No, when I use the term “unusual orchestration,” I mean the truly inspired and unfamiliar use of orchestral color, not merely as an end in of itself, but (in tandem with the notes) to coax the listener to feel ever more precisely a desired emotion or experience. As an apotheosis of this ideal, I invariably go for my real kicks to the scores of the Great One, “The Herrmannator.” the Maestro of Mystery himself, Bernard Herrmann. In the Hollywood assembly-line scoring industry over which he towered, he remained a dissident, never to my knowledge employing a separate orchestrator, but rather generating his dramatic moods from the ensemble’s inside out, not merely adding color but building from color.

For example, in the first CinemaScope film, “Beneath The 12-Mile Reef,” (20th Century Fox, 1953) a film about ethnic clashes among reef sponge-divers, much of the action is shot underwater and Herrmann employed a standard studio orchestra, but dominated by the addition of 9 (count ‘em nine) harps. This wasn’t merely to make up for the mechanical chromatic shortcomings of the modern instrument, but rather to vivify the murkiness and fluid motion in the underwater photography. Heard apart from the film, the underwater feel is still there, a good acid test of the efficacy of any orchestration.

In “Journey To The Center Of The Earth,” (20th Century Fox, 1959) there are two standout uses of unusual color becoming a dramatic element. In a scene involving a giant snake, Herrmann coaxed a low, unsteady moaning effect out of an Renaissance instrument called, appropriately, a serpent. The bass member of the cornetto family, it is a woodwind with a brass-type mouthpiece and recorder-like finger holes, and using a tuba embouchure. Even on a good day it has trouble producing a stable, centered tone. Over a bed of contrabassoon and bass clarinet, it made a perfect bit of sound design for the slithering, menacing super-snake. (For another taste of this effect, see also “White Witch Doctor,” 20th Century Fox, 1953.) For the last (underground) half of “Journey,” Herrmann augmented his usual orchestra with 5 organs (4 electronic and 1 pipe,) again not just as a pinch of varietal spice, but as the overall base of the subterranean look and feel.

For one of the more inspired cases of chase scene underscore in my memory, take a look at “On Dangerous Ground” (RKO Pictures, 1952.) What might have been a rather pedestrian (pun intended) foot chase up an icy, rocky mountain (with its obligatory deadly slip and fall at the end) Herrmann employed 9 French horns leading the orchestra in an uncanny emulation of savage, snapping dogs.

Regarded by many critics as the finest film ever made, “Citizen Kane” (Mercury Theater/RKO/Pictures, 1941) contains what must be every orchestrator’s wildest dream—an “over the top” assignment to orchestrate so massively that the music’s climax will drown out the scene’s focus, Susan Alexander Kane, a pathetically amateur lyric soprano opera star wannabe. How often does your client really mean the words, “can’t be too big?” In this case, Herrmann had to tread carefully to compose an unknown aria so convincingly authentic that viewers would intuitively sense that the fault for the bad performance lay with the “singer” and not the composer.

In stark contrast to his most acclaimed collaboration, his most famous score was effective not for what he (overly) put in, but rather for what he left out—woodwinds, brass, and percussion. “Psycho” (Paramount, then Universal, 1960) is a black-and-white film, stark in many respects, and shot with the budget (and personnel) of Hitchcock’s television series. At first blush, a small string orchestra would make it counterintuitive for a grisly mass-murder story, but Herrmann managed a perfect, organic marriage of the visual and the orchestrational which surmounts the presumed limitations of either. The genius of the orchestration was that it deftly handled the extremes of mood as well as action, including arguably the most horrorful murder in film history.

Of course, in an increasingly sequenced and sampled industry, of what relevance is this historic figure? Aside from a true sound-design composition, most synth/sample scores are, let’s be honest, pretty conventional orchestrationally. We’ve gotten so hung up on sample authenticity that we’ve forgotten about our obligation to innovate. Also, unfortunately, most of us are neither challenged nor inspired by collaboration with a Hitchcock or a Welles, but we must strive as if we were. Give me imaginative use of mediocre samples over uninspired and unsearching use of stellar ones any day. Banish “right out of the box” from your thinking. Bernard Herrmann had access to real instruments (albeit with varying limitations) on all of his scores. And yet if he hadn’t always gone that extra imaginative mile, would we be talking about him today?

A number of years ago, I found myself killing time late one night in the lounge of the Four Queens in Las Vegas. It was my night off from my showroom gig at the Tropicana (remember live music in the showrooms back then?) and I was there to hear Carl Fontana and his band playing some real music, after hours. When the gig was over, out of boredom I got involved watching the sound man tear down the stage, as he seemed to have a too-elaborate method for coiling up mike cables. Then it hit me. By going back and forth with the orientation and twist of each loop, he was managing to create a large coil which, when extended, would have no accumulated twist of the cable at all. We’ve all seen coiled garden hoses which, when pulled across the yard, became kinked from all the accumulated twisting. This is a result of repetitively (and instinctively) looping the hose in the same direction when being coiled.

