This week I had the unique opportunity to get some orchestrating lessons from C. Michael Perry. Mike is an awesome guy with experience as an author, composer, performer, director/choreographer and a producer as well! He was kind enough to sit down with me and help me figure out my first real orchestration piece, “Wings to Fly”.
While Michael can hear full orchestrations in his head, I have struggled just to know which instrument is which! Most of my attempts have ended up being too heavy with instruments playing all at the same time, and with not much organization or character.
Michael helped me see that the most important thing about orchestrating is creating different textures. It’s important not to have all the instruments sounding at the same time, but to pull only the necessary instruments to create the right “sound”.
Michael helped me figure out a pattern I could follow. We started with my piano part. The sheet music for “Wings to Fly”, I already had notated on my computer. We pasted that into the score.
Next was the bass part. That was also pretty easy. I just had the bass stay consistent with the piano part. It added a little bit of depth to the piano, and helped me “hear” a little more of the orchestration that was inherent already in the piece.
When Michael orchestrates a piece of music, he says he just listens over and over to the music, in order to get a feel for the parts that stand out and are easily orchestrated. I wasn’t sure if that would work for me, but just adding the stronger parts of the song wasn’t as difficult as I thought. It was fun to experiment with different instruments playing the different lines. I didn’t have them all playing at once. I experimented with different textures and sounds. I’m starting to learn how different instruments can work together to create beautiful sounds.
I use Finale to notate my songs, and with the Garriton Personal Orchestra that it comes with, I was able to get at least a reasonable idea of how it might sound all orchestrated. It was fun. I really enjoyed the process.
The last part is just filling in the rest of the parts, making sure that the strong parts that we did previously are not covered up and remain the focus. I found I didn’t even need to add extra parts sometimes because the lines I already had sounded good. That was cool. I had a lot less instruments playing all at the same time.
Overall, it was a really positive experience! I’m still not done yet– It’s the middle of summer, and with all seven of my kids at home, I rarely have time to really work on it, but it’s coming, and I really like it!
I’ve also discovered a great analogy as I’ve been working on this process. Life, for me, has often become unbalanced, too full of things I’m trying to squeeze in here or there, creating an (orchestrated) mess! There isn’t much that I can enjoy when I’m like this because I’m trying to do too much in too many places.
If I keep my purpose in life clearly first (like my bass part that stays right with the piano) then I know I’ll keep my priorities straight. I can add extra things into my life, making sure that I start with the big things that are clear and straight forward. Sometimes I have to experiment even with these big things to make it work right into the balance of my life.
Adding in extra things after that, is like adding notes and orchestration only after the main things are all done. This is the part that is too easily messed up- knowing when to stop. But even still, it’s possible to get everything to work in perfect harmony and order, and it sounds absolutely magical! I can’t wait to have something to show off soon.
Thanks Michael for the wonderful lesson! I’m finally doing some orchestration!!!!! =)