AudioMidi.com - Film & TV Composer Seminar

It was very inspiring to listen to what real professional composer have to say about composition, samples, orchestration, budget, demo, rigs, etc, etc.

Chris Stone started the event speaking about orchestral samplers being "Additive" like organs. For example for divisi passages you'd want one section to divide their section into 2 or 3 or whatever number and play a chord. Most samplers now if you double note you get that much more players in the mix. That's Hazardous. Audio Impressions has this library that's supposed to do that .. for 3500 just for strings.. Cool what they can do yes. If you have money go for it.

What's interesting though is they all use these things but still they say "Mock up sounds like sh*t"
It never sounds like a real orchestra. Doesn't work like how real orchestra work... These guys are one of the top composers right now.. can they run total 7-10 computers when they score film or TV. yes and still the real thing sound way better.

It's always debate whether you should hire real person or use samples. Depends on budget, etc etc. Emotional impact director wants. That's what you need to take care of as a film composer.

Having said this... I still want great orchestral samples. Just because I still can't write for whole orchestra on piano. I do need to hear some thing like strings to write for strings. I wish. Possibly soon.

Synthesizer Tutorial Video

I've just found a few amazing synthesizer tutorial. Not really for beginners.. you'd have to understand at least what oscillator, filters are and their functions..

They were talking about FM synthesis, how to make drums beats with LFO, things like that.. good point to cover. and he explains it really well.

http://www.sonicstate.com/

MIDI Programming for beginners: What is MIDI?

I'm going to write about the first step in MIDI programming and what those fancy term means.

What is MIDI? Often times my answer is "It is like a sheet music with performance information"

Any good sheet music will include marking like f (forte) p (piano), crescendo, ritardando but none of them actually gives you an idea of what it really sound like.. what composer meant. what arranger meant when they put those marks on the score.

On the other hand, MIDI records (or at least tries to capture) all that little nuances that composers were dying to put to their scores.

You can listen to free MIDI files somewhere and you should be able to tell differences. Some of them will have unnatural flow or no emotion and make you think "MIDI is horrible," but often times it is not MIDI that's is bad. Programmer.

MIDI will let you compose or play your own music even if you didn't know anything about music but on the other hand making it sound realistic or as if somebody is playing is very hard to do, especially when you are trying to get that "orchestra" sound; you have to know how all the instruments are played, sounds and talk with each other.