Anyone use BBCSO for orchestral sketches?

haralddaviking

Does anyone use BBCSO to create rough orchestral sketches of your musical ideas? If so, do you create ensembles of instruments to use for melodies, other ensembles for accompaniment/accents, and others for bass, etc.? What ensembles would you recommend for sketching? BBCSO Core is the only high quality sample library I own, so any suggestions or advice is very much appreciated -- thanks!

hdv

Retroblueman

Hi, I see BBCSO as more of a tool for realising sketches than a tool for sketching (and think, for the money, it's the best tool out there for that). It's not great for sketching because you can only play one instrument at a time- Spitfire once hinted that they might release ensemble patches for BBCSO - wonder where that got to...

I'm a bit of an "old skool" sketch the basic melody/harmony on the piano and then orchestrate kind of fella so probably not helpful - I tend to work the piano sketch through to the end but if, along the way, I get an idea that (e.g.) a French Horn or a flute (or whatever) could do a cool thing then I'll pull one out from BBCSO and add that to the sketch as I go. I've always thought that if you think of an orchestra as 3 pianos working together (strings, woodwinds and brass) and make sure each "piano" sounds good and well voiced in its own right then you won't go too far wrong at the orchestration end.

Where I do use ensemble patches is if I know I want a sustained string based thing - I used to use LABS strings to do my "strings" sketching as a foundation for the rest of the orchestration, but I recently treated myself to Originals: Epic Strings (which I love). I'll usually try and limit my hands to 5 fingers at a time and then copy paste the midi from that into 5 BBCSO patches (bass, celli, viola and 1st/2nd violins) - then I delete the appropriate "fingers" from each piano roll (and then tweak extensively)

Londoneye330

Hi there!

Personally, (now) I use Albion ONE for orchestral sketches and BBCSO to refine those ideas. The main reason is that Albion is an ensemble patch, while BBCSO focuses on the individual sections.

I regard Albion ONE as a composing-sketching tool, and BBCSO as a composing-orchestrating tool!

Albion is great with composing realistically (enough) on the fly with their ensembles, you don't have to worry about so many instruments taking up so many tracks - they are arranged into instrument groups (high/low brass, high/low woodwinds, etc.), but when I really need to control what instruments with what timbre play what melody at what time, BBCSO is the way to go. Essentially, Albion ONE is less work, less control over the sound, and BBCSO is more work, but more control over your sounds!

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Enough about other plugins, here's how I would separate my BBCSO instruments into racks. Before my Albion ONE days, I would do this - it's just that it takes up so much CPU😭 Anyways here's something I revisited, filling it with asterisks because it evolved so much that it changed significantly.

Okay, so one thing I should add here is that for each rack, dynamics is controlled by a the same CC control, but the expression is not. So if I am only looking for a certain instrument within one rack, I simply turn down the expression knob for all the others. Okay time to go through all the asterisks I added:

* - Starting with strings, I had many different ways I separated them, and I changed with around often. This was the larger version. Basically in each rack you would have all 5 strings sections. The great thing about that is that if you are looking for a certain articulation it is right at your fingertips. For me, those six ended up as the most commonly used, you can change that any time. The inconvenient problem with having all this range in one rack is that it is really hard to mix. This will take up almost the entire frequency spectrum, so EQ-ing this will be a problem. (A work around that I didn't realize at the time, was to make each plug-in go through their own separate EQ within the rack) The other option would be very similar to the format with Woodwinds and Brass.

** - I later moved Oboes with the Woodwinds High, and Clarinets with the Woodwinds Low

*** - I usually leave a few Plugin tracks below each sections as misc. Their purposes are to include all the things we did not include (embellishments and other techniques)

**** - However, I did not put misc. tracks under percussion. I usually don't have go to percussion instruments because all of them are usually my go-to instruments 😁 plus, you can't really put percussion in a rack.

Let me know if you have any further questions! I also had another rack chart where I separated them into different timbres, but I don't remember if it really worked or not. If you want to see that too, let me know.

haralddaviking

Retro, London, great tips -- thank you!

