Creating Orchestral Music With Sampled Instruments

"There's this bloke, right, reckons he can replace all of us with a 19‑inch rackmount..."

When it comes to emulating acoustic instruments, the modern orchestra probably represents the ultimate challenge. Philip Meehan shows you how to take it on and win.

Now I don't know about you, but for as long as I can remember there has always been a musical instrument that has been out of my humble reach. Back in the early '80s, it was (of course) a Fairlight CMI or NED Synclavier. Then, later on, it was something more esoteric and 'retro', such as an ARP Quadra, or an original Theremin. Nowadays, the one instrument I would dearly love to own more than any others is a full symphony orchestra — even though it would require constant feeding, make a lot of mess and take up so much space...

Without wanting to start (another!) long‑running SOS debate, I would claim that the modern orchestra is still hard to beat for power, style and versatility. Portishead, Björk, The Divine Comedy, Pulp and Puff Daddy all featured fairly heavy‑duty orchestration on their last albums, and even those goaty metal stalwarts Metallica are currently writing and recording a 'symphony' for orchestra with film composer Michael Kamen. With the advent of several excellent sample libraries of orchestral instruments (such as those by Peter Siedlaczek and Miroslav Vitous) — as well as half‑decent acoustic presets on most keyboards — it's now just about possible to capture some of the feel of having 80‑plus talented musicians at your control, if you do a little groundwork first.

Seating P(l)an

A typical modern orchestra layout. The diagram shows representative numbers of instruments for each section.

The orchestra has developed a fairly standard seating arrangement over the last few centuries, whereby loud instruments are placed towards the back, quieter ones nearer the front and solo instruments generally in the middle. The left‑to‑right placement of instruments is crucial to achieve a good stereo balance, so that the overall soundfield is never left‑ or right‑heavy during the performance. By emulating this layout with your sampler, you can make your own orchestra a thousand times more convincing, as well as saving on memory by using 'panned‑mono' samples rather than stereo versions (they'll sit better in the mix, as well). Once positioned, adjust the levels for each section so they all sound about the same and start cranking up the reverb — remember, more on the instruments at the back, less on those near the front.

Once you're reasonably happy with your layout, save it and — here comes the important bit — never touch it again! No matter how tempting it may be at some point to start EQing, panning or level‑adjusting, don't. I'll explain why later, and no cheating, or I'll tell...

Happy Families

Setting up suitable pan positions and reverb depths for each instrument on your sampler may seem a lot of trouble, but it's nothing compared to the effort involved in recording a real orchestra!

The orchestra can be divided into four main families of instruments: strings, brass, woodwind and percussion. No matter what the backlit LCD on your sampler may tell you, these are not instruments in themselves. A sample called 'Strings' is about as meaningful as a sample called 'Norman Cook' — whilst it may give an impression of an orchestral string section, what you really want is a set of four different programs. Let's go through them properly.

The String family is made up of Violins, Violas, Cellos and Double Basses (more usually referred to as just 'Basses'). These instruments' parts are clearly defined in orchestral arrangements, with each section normally playing a monophonic (or occasionally duophonic) line. Playing a big, two‑fisted chord part on your 'Strings' program may sound impressive but it is not at all accurate and — more importantly — you won't be able to hear any other instruments through it! If your sample library has these four instruments as separate programs, all well and good: otherwise, you can create them by taking your 'Strings' program and dividing it up by limiting the keyranges to G3‑C7 for a 'violins' program, C3‑C6 for the 'violas', C2‑A5 ('cellos') and E1‑B3 ('basses'). Dividing up these instruments and assigning them different parts (and stereo positions) really will make your string arrangements sound better.

The modern orchestra layout has evolved over the centuries so that from the conductor's point of view (right in the middle) all the instruments are fairly well balanced.

One problem with sampled strings is mimicking the different playing styles — strings can either play smoothly from note to note (legato), or skip around in a 'Bittersweet Symphony' manner (detaché or staccato). One way of helping to reproduce these styles is to assign attack and release times to a mod wheel or other controller. By choosing samples which contain the attack portion of the bowed sound and then programming the mod wheel to range from 0‑sec attack/0.5‑sec release to 1‑sec attack/2.5‑sec release, you can use the mod wheel to vary the envelope as you play, smoothly flowing from legato to staccato with alarming aplomb.