When it comes to delicate and expensive quality studio cables, any excess twisting isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging. Therefore, enlightened assistant engineers get in the habit of gathering and coiling them so as to eliminate any accumulated kink. You know the simple thumb-and-forefinger twist you use to make a loop? Unconsciously, that simple maneuver, when repeated down the entire length of cable is what yields a “Slinky”-toy-esque twisted monster the next time you stretch it out, and its avoidance is simple: use the same finger/thumb twist, but go in the opposite direction on every other loop. Try it. Logically, every twist you use to make successive loops adds to the overall kink, and each opposite-direction twist attenuates it. Next time you stretch out your cable, extension cord, rope, wire, or string, you will have a straight, unkinked, and unstressed (read longer-lasting) line.

The second tip involves counting measures, either of rests (for a player) or music (for a score-follower.) Out of sheer programming, we all count in the decimal system, or base-10 (you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … 9, 10, 11…) As a backup, we use our fingers to allow our conscious minds to process other things while we are counting (visual cues, checking key signatures, looking ahead in the music for significant events, etc.) However, our natural shortage of digits limits us to 10 measures and then we start over. Wouldn’t it be nice to triple that capacity and without surgery?

Have we ever considered counting in base-five? Thinking outside the box, it’s simple. You still use your fingers, and still think in base-ten, but your fingers work in base-five. Place your hands over the table in front of you (or your lap, or on portions of your cradled instrument, etc.) palms down with fingers spread and labeled as: left hand thumb (L1), left hand forefinger (L2), left hand middle finger (L3), etc., all the way through right hand pinky (R5.) Using your right hand for increments of one and your left for increments of five, you can turn your two hands into a base-five abacus, counting to thirty by various combinations of fingers up or down. For 1-5, you would count 1 (RT), 2 (R1R2), 3 (R1R2R3), 4 (R1R2R3R4), and 5 (R1R2R3R4R5.) For 6-10, hold down your left thumb (L1) while going through the previous sequence L1R1, L1R1R2, L1R1R2R3, L1R1R2R3R4, and L1R1R2R3R4R5. Do you see the pattern? Using this method of counting digitally (pun intended) you can count all the way to 30 without involving your conscious mind. With practice, you can instantly tell by feel what the count is at any moment. When you hit 30 (all digits down), you can start over again for higher counts, and keeping stock of groups of thirty is much easier than groups of ten…

The final tip involves pulling rough tempos out of thin air, on the spot, and even while distracted by other music, a godsend for accompanists, players, and conductors (especially so for the latter when jumping between cues and parts of cues on the fly during a hectic session without resetting the click.)

While learning to read words, you probably moved your lips. Though discouraged at the time, it’s what makes this technique work. To purely mechanically pull 120 beats per minute (BPM) out of thin air, simply count silently (but with your lips moving) to four, repetitively and as fast as you can. Each “one” is a beat. Enunciate clearly, as mumbling may let you go artificially too fast and throw off your tempo. For 105 BPM, count to five. For 90 BPM, count to six. For 75, seven and for 60, eight. If your target tempo falls outside of these benchmark numbers, shave your execution a little faster or slower from the closest one. If you know the music at all, this can serve as a useful mnemonic and, if you don’t, it should still let you hit the ground running. This technique helped me learn relatively quickly and conduct performances of one of Mozart’s most challenging operas, “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Seemingly trivial bits of utility? You bet, but put ’em to use and they bloom like roses.

To reliably navigate where and how your career is going, however the industry labels your duties, you need periodic and unvarnished reality checks on who and what you really are inside. Take my following 4-part (by-no-means-exhaustive) Orchestrational Aptitude Test (OAT), and perhaps discover where you really stand. Score +1 for every “yes” answer and -1 for every “no.”

YOUR APTITUDE

1. Do you often find rehearsals, with their potential for orchestrational disassembly and microscopy, more interesting than the performances they precede?
2. If you find yourself at a garage/estate sale or used book store, do you find yourself weeding through piles of publicational claptrap on the very off chance of finding a musical score to practically anything?
3. When watching film, do you often find the dialog getting in the way of the orchestration?
4. When you hear classic (not classical) songs by the likes of (Sir) Elton John or the Beatles, does your attention drift away from the vocals to discern the makeup and voicing of the small but colorfully effective ensembles which so often spiced up the tracks?
5. (Followup to #4) In general, do you find yourself more familiar with the arrangement of a pop song than the lyrics or even the melody?
6. Bonus point: Can you orchestrationally describe the underscore to the narration in The Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin,” especially if you can’t recite the words?
7. In a comparison between original or recreated recordings of film scores and “pops orchestra” versions (despite their larger forces or better recording quality), do you usually find the original more compelling?
8. When you tune in classical music on the radio. do you immediately look for something else upon hearing either solo piano or anything with harpsichord in it?
9. Do you ever find yourself killing one side of a stereo ensemble recording, just to approximate the experience of standing against the wall of a session while it’s going down?
10. If given a choice between the printed score and the recording (assuming you are not on a desert island,) would you more often than not choose the score?

YOUR KNOWLEDGE

11. Could you hold your own in a game of instrumental trivia? (How big a store of orchestration anecdotes from the history of music and/or film do you carry around in your head like a comedian’s jokes?)
12. Is it no longer necessary for you to look up transpositions or ranges for the instruments you use?
13. If blindfolded, could your ear differentiate between the registers, timbres, articulations and special effects of all the standard orