Being the investigative researcher he is, Max Tofone, who newly engraved Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook, discovered that the Austrian composer/conductor Felix Mottl, who was an expert in conducting Wagner, had orchestrated Chabrier’s Bourree Fanstasque and found the complete score online. I then followed up and found a complete recording of Mottl’s orchestration on iTunes.

Here’s Mottl’s solution for the opening bars for strings within the full orchestra. What do you see?

Today I started scoring the Bourree Fantasque excerpt for strings for the 50th Anniversary re-release of Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook by Joseph Wagner. Here’s a screen shot of it:

For the first six and a half bars, the melody falls into the range allowing for Vlns 1 + Vlns 2 + Violas + Cellos. This is a big sound used effectively by Holst in The Planets and Bizet in his L’Arlesienne Suites (see Professional Orchestration 2A for both examples under the String Unisons section). However, at bars 7-8, the unison can only continue with Violas + Cellos since the low F is not playable by the violins.

For fun, I tested Vlns 1 + Vlns 2 + Violas + Cellos on these opening bars using the EastWest QLSO Platinum with the new PLAY player. I used a spiccato “round robin” program to handle the repeated notes.

What a glorious sound!

But the “trouble” begins on bars 6-7 where the violins must drop out. Even with a sampled library playing the lines, you go from power to drop off to full ensemble. And it’s noticeable. The ear is immediately drawn to it.

Is the drop out intentional? Or is the orchestrator a complete boob?

Choices!

For the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook by composer Joseph Wagner, we’ve been doing a major overhaul of the book including having composer friends of mine orchestrating eleven bars from a piece by Chabrier called Bourree Fantasque.

Besides myself, two other composers have gotten their examples in: Billy Martin and David O’Rourke. Reading through their scoring approach has been so instructive. All three of us came up with some things similar, but many things different. It’s great to see that in the age of sample libraries that scoring insights still live.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Bourree Fantasque and have a go at it. How would you score it?

Briefly, Project SAM’s Symphobia 1.1 update is good one since it not only fixes stuff, but adds new content along with the new Kontakt 2.2.5 player. Note that the 2.2.5 player works with Kontakt 3 and Kontakt 3.5 but does not work with Kontakt 2. 

I saw reports that 2.2.5 was having issues in both Steinberg’s Cubase or Nuendo on the PC. If you’re using one of these programs, double check before installing the update for both Symphobia or Project SAM’s classic brass.

Here’s an update summary from Project SAM:

New Content in 1.1

Improvement & Additions in 1.1

Bug fixes in 1.1

Installation takes 1-2 hours since you’re downloading just under 1GB of data, so using a download manager will definitely speed things up.

Once downloaded, installation only takes a few minutes.

I’ve only had about 20 minutes to play through the strings. From what I’ve seen so far, an excellent update. And it’s free to registered users. The Project SAM guys did a great job.

Definitely worth having in the studio.

We noted that John Williams uses the C-Trumpet in his scores. One of the best references available on the C-Trumpet is from the Vienna Academy at the Vienna Symphonic Library web site.

Read. Learn. And hear demos under PLAYING TECHNIQUES.

The Vienna Academy is a great resource so be sure to bookmark it.

Reading the preliminary test results from other composers on the Kontakt 3.5 update beta that’s just been released suggests that the Mac Pro Nehalem is now the dominant music computer with the oft wished request of being able to do it all on one system, pretty much here.

The new 64-bit Kontakt 3.5, in standalone mode, reads all the RAM available on the Mac system. Since the Mac Pro already has a motherboard capable of installing up to 32GB of RAM, no special hardware requirements are needed. It’s ready to go. By comparison, many store-bought PCs are now shipping with a motherboard capable of handling up to 8GB of RAM. To go above that on a PC requires a server motherboard and a server case along with the ability of handling four or more hard drives.