Vibrato is also fairly important here, and simply assigning a 6‑7Hz LFO to a single program called 'Strings' can result in a big, wobbly sound. Assigning slightly different vibrato rates to each of the four string sections, with deeper modulations on the violins and less on the basses, will make the strings sound much more lifelike, and sit better with the other instruments.

Another playing style that can cause problems is pizzicato. In this style, the instruments' strings are plucked rather than bowed, and although sampled pizzicato strings are universally quite realistic, there is a common problem. With the exception of the 'professional' sample libraries, most sample CDs and keyboards only have one pizzicato multisample. This is fine for most uses, but when the same note is played in quick succession, its digital roots are exposed and realism takes a back seat. All is not lost, however...

The best way to simulate a pizzicato passage is to swap between two slightly different multisamples, either at random or alternating with every note. If you only have the one program, you can 'fake up' a second by moving each root sample down a semitone or two and detuning them back up to the correct pitch. This will produce a very slight difference in the sound which will help massively when playing a pizzicato string piece. And it won't take up any extra sample memory either!

Arranging orchestral parts for strings is a lifelong pursuit, so in the meantime an old adage applies well here — keep it simple. Listen to lots of good examples of well‑arranged orchestral music for ideas and I guarantee you'll be surprised at just how simple the string parts in many of them are.

So Horny

The Brass family, like Strings, is made up of more than one instrument, namely Trumpets, Horns, Trombones and Tubas. Each of these instruments can sound quite different, unlike strings, where all four instruments are similar in tone, but differing in pitch. If you want to produce powerful, realistic‑sounding brass parts for your arrangement, my advice would be to back off from the ubiquitous 'Trumpet' and 'Trombone' samples and make more use of 'French Horns'.

The French horn is probably the most versatile member of the brass family, with a playing range of F2‑C5 and a total length of 17 feet (which is why it's all curled up like a garden hose). Unlike the trumpet and trombone, the French horn has a more 'generic' sound that is much easier to replicate with the sampler, especially when used in conjunction with a slickly‑programmed filter. As with the strings example earlier, the key to achieving realistic brass performances lies in your mod wheel.

The dynamic range of most brass instruments is fairly huge, and french horns are no exception. They can go from soft to loud, mellow to brash in just one puff, and the best way to simulate this playing style is with a low‑pass filter attached to the mod wheel. The exact filter frequencies will vary from sampler to sampler, but you want the filter to track from 'fully open' to 'hugely closed' at its zero point. That way, the mod wheel will filter sweep from very dull to extremely bright and, as with the strings, you can incorporate the mod sweeps into your playing style — literally 'pushing' open each note by hand in a way no filter envelope ever could. It may sound like an obvious trick, but with a little practice it's possible to produce astonishingly realistic results.

The same trick can be applied to the other instruments in the brass family and helps massively in simulating a brass section. A common giveaway with sampled orchestral work is that the brass section is all‑pervading, fizzing and farting away with every note. Low‑pass filtering each brass part by hand helps to separate out the different instruments, giving the arrangement much more room to 'breathe'.

The Answer My Friend...

The Woodwind family includes flute, clarinet, oboe, cor anglais and bassoon, as well as variants of these such as piccolo (high‑pitched flute), alto flute (sometimes incorrectly called a 'bass flute'), bass clarinet and the deep, dark, mysterious contrabassoon.

Sampled versions of these instruments generally tend to be fairly accurate, but with one quite common flaw. Woodwinds are generally played by humans who, on the whole, only have the one pair of lungs. Putting aside the technique of 'circular breathing' (jointly developed by the Aborigine people and Rolf Harris), it is not possible to play a note on a woodwind instrument for more than several seconds without (a) being sick or (b) imploding. Therefore, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense to loop sampled woodwinds (unless you have a sampled woodwind section, who alternate their breathing‑points to keep the note sustaining). So, if possible, edit your solo woodwind samples so they naturally tail off after about six or seven seconds and your arrangements will feel all the better for it. Trust me.

