I actually like sending files via email but the issue is that if I don't deal with it immediately, it can tend to get lost in the aether.
TN: Because of time constraints, TV composers tend to write into ensemble patches and then leave the orchestrator to split out the chord into different instruments. Is this your approach?
JL: If you take something like Downton Abbey, what Alastair did was mainly work out what part of the chordal pad each string instrument was going to play. The other instruments such as the vibraphone, cor anglais, soprano sax and French horn were already played in by myself and they were obviously just a single line each, so didn't need splitting out or dissecting. If I was really under pressure, sometimes I had a tendency to miss out a French horn and then when I'd be going through the score I would realise that we only have three cues with French horn in them, so I'd ask Alastair if there were any places in any of the other cues where he could write a horn part in.