I want this library because I desperately want my mockups to sound like they were played by the actual BBC orchestra.
But that’s not what’s actually going to happen, is it? They will still be mockups.
The marketing brilliantly put that in my head. I damn well know what that orchestra sounds like live. I’ve seen performances. Beautiful.
But I have to tell myself: this is NOT the same thing as hiring the BBC orchestra.
I have several orchestral libraries. EastWest. Cinesamples. Spitfire Symphonic and Studio. 8Dio. They all sound fantastic. One more? It’s just not going to be all that different from what I have.
My view with Spitfire stuff is that essentially right now they are considered best at orchestral sampling and one of the best for interface usability. The goal is made apparent in some of Christian Henderson’s blogs and if you watch the companies marketing strategies you’ll see a clear progression which is this…
They started as an incredibly low profile business that gave some extremely high quality products to the select few. Infact they were so expensive that Christian even said that if he wasn’t a co founder of the company then these plugins would simply be out of his reach… we’re talking 8 grand plus, just for a strings library.
Over the years I’ve seen the libraries they make either,
get bigger and the price stays the same
Get bigger and the price decreases
Get more specialist and the price plummets.
The goal for them is to create a better result each time while making the libraries even more affordable. They definitely seem to be doing this with the release of this library.
They also started diversifying their rooms so that each library has a slightly different flavour, so that eventually there shouldn’t be any debate on wether spitfire has one sound or not, but rather a multitude of different sounds that a composer can choose to express themselves more… an I guess adding mic positions and bleed mics to a library does one thing, it adds realism which can only be a good thing. Often composers these days have to go all out to compete. This may sway that either way…
But regardless I see this as just another pallet that we can choose to use… an it will be the BBC palette which can only be good imo
Awesome! \o/ It’s about time… As far as I can remember, all I’ve done since last time around is practicing and trying out upgrades and adjustments on my cello and violin.
Indeed; this sounds like it might be a great option if you’re not already properly covered on the orchestral side, or if you can justify the cost of grabbing yet another library. After all, you can’t have too many good libraries - but when it all comes down to it, there’s still nothing like the real thing, and all this is just about getting slightly closer, and/or getting better results with less effort. How much is that worth to you?
To me it’s worth quite a lot, apparently. I just don’t see myself having the budget to hire an orchestra any time soon, so what I hear is what I get. Also, although I can “hear” arrangements in my head to some extent, I’m just not experienced enough to reliably judge the quality of my work without hearing it rendered in a reasonably realistic way.
So… Do I want BBCSO? Of course! But, not right now. My collection is pretty nice already, and… I’m saving up for a professional violin.
Regarding judging the quality of unheard arrangements…
I have found, to my amazement, that what sounds good on piano almost always sounds good orchestrated, almost regardless of orchestration choices made. If it sounds good on piano, it seems I almost can’t go wrong as long as I make sensible and not weirdo choices, like, say, asking sections to play far out of their comfortable range.
The modern orchestra is just an amazingly evolved instrument. It’s largely pre-balanced for us, through centuries of trial and error.
I realize that samples somewhat make this easier for us, but it’s also the case that composers make adjustments on the fly once they hear their arrangements played.
Maybe I’m being overconfident, but I really think the piano alone does a great job of forecasting what will work when orchestrated.
First of all, I agree with you 100%. If a track sounds great on solo piano it should translate well to a fully orchestrated composition. However, the opposite is not always true.
As an example, I’ve done an action track that basically revolves around an F minor chord all throughout, with everything focusing on rhythm and percussion in that case. That track would sound dreadful on solo piano, but the track is one of my best produced ones and would work amazingly well for a modern action sequence.
But getting back on topic, what is your opinion of this new “all-on-one” package of the BBC orchestra?
I want to hear this action piece! I bet it would actually sound “good” on piano, depending on what we mean by good. Good would not mean it is as impactful as it is fully mocked up. Good would mean “still works musically.”
Yes, I feel like it would work for guitar too, with the minor caveat of guitar’s limited bass, but that’s a minor problem. In fact, my favorite orchestral writing doesn’t have a constant presence of contrabass, but holds it back for “big” moments.
Here is the action composition I was referring to. 7/8 time, with the rhythmic groove and syncopation providing the action vibe. So the harmonic progression is very repetitive, which was my point, that it doesn’t have to sound good on solo piano.
I do think that would have sounded “good” on piano in the sense of “not wrong.” In other words, even though it would have sounded plinky and would have lacked energy, it would have been balanced—no big arrangement errors like, say, muddy bass.
And if you created a piano reduction of it, and then someone else arranged it for orchestra, I think different instrumentation choices would work fine because the piano reduction would still work. For example, you could easily have had a section where the drums get quiet and the same basic parts were played entirely by winds. That would totally work.
You’re right about drums, though. When I write on piano, I do often “cheat” by allowing myself drums if a section of a piece is heavily percussion-driven. There truly is no way for a piano to place-hold for driving war drums.
Thanks for sharing that piece. It’s really a neat piece and 7/8 is working for it so well.
