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Your favorite MIDI orchestration tip

Apologies if duplicative, but as an orchestrator and conductor I run into many composers who've worked mostly in the box and are not yet aware of the dynamic nuances of a live orchestra. This becomes a particular problem when samples are balanced in unrealistic ways in the mockup. Conversely, a composer familiar with orchestral realities might either build their mockup with a more authentic balance, or rely on a good orchestrator to make the adjustments when translating the mockup for live players. If the latter, the composer must be amenable to some distribution changes, etc. Ironically, sometimes to sound most like the mockup, which some composers really do want, the actual orchestration must diverge a bit from the MIDI input. Hope this helps.

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My favorite orchestration tip is ‘wait’, because the weakest part of many orchestrated pieces isn’t the orchestration itself, but weak harmonization.
And if you figure out that you should have chosen a more interesting chord progression after you have spent a lot of time orchestrating, you may have wasted some valuable time.

Talking about how he dreamt the Yesterday melody, Paul McCartney illustrates how important chords are in this clip:

 
I don’t know if this counts as a MIDI tip, but when I compose out of the studio (at the piano, or even at the local coffee shop, with pencil and paper) and the piece is finished and I start to build the MIDI mock-up sometimes I’ll record an audio track of me singing freely the main melody, with all the tempo fluctuations it dictates. Then I’ll make a tempo track using this guide, and carry on from there. One of the things I find most revealing of sample vs. real instruments is unnatural tight tempos. Of course this varies a lot with the genre, orchestration, etc., but on more lyrical pieces I found this to work for me very well.
 
I've been just starting to do orchestral stuff with Dorico and EWQL HO Opus, so I'm a total beginner. Been playing guitar for 34 years and composing a lot of stuff during the years. So that's my background.

There's some comments here about the little being out of tune what makes everything sounding better. Is it total heresy to apply things from guitarism to orchestral stuff? I mean, I use a lot (and I mean A LOT) pitchshifting on guitar tracks particulary but goes with many other instruments, vocals, percussion etc.

What I use is Eventide Micro Pitch. You know, you can add a doubling in mono or stereo with predelays. I just love the sound of a lead guitar with micropitch like a stereo -9c/+9c with differennt predelays. Then turn the MIX down to about 30-40 %. Just so that you can't hear it when it's on but can hear when it's off.

Why wouldn't you apply such things to orchestral stuff?
 
Ad_Astra said:
I've been just starting to do orchestral stuff with Dorico and EWQL HO Opus, so I'm a total beginner. Been playing guitar for 34 years and composing a lot of stuff during the years. So that's my background.

There's some comments here about the little being out of tune what makes everything sounding better. Is it total heresy to apply things from guitarism to orchestral stuff? I mean, I use a lot (and I mean A LOT) pitchshifting on guitar tracks particulary but goes with many other instruments, vocals, percussion etc.

What I use is Eventide Micro Pitch. You know, you can add a doubling in mono or stereo with predelays. I just love the sound of a lead guitar with micropitch like a stereo -9c/+9c with differennt predelays. Then turn the MIX down to about 30-40 %. Just so that you can't hear it when it's on but can hear when it's off.

Why wouldn't you apply such things to orchestral stuff?
Click to expand...
That could be your niché maybe. Jamming the violin etc like a solo guitar. One of the string libraries is made from 'fake' string sound (synthetic), damn I cant recall its name now, but it should be able to do impossible pitch switches for strings (like a guitar).

(Edit: I looked it up, SWAM strings)
 
Maybe more of a mixing issue, but one of the hardest things for me is working on a track gettting it just right, and then having to push it into the background because it's not the main focus of the moment. So the tip is: if it's not foreground, turn it down, no matter how good it is. (But still do all the work to make it perfect.)
 
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