As with strings and brass, modulation is the key to realistic woodwind samples. With strings, we modulated the envelope and with brass, the filters, and now it's the turn of the LFO to have a go on the mod wheel. Woodwind instruments' most notable characteristic is their delicate use of vibrato and tremolo (and just to quickly clarify the difference, vibrato is a modulation in pitch and tremolo is a modulation in level).

Vibrato is most effective on the oboe, cor anglais, clarinet and bassoon, whilst tremolo sounds more natural with flute samples (which are blown across, rather than blown into). With solo woodwinds, program the mod wheel to control the frequency of the sine or triangle LFO, sweeping it from around 3.5Hz to about 6Hz, whilst simultaneously adjusting the pitch‑modulation depth from zero to around 10 cents (in the case of a flute, you want to modulate the level, by about 5dB or so).

Then, once again, play the mod wheel as you play the woodwind samples, bringing the vibrato/tremolo in and out on every note. When building up a woodwind arrangement, the subtle differences in modulation speed and depth on every instrument will really help to bring the arrangement to life. (By the way, here's a quick tip: when programming vibrato and tremolo, make sure the instrument in question has got reverb on it. It's hard to get realistic‑sounding modulation on a 'dry' instrument, since it's the effect the modulation has on the reverb that is the most important.)

Percussion Sections Of Distinction

The Percussion family is essentially the 'Waltons' of the orchestra, comprising a large range of assorted instruments, and is often referred to by orchestral people as 'the kitchen'. The set of instruments most often found lurking at the back are the timpani (or 'kettle drums'), cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, glockenspiel (or 'orchestra bells'), xylophone, tambourine, tubular bells and gong (or 'tam‑tam'). By the way, did you know that the weird, quasi‑choral, moaning effect throughout the soundtrack to the 'Alien' films is actually a gong being slowly stroked with a gobstopper?

If there's a secret to making sampled orchestral percussion sound realistic, it's probably contained in the phrase 'less is more'. When you've first loaded up some percussion samples, it's all too easy to bung on lots of reverb and crash away to your heart's content. Once you've got that out of your system, however, it's time to get to work properly.

Orchestral cymbals, for example, are treated very differently to conventional cymbals. Contrary to popular belief, they are not usually crashed together (since that invariably sounds like a trolley collision in Casualty) but are instead 'swept' together and then muted on the player's body. Therefore, sampled orchestral cymbals should have a slight attack time at the start and a fairly short release time (less then a second). If these samples are played slightly ahead of the note, they give a much more realistic sound than a simple 'crash' played dead on the beat. By changing the length of time for which you hold down the key before releasing it, you can also modulate the decay time (unlike having a simple triggered cymbal sample with a fixed decay time). Bear in mind, however, that if the tempo of the sequence is changed, the cymbals will need to be moved slightly earlier or later to pull them back into sync.

Creating a convincing orchestral sound using just samples owes more to the way those sounds are put together and treated in the composition than it does to the samples themselves.

Timpani can also benefit from the same treatment. While individual timpani strokes are good for underpinning and emphasising passages — by essentially forming a bass line — timpani rolls are even better at emphasising crescendos, by starting a bar or two ahead and leading up to it. A useful keyboard setup would duplicate the timpani samples that normally occupy the first few octaves of a keyboard on the top few octaves as well, so the same sample, for example, is present on C2 and C5. That way, timpani rolls can be played using both hands a few feet apart, which is much easier than trying to 'roll' with both hands on a single key.

Orchestral music can use a lot of fast snare rolls, which can be difficult to emulate and even more difficult to sequence. Repeating the same sample very fast is not a convincing option, since you invariably sway off into drum 'n' bass territory — not necessarily a bad thing but, nonetheless, not what's required here. A better solution is to either find an orchestral drum‑roll sample and create a continuous loop, or manufacture one by adding continuous filtered white noise to a single snare hit. If you place the looped drum roll/white noise on C# and the single hit on D#, for example, it's possible to play some extremely realistic orchestral snare patterns which, unlike more conventional drum loops, do not wander out of time when the sequence tempo is changed. Don't be timid with the reverb, either — remember, these instruments are right at the back of the hall, and the key to realistic percussion is to create a good 'off‑mic' sound. Which brings us neatly to the next section: mixing.

