Look closely to legato lines, accents and so on. I'd suggest Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's “Pictures of an Exhibition”. Imagine how exactly you can achieve that legato sounds in your orchestrations.Īnd my final advise would be to buy some orchestral scores and to look through all the articulations and melodies included in the score. For example listen to Paganini's “La Campanella” - first of all listen to the solo violin and then to the backing strings. You can't notice visually when the players change their bows, but you can hear what the strings sound like. Try answering questions like “How do you achieve the pizzicato effect?”, ”How often do players change their bow directions?” etc. I know that some of you would hate that particular phrase, but in classical music you can observe how composers used the string section, what types of articulations they used and how the musicians play them. So before we continue to the actual tutorial, I'd like to offer you some things that you should consider, observe and watch.
I'm sure they will be a lot easier to deal with, when it comes to string melodies. It takes a lot of time and work to get things sound precise – and even then something is just not right! I want to open a bracket here and I want to tell you that I don't have the financial resources to try out the most expensive orchestral libraries out there – for example LASS and EWQL Hollywood Strings. So how exactly can we capture that unique sound? Is it possible to get that violin melody sound as perfect as it would sound when played live? In my opinion, computers still can't replace the actual feeling that the strings can give us. This can create a specific effect or emphasize certain feeling.Īs you have probably guessed, most of the work on MIDI orchestration goes for string melodies. If you look through various types of classical scores, you can see that the composer intentionally wrote “Sul D” on top of the violin section solo. And last, but not least, a violin player for example can play a single tone on different strings and therefore create a specific sound. Secondly the players are always slightly out of tune, mostly in the beginning of the note – especially when they change positions very quickly and therefore produce a slurred tone.
The bow can be moved either up or down and this creates different aspect of the sound. This means that the musicians use a bow to produce the tones. That is because it, even though the strings are probably one of the most homogenous sections of the orchestra, it has some characteristics that are extremely hard to produce via samples.įirst of all, the strings are bowed instruments. When it comes to MIDI orchestration, the string section is probably the most difficult to emulate.