The screenshot below, taken by Frederick Russ, owner/sponsor of the VI-Control.net/forum shows Kontakt 3.5 loading 384 instruments on a G5 Quad with 8GB of RAM with K3.5 in standalone mode.

To be determined is how well the drivers for existing Firewire cards work with the new Mac Pro.

Native Instruments’ new triumph also solidifies that for now,  there are three dominant sample instrument players for professionals: Kontakt, PLAY and the Vienna Instruments.

Here’s the transition test that developers with K2 players must do: test to make sure that K3.5 doesn’t break their programming, especially where heavy scripting is used.

This is the opening voicing in John Williams’ Liberty Fanfare (which you can download from iTunes): Trumpets - Trombones + French horns. The “formula” reads that the trumpets are doubled an octave below by Trombones and French horns. Musically, the D triad is in root position doubled down an octave. The top stave is assigned to the C trumpets while the bottom is assigned to three French horns and three Trombones. The C trumpet is used in the orchestra and has a slightly brighter sound. The score is written for three C trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, and four French horns. This triadic heraldic sound is written for two measures. At bar 3, the fourth French horn and the Tuba enter.

The lead trumpet is in the high register.

The lead French horn and Trombone, are in the very high registers.

The dynamic is ff.

The resultant sound is achieved by knowing how the individual brass sections sound in each register, at what dynamic level, and then combining them to create this sound.

Then there’s brass weighting.

At ff, 1 tpt = 1 trombone = 2 FHs.

Since it takes two (2) French horns at ff to equal one trumpet or trombone at ff, doubling each trombone with a French horn doesn’t cause the lower brass to be substantially out of balance with the trumpets, meaning that the lower brass would predominate. They don’t. The trumpets still predominate.

The MIDI mockup question is whether or not a single library or a combination of libraries, can emulate this sound electronically.

I spent a decade in the ad agency business before coming back to music full time. Consequently, I developed an eye for good marketing techniques.

While many composers have their own web sites, one of the most effective I’ve seen recently is composer John Debney’s at www.johndebney.com. John composes for film (including Mel Gibson’s The Passion). What John has done with his web site is to use video at its most effective use - to demonstrate.

I won’t give away the secret. Just go to his home page.

If you’re getting a new laptop and you want to do music on your system, if it’s available, get the 7200RPM drive over the 5400RPM drive. You can’t be sure what tomorrow will bring and $50 is a cheap insurance policy to insure that you also have adequate power and “spin” from the hard drive to stream samples.

A few months ago I saw a customer complain about the poor performance of a particular sample library on his system. He complained on a major forum. However, he later found out that the problem was that he had 5400RPM drives. Once he replaced them with 7200RPM drives, the performance issues disappeared.

The tendency is to look at how you’re using a system today as opposed to how it might be used in six months or a year from now. I suggest you avoid that view by looking downrange and doing just a little planning. Even if a laptop is “cheap” (however you define cheap) it’s still a capital investment that can last a few years. Where possible get the faster drive, and see if you can get 4GB of RAM, too.

Ultimately, you’ll be glad you did.

Bloat is one of the reasons why there are so many tech support issues on both the Mac and the PC. That’s because a current operating system has to be backward compatible. The more backwards compatible an operating system must be the more bloat there is. This continues through to sequencing programs and software instruments, because if the OS has to be backwards compatible, so must the sequencing programs and software instruments.

Bloat helps set the stage for tech support nightmare.

I’ll give you an example. One day I ran across a forum where there were pages of complaints about a single program. I read through every one of the complaints. All had this in common: none of them, not one, reported with their complaint the specs for their system.

A complaint or problem must be accompanied with this information:

1. The operating system and version number of your system
2. The CPU of your system
3. The version of the sequencing program you’re using
4. The version of the software instrument you’re using (if that’s where the complaint is)

All four pieces of information, along with a cogent description of what’s happening reported in such way that tech support can duplicate the issue, must be provided so that after testing, the programmers can be brought in to review and correct the program.