Hands Off Control

As mentioned earlier, the modern orchestra layout has evolved over centuries so that from the conductor's point of view (right in the middle at the front) all the instruments are fairly well balanced. It is his job to then keep time with his baton, emphasise certain passages and adjust the various levels of each section to create a good overall effect. I've always found it amusing that classical people think that mixing modern dance music just involves 'wiggling a few faders', while a lot of contemporary producers think that conductors 'just wave their arms around'. Fact is, Sir Georg Solti and Goldie both do the same job and I, for one, would like to see them swap.

When simulating an orchestra with samplers, the reason for keeping away from the normal armoury of EQ, panning, FX processing and level‑adjusting is that none of these processes exist with a live orchestra — but they all have a direct parallel in the world of arrangement. The basic rule is simple: if a particular instrument sounds too quiet, don't reach for a fader — play it louder! Below is a list of common mixing processes and how best to emulate them in arrangement:

• Faders: with an orchestra, the only level control each instrument has is for the performer to play it louder or quieter. In a live situation, there really isn't anything in the way of foldback, so each performer looks to the conductor to see how their part sounds 'in the mix'. When orchestrating using samplers, experiment by adding together different instruments to boost volume — double up a violin line with violas, or a horn part with trombones. Woodwinds are useful here — bass clarinets will help to emphasise cellos, whilst the contrabassoon will help to bring forward bass parts.
• EQ: now this is where things get interesting. While most individual players can subtly affect their tone on an instrument‑by‑instrument basis, arrangement is the key to a good‑sounding orchestral piece. Just as EQ can help to make different instruments 'sit' well in a mix, so arrangement can be used to create a convincing overall orchestral sound.

If a melody line is getting lost in the mix, it can be 'brightened' by being doubled with the same line an octave higher (or 'deepened' by being doubled an octave lower). Basses, trombones and timpani can all be used to enhance the bass end, while combining instruments such as violins and flutes can help to lift a section out of the mix. Tambourines can add top‑end sparkle to a section, and gentle bass‑drum rolls can be used to fill out the bottom end.

• Enhancer: there are orchestral equivalents to using an enhancer in a mix. If a melody line sounds a little 'muddy', adding a glockenspiel or harp part can act just like an Aphex, giving the line a more prominent attack. Likewise, if a rhythm is getting lost, a xylophone can be used to cut through the mix. Another secret weapon is the humble triangle. Although it's a quiet instrument, adding a looped triangle trill to a section really emphasises the high frequencies and, when used with a low timpani roll at the same time, can give a massive orchestral feel!
• Boom Box: if the bass end of the piece needs a little more punch, try emphasising the rhythm with plucked pizzicato basses — in a real orchestral environment, this sound alone can loosen your ribcage. For big moments, the bass drum can be (sparingly) used to wake people up.
• Compressor: the dynamic range of an orchestra — real or sampled — can be immense. To make loud passages leap out without hitting the end stops, don't add instruments; instead take them away in the preceding passage, one instrument at a time, before bringing them all back at once. In good orchestral arrangements it's the 'gaps' before the loud sections that make the crashes seem loud, not the crashes themselves!

Final Scores

I hope that you now have more of an insight into the world of orchestral arranging. Creating a convincing orchestral sound using just samples owes more to the way those sounds are put together and treated in the composition than it does to the samples themselves. Naturally, if you start out with an excellent orchestral sample library (and gigabytes of RAM!) you'll create a more realistic sound, but you may be surprised at just how good an orchestral sound you can achieve simply by observing a few simple ground rules.

Personally, I see no 'moral' issues with writing orchestral music using electronic instruments. Gustav Mahler described the term 'symphony' as '...creating a world with all the technical means available.' By encouraging people to write and arrange music that includes orchestral instrumentation, we're all helping to keep the spirit of orchestras alive (and orchestral musicians in work!). I, for one, would like to have all my pieces performed by a real symphony orchestra in a beautiful‑sounding hall, but it's a little out of my price range at the moment.

Still, you've got to start somewhere, and these orchestras will have to have something new to play in the next millennium... so let's get scoring.