Retro, I like your "3 piano" tip. I'm assuming each piano could play melody, accompaniment, or accents/ostinatos and that these roles are switched at the composer's will, correct? I like the "5 finger" max tip too when setting up the strings (sounds like I will have to check out Spitfire's Originals). Maybe use 4 fingers max for winds and 5-6 max for brass (maybe more if you use more horns?)?

London, your "racks" idea is what I was looking for. Thanks very much for posting that image -- very helpful. With my DAW (Cakewalk) I can setup racks and then use the MIDI ECHO button on each track to enable or disable any instrument within a rack, so I can reduce the issue with a rack taking up too much of the frequency space. Breaking up the sections into "high" and "low" would also likely help (I'll try this out too). Have you ever combined instruments from different sections to create a rack? For example, I like the instruments Strauss combined to play the main melody of the Blue Danube (bassoon, horn, violins, celli). Do you think it would be useful to put those instruments in their own rack to use for softer melodies in sketches?

hdv

Retroblueman

Yes - that's the idea. A piano doesn't have to just play chords, it can do counterpoint with three or four voices split equally or unequally between the hands, have chords in the right and ostinati in the left, or chords in the left and decoration in the right, or decorative figures in both.

I think my point was more that, rather than worry about voicing "the whole orchestra", if your winds "piano" sounds ok, and your strings "piano" sounds ok and your brass "piano" sounds ok (of course by reference to the underlying harmony), then they'll probably (not always) be good to go when played together. You can also sketch "a hand at a time" - i.e. do the left hand of the strings first, then record the right hand strings over that. Same thing with woods (LH = bassoon and clarinet, RH = oboe and flute).

I think, with brass, there's possibly a case to be made that it is two pianos in its own right. So one piano = French Horns doing one thing, and the other piano = trombones in the left hand and trumpets in the right, doing a different thing (that's how it sits in my head anyway). Or maybe you could see it as bones in the left, French horns in the right, with trumpets doing their own thing.

None of this is meant to stand up to intense scrutiny or be treated as gospel - it's just a heuristic idea that hopefully makes "the orchestra" a bit less intimidating by reducing it to three (or four) pianos made up of six (or eight) hands.

PS - The slight note of caution I would sound over "racks" is that you'll end up with one midi "performance" triggering all the instruments in the rack and that can sound a bit artificial and synthy (not always, but there is a risk). It might be the case that (for example) what you are doing in your left hand for strings (i.e. bass and cello) is doubled by your left hand for brass (trombones), but I would take the extra time to record another midi track for the brass just to add a bit of unpredictability (and therefore realism). This will also prompt you to stop and think about whether you actually do want to double - e.g. you might have a repeated 4 note rhythm going in the celli and consider doubling on the trombones, but actually the best musical answer might be to have the trombones play only the first note of each four note group.

PPS - I have ignored the tuba and piccolo (and other "extended" instuments) as they are a bit like table salt - bad for the blood pressure if added unthinkingly; )

Jonathan

I left a lengthy post here, but it is now gone. Not sure why it was deleted.

Londoneye330

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/8653#Comment_8653

Yes, so combining racks does have a problem of sounding synthy, so I recommend using it for sketch only, and then record them separately if you have time/if it does sound synthy.

As for specific instrument combining, however combination you want to put, whether it be by range or style or timbre, it's up to you if you want to do so! The biggest reason why I used a rack by range most often is because it makes mixing so much easier. But experiment with other types of racks as well, BBCSO core sometimes sounds great out of the box, so mixing is only a thing you should worry about if it is for a much more... professional(ish)? track

haralddaviking

Jonathan, would you be able to just reiterate the "bottom line" of your post that was lost? Thanks!

eakwarren

Unify is a great tool for building ensemble patches out of BBCSO. Plugin Guru's CoreStation has some interesting content as well.

eakwarren

Or Kushview Element could also build ensemble patches. It's currently on sale for $2.99, normally $5.00.