In this series I’m going to start talking about orchestration – specifically for film-style recording sessions at a large scoring stage.  Additionally, let’s consider that your are orchestrating someone else’s music and that they composed that music with samples in a sequencer. 

Dynamics and Balances 

A crucial part of your task as an orchestrator is to set dynamic levels.  This has to be done by ear.   You can use the CC information as a reference but you must listen carefully to ultimately make the decision.  Listen in context, not just via soloing tracks.

Keep in mind these concepts when you are listening to mockup playback:

1. Composers tend to overuse CC1
2. You may be listening to extra, artificial gain via plugins (more than you can see via their delivery)
3. Samples may use larger sections and therefore have artificially louder apparent volumes than what you will have at your session
4. You have a fixed orchestra size and limited bandwith

Listening Between the Lines

Imagine you had a four horn unison swell, you’ve written down the proper pitch and length and are deciding upon volume choices. 

You’ve established that the ending volume is FF but now you need to decide what the starting volume is.  (As an aside I very, very rarely use over-FF or under-PP dynamics – there are finer ways to manage these situations). 

Well in this example the composer made the swell with only a CC7 gesture – so it ultimately sounds Loud to LOOOOUUUDDDD.  CC1 stayed at 127 (max volume) the whole time.  

So the question is what should the starting dynamic be? Well if you wrote down exactly what the composer gave you there would be very little crescendo. 

So this might be a point where you listen and decide that the swell itself is more important than the starting volume and you change the composers starting to dynamic to P instead of F. 

This type of decision making is very common.

Impossible Dynamics 

Its pretty common to see things in mockups that aren’t possible in real life.  It is common to hear the “barking” sound bass trombones make presented artificially at a PP layer – well to get that barking sound they are going to command the room – you need to decide how to handle that.

You might see the start of swells in the midi that don’t sound in the audio till much later.  

Via the miracle of gain staging you might hear eight french horns playing forte being overpowered by a low range flute solo.

Well its your job to solve all of these. 

Bonus/Pet Peeve:

99% of the time this is bad orchestration – either make that hairpin smaller or adjust the dynamics to be further apart.