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Hi folks,I am working on my first orchestral piece... http://www.taxi.com/timbehrensThe song is called "Caught By the Current"(does anyone know how to directly link to a tune on your Taxi page?)I'm not sure if this will be worth submitting for anything or not. Your advice on how to improve it would be appreciated. I learned a lot in the process and am hoping my next attempt will be a bit cleaner and more cohesive. I'm also learning that it's best (at least for me) to clean up my midi as I go. Do you folks that do orchestration record live and clean up after the fact or do you use quantize and step editors?I'm also wondering if it's best to render to audio when you're done with a track? I found my humble computer crashing quite a bit when I wasn't freezing tracks... In any case, thanks to everyone here for the inspiration and for all the advice I've already seen posted here at the forums.Tim

Hi Tim,I really enjoyed this piece. Really your first? The harmonic movement and slow building pace were really nice. And I love the percussive elements. Very Elfman flavored. What samples are you using? I really don't herar anything negative to comment on at all. I think this is a fantastic first or even 50th little piece.I'm sure everyone here does things a bit differently. I know I do from piece to piece. But mainly I start in a notation program and then export to midi and I'll bring that into either Ableton or Cubase to tweak. Once it's in the main sequencer I'll start working on the dynamics and the performance and will invariably start reworking parts or playing some of the lines in real time to try and hide the computerness of the performance, although I have to say that Sibelius does a pretty nice job of exporting an expressive MIDI performance.And I always bounce to audio. For the same reason you are. My computer crumbles to its knees if I don't.Great job and keep this up. I'd like to hear more.B

Hey there B,Thanks for the response and for taking the time to listen. I should clarify that this is my first 'complete' piece. I'm sure I have a lot of half-written, half-recorded attempts before this one, but I got too lost in the process and was too dis-organized to finish them. Hopefully, this will be a 'turning of the page' for me and I can get a few more out.I used EastWest Symphonic Gold for most of this... some of the percussive elements came from Stylus RMX. I think the Music Box sound came from Colossus (I bought the Composers Edition a while back and am loving how some of these libraries compliment each other). Thanks for sharing your process, too. If you happen to read this reply, could you tell me what Notation software you use? Do you like it? I'm curious about Sibelius, too. I'll have to look into that. I doubt I'll move away from Cubase any time soon, but there are days when it frustrates me enough that I want to look.Best wishes,Tim

I use Sibelius. I also have Finale, but Sibelius just feels so much easier and faster to work with. I'm about to go back to Cubase. Have you seen the unbelievable tools for handling large mulit-articulation libraries that they've just added? This entire maddening process of working with the East/West library has just been solved. Can't wait for it to ship!B

Hey B, Yeah, I am very curious about the new version... some of the MIDI tools they've incorporated look pretty amazing. Cubase 4 has been a bit buggy, but I'm hopeful that this will be a new page for them, and the initial feedback has been pretty good.

I don't know much about orchestral music but I love the piece. I could hear it behind a movie for sure. Good job.

Great job sounds nice!

This is a beautiful piece! I really don't have any suggestions on how to make it better. I use DP for film scoring and Sibelius for concert music. When I use DP I usually record with a metronome click and only go back and quantize if it is obviously off. I also try to play it with dynamics as I record so that I don't have to go back later and add those. That saves a lot of time. Up until last year I had to bounce to audio after each track but last year I bought a new computer and now I can wait until the whole piece is finished. That is SO nice... I am looking forward to hearing more of your music. ~ Lydia

i listen to a lot of hip-hop and r&b ( i know mostly nonsense) but that was by far one of the best arrangements i think i've ever hard. i think someone mentioned the movement earlier and i understand exactly what they mean. as the piece progressed, it made me start nodding and shaking my head at points (only because in my world i heard a crazy drum pattern under there.GREAT JOB and keep up the good work!

Thanks for the positive words and feedback. I appreciate everyone taking the time to listen. Lydia, thanks for sharing part of your process with me. I'd love to hear what kind of computer you are using now. I think I may have to take a leap and upgrade at some point.