Piano Cue Part Two

This week we’ll orchestrate our piano sketch from last episode, check it out!

How I orchestrate a piano sketch

This series is Espen’s. Here’s how I go about the same thing in my own music.

This is the fun part, when the track comes to life. Here is how I take a piano sketch and turn it into strings.

First, a shortcut. Before I split anything up, I copy the whole piano part into one “master” region and draw the modulation (expression) into that. That way every string line I copy out of it already has its dynamics written in, and I don’t have to redraw or copy modulation over and over. I keep that master muted at the top of the session.

I draw the modulation as swells rather than flat lines. I love swells. They can rise and fall with each chord change, or grow steadily across a whole section, and that movement is what makes the strings feel alive.

Then I copy the master down onto each section and delete the notes that don’t belong there. The low basses only keep the bottom notes, and I check the range of the patch, because some double bass patches go down to C1 and others to C0. The cellos take the next notes up, the violas the line below the violins, and the seconds and firsts take the top.

I often leave the cellos out of Act 1 and let the violins and violas do the work. It’s also nice to give the cellos a counter melody later on.

Watch your sample ranges. If you can’t hear the melody, check that the notes actually sit inside the patch’s range, and move them up an octave if not. Some patches also aren’t consistent across their modulation, so a section can suddenly sound more aggressive than the rest. Listen through and adjust the expression for each one rather than assuming it will all balance.

Next, have a look at part one if you missed the sketching, 13 Ways To Make Your Orchestra Sound Real for getting more realism from your samples, and How to Create an Orchestral Template. My Uplifting Orchestral course goes through this whole process step by step.

Happy composing!Rich