On Jun 23, 2007, at 1:12 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:
What is never right - in my scores, are the balances. Those things
change so rapidly in a live performance, that I can't even imagine
the amount of work it would take to include them in sound created
by a machine, and whatever you created that way would change in the
next live performance. So I mistrust the midi playback for this
and apply my experience with live bands to judge whether or not I
have a chance of having written what I want.
That is the right decision, IMHO. Balance is very touchy and organic,
and probably the last thing for an orchestrator to understand
properly (well, at least it was for me!) The examples you have heard
of excellent MIDI realisations were done by people with a lot of
orchestra experience and probably by comparing their work to an
existing live recording. If a student had enough knowhow to balance a
MIDI realisation like a live orchestra would, he wouldn't NEED the
MIDI realisation to hear what he was doing! I am constantly seeing
work handed to me to orchestrate by actual working composers who
don't understand that a flute in the lowest octave is going to be
buried by anything else playing more than a p dynamic level, for
example.
Darcy has made thoughtful suggestions to Garritan for improvements
in the balances, things that would get them started with a closer
approximation of what you'd hear a band play, but those things vary
so much from band to band that I'm not sure there is a "right" way
to set up the midi balances.
Very true.
Orchestral balances are more standardized - maybe as a result of
having refined them over the long history of orchestral music and
the constant adjustments that have been made in numbers of players
in the sections and the traditions of orchestral playing.
Yes, I would say particularly the latter, in the case of orchestral
playing. I don't think the balance question is any easier to an
orchestral musician; it just LOOKS easier because orchestral
musicians have played together for a longer time than most large jazz
groups. (Basie, Ellington, etc., are exceptions because they had
bands that had stable personnel and dense schedules that rivaled the
busiest classical groups.) The difference between a p and a f to an
orchestral musician might be more one of timbre and shape than actual
volume, and will change according to the period and composer anyway.
These guys have been playing some of these works for a LONG time, and
so know where the traps are. All you have to do is to hear a
university orchestra in a first read-through of some standard to
discover where the weaknesses are!
We have a tougher time in jazz bands. The traditional
instrumentation is dynamically out of whack to begin with, and few
bands compensate for this in a way that would satisfy my musical
vision. (It is possible to do - check out The Sultans of Swing
recordings for a contemporary example, or the Basie, Ellington and
Mulligan bands for historical standards of balances that work.)
Are you referring particularly to the drums and bass? I would agree
with you in that case, but in the case of the winds, the traditional
sectional setups are actually quite well-balanced naturally,
particularly compared with orchestral winds, which have all kinds of
inconsistencies to deal with. And I wouldn't leave Gil Evans out the
list of guys who work with balance quite well, though in his case it
is often extreme examples that noone can figure out why they work as
they do.
So what I want to suggest to users of this technology is something
like: Check your pitches and rhythms, with the understanding that
subtleties in each of those areas will be changed by live musicians
(in good and bad ways!), and try to get an idea of the overall
textural and timbral (is that a word?) structure - the similarities
and contrasts. Then imagine that most of them will be vastly
improved in any halfway decent live performance.
Hows that for a cautionary instruction?
Very good!
Christopher
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
Finale@shsu.edu
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
