When the first electronic synthesizers began to appear in the 1960s, musicians’ unions sought to ban them out of fear they would put orchestras and traditional musicians out of business. In retrospect, this seems awfully ironic considering how crude the earliest synthesizers sounded.
Modern sampling synthesizers, such as Propellerhead’s Reason and Native Instruments’ Kontakt, are capable of recreating most, if not all of the instruments that make up the typical orchestra with astonishing fidelity. Unless your name is Wendy Carlos, you probably won’t be using them to recreate a full classical concerto. For those home recordists who want to add orchestral colors to a vocal song or instrumental and can’t fit the London Philharmonic in their living room, these synths can really do the trick.
It helps enormously to understand the range and techniques of the various instruments in the orchestra. That’s where Paul Gilreath’s 703-page hardcover book, The Guide To MIDI Orchestration, now in its third edition, comes into play.
In a way, the book itself is an illustration of Glenn Reynolds’ Army Of Davids meme: beautifully laid out on slick, glossy paper and copiously illustrated in color, the production qualities of this self-published book are impeccable.
The Guide To MIDI Orchestration is infinitely more than just pretty to look at. It’s also chock-a-block full of details and tips on how to get electronic instruments sound less, well, electronic. While the topic of arranging classical instruments alone could fill a book the size of Gilreath’s—and has, many times—there’s enough detail here to give a keyboard player with decent chops a great starting point. It’s no coincidence the book is also being sold as a school textbook.
Unlike the typical book on arranging actual instruments, The Guide To MIDI Orchestration presents those arranging tips in the context of electronically sampled instruments, particularly computer-based software synthesizers.
In addition to the tips is advice on which effects to use to increase the realism of electronic instruments and where to place instruments in a recording mix to get as close as possible to the sound of being in the room with an actual orchestra. There’s also a chapter devoted to well known soundtrack composers, mastering engineers, and synthesizer designers.
The Guide To MIDI Orchestration isn’t cheap at eighty buck, but for the home recording enthusiast who already has some basic keyboard skills and wants to expand his recording abilities to include orchestration, this book is highly recommended.
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
Nice Article...
MIDI can also pertain to instruments outside the orchestra like guitar,drums,etc.. Besides people possibly using MIDI to replace musicians I think it's better used as a technology to enhance composition. An example(which already exists) would be that I could store samples of all different kinds of drum kits on an electric kit,henceforth, I would be able to utilize different sounds for different songs without needing each drum set. And, as digital recording gets more & more closer to analog quality, it will be harder & harder to differenciate between computerized samples and the real thing.
Again, nice article...
2 - Jerry Gerber
I am composer/music producer and have worked in MIDI since 1982, I am one of the first composers in the US to score an entire animation television show using MIDI. I also teach composition and music production.
Though I agree that Guide to Midi Orchestration is a good book for learning about equipment, software and procedures involving electronic music *production*, as a book on orchestration it is quite insufficient. All of the music examples are of the composer's own work, mostly in the key of C and, frankly, are unoriginal, unsophosticated examples. If one compares this book to some of the classic orchestration books by Piston, Adler or Kennan, one will see immediately that The Art of Midi Orchestration short-changes the student in that area. Though orchestration is best learned by doing and experimenting, a book containing orchestral excerpts by master composers with analysis and commentary can go a long way to helping the student understand the possibilities and styles of traditional and modern orchestration. The Guide to Midi Orchestration glosses over orchestration and instead focuses the bulk of its information on hardware, sofware and interviews about sound libraries. While this information is useful, it is hardly a book on orchestration, hence the title is a bit deceiving in my opinion.
Jerry Gerber
www.jerrygerber.com