WHY THIS COURSE? 

When I first started thinking about how to teach advanced mockup skills, I started by asking, what are the things that you need to be able to do to create great orchestral music with virtual instruments?  

Well, to write and produce great orchestral music with VI, you really only need five things: 

1 - Good composition (note choices) 
2 - Solid orchestration (instrument/sound choices) 
3 - Expressive and Dynamics Performances/programming 
4 - To use the right patch/articulations for the job 
5 - Solid production skills (reverb, fx, mixing, mic positions, etc.) 

I also asked, myself, "what are the greatest weaknesses that I usually hear in VO music?" Here I started to set composition and orchestra aside, since they are such broad subjects on their own. A bad John Williams mockup will still sound great because the music is COMPELLING, but not all John Williams mockups are equally excellent in the three other categories. 

So the answers were, in order: 

a- Inexpressive and Dynamically FLAT Performances/programming 
b- Not using the rights patch/articulations for the job 
c- Weak production skills (reverb, fx, mixing, mic positions, etc.)

This course series, Bringing Virtual Orchestra Music to Life, an intermediate-to-advanced series dedicated shoring up our skills in these three areas.

THE PROBLEM AT HAND: Not using the Right tool for the job

This volume addresses the second problem: having a poor command and knowledge of different patch/articulations types - what they are for, and how/when to use them in context of a specific musical function or part.  

The result of this weakness ends up being music that is stale and uninteresting, and the frustrated user might even end up caught in the dreaded G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome) cycle, never being sure if he/she has the needed elements to make exciting and emotive music. 

But there's good news: if you have any modern orchestral sample libraries (from the last 10 years or so), then you probably have the basic components to do far more than you imagine. 

COURSE APPROACH AND LAYOUT 

To solve this problem, we need to know three things.  

1 - What is the job? (that you need virtual instruments to perform?) 
2 - What are the available tools (articulations/samples), and what their purpose?  
3 - How do I do the job with those tools?  

So the lessons in this course are arranged in a sequence that asks, and answers, these fundamental questions.  

Firstly, we will identify common musical functions and parts that you will need to articulate with your patches: that's "The Job".  

Secondly, I will walk you through the primary articulation types in orchestral music, their traditional purposes, and how they are uniquely expressed, packaged, and controlled in virtual instruments.  This should provide both a enlightening vision for their purposes and give a foundation for how to use common sample articulation types. I will also show you how I audition and inventory my own sample libraries to determine what will be useful or not, and to determine if I actually need to buy the latest, greatest samples library (usually: I don't).

And thirdly, I will show you how I actually "do the job" in articulating common musical parts and functions, like melody, bass, sustained texture, moving texture, transition FX/accents, and more.  

COURSE END RESULT/GOAL 

My hope for you if that when you reach the end of this course, you have a greater knowledge of the purposes behind articulations, and a greater command of your tools so that you can take the vitality and color of your compositions to the next level.  

DON'T FORGET THE LESSON NOTES!

If you're already reading this at the end of the page, then you didn't! ;P

But be sure to check out the lesson notes that you will find below each video. These will give timestamps regarding particular topics addressed in the video (when it makes sense to have them), and will also include any links to other resources or information about your assignments and exercises.