Thank you, btw a tip. Even though piano is my preferred sketching instrument, because of the reasons we discussed. I sometimes use an ensemble strings patch (I love Afflatus Strings because it has polyphonic legato) if the music will be very lyrical (lots of legato). Other times I sketch with a short note string articulation if the piece is going to be more rhythmically focused.
Btw, 7/8 was really hard to record to live. I like to record all my parts live btw. 3/4 and 6/8 is easy, but man those “uncommon” signatures are hard to keep the beat to at least for me.
Actually, your tip is my other cheat! I allow myself a generic string patch for long-held notes too! Although sometimes I’ll just repeat the piano note. So…Afflatus, huh? I will check it out forthwith!
My writing on piano first is not a hard rule I follow. My intent is not to straitjacket myself. I honestly started composing this way 3 years ago because my heroes are old-school piano-based composers. John Williams, John Barry, etc. I was just imitating my heroes.
But I found that it worked shockingly well. I found that writing on piano (and I use 2-3 tracks of piano) allowed me to keep track of, and keep organized and coherent, more layers of music than I’d have been able to hold together if those same layers were distributed across a dozen instruments. I also like how it makes me ask myself the question: is this a good piece of music regardless of how epic it sounds? That question is staring me in the face the entire time I’m writing it.
And, while I lose the experience of being inspired by the patch—a real loss, I admit, and I do write differently when I write that way—I gain the exhilarating experience of hearing a relatively drab-sounding piece of music come to grand life as it gets placed into the orchestra. And it’s almost magical: I always worry that this time, the orchestration won’t really work. Sometimes it doesn’t start sounding right until near the end, when there’s very little left in the piano track to transfer to the orchestra, but there seems always to be a point where it magically clicks and starts to sound right. That’s why I say the orchestra is such a marvelously evolved thing. I know I am not a brilliant orchestrator. And I certainly have immense room to grow in this area. But still, my arrangements seem to always work when I start them on piano. I don’t do anything, really, but port piano parts over to the orchestra. The perfect design of the orchestra does the work for me. There is no trial and error. I port them over, and it sounds right. I continue to be amazed that this works.
I do not mean to say everyone should write this way. In fact, I think it is a good exercise for a composer to try composing in many different ways. I would benefit from finding an inspiring patch and seeing where it takes me, leaving the piano behind occasionally. And I’d certainly recommend that any composer try it my way at least once, but not to abandon working in the way you love to work.
But I do find that the piano-first yields many benefits, and although that glorious gratification experience of “holy shit that sounds great!” is deferred until later in the process, it’s not lost!
Yes I know what you mean, and of course there is no right or wrong way in music composition, but I would agree some things are “tried and tested”, like focusing on getting your main ideas down on piano first.
I am curious though, you mentioned you use 2-3 tracks of piano. What do you mean? Like one for chords, one for melody, one for rhythm?
I just mean that I’ll start with one track of piano, but it gets cluttered so I end up using 2 or 3. Like, if I have a melody and chords already, and then I add a flute-intended run or flourish, that flourish might literally occupy some of the same notes as the melody or chords, and so I’ll put it on a different track just to keep things clean-looking. But it’s all the piano SOUND I’m hearing.
Haha I’ve to write a song that switches between 3/4 and 5/4in the chorus and changes between 3/4 and 4/4 in the verses… essentially giving a staggered 4/4 feel in the chorus and a 7/4 feel in the verses. I wrote the piece for a charity single I’ll be releasing and I’ve had instrumentalists and singers come to my studio to record and sing to it. Everyone’s had trouble with it but it’s been so entertaining and everyone’s had a good laugh trying to do it. One guy (Gary Jones) was actually inspired by it which was quite flattering. He ended up writing a piece in 7/8 himself to get better at the time signature.
Also, my friend Sam introduced me to 13/8 a few months ago which is essentially a bar of 9/8 (or two bars of 5/4 and 4/4) and a bar of 4/4 it really grooves!!
Wow, apparently you must have way better keyboard and rhythmic skills than I do then…because I was lost all the time performing the parts lol. Re-take bonanza!
That Sam guy should join the community, just saying!
I’ve asked him a few times but he’s much busier than I am aha. He said he will when he’s got time
Tbh I had to programme the click so that I could keep in the right timing and not get lost speaking of Sam. He’s a drummer first and foremost so he recorded the drum part live and he’s infinitely better than me at rhythms and even he had a bit of an issue lol. As soon as he got the groove he was fine though.
The truth is when I wrote the song I knew I was speeding up and slowing down occasionally but didn’t realise I’d wrote a bit of a beauty time signature changed track until I sat down to do the drums and 4/4 wasn’t working
Definitely an intriguing library, and the first one from Spitfire that I’ve had a genuine interest in. But the fact still remains, I’ve got all my sections covered well, so this library would be a really nice add-on and extra colour. If I was just starting out, well then it’d be a different story.
speaking of Sam. He’s a drummer first and foremost so he recorded the drum part live and he’s infinitely better than me at rhythms and even he had a bit of an issue lol. As soon as he got the groove he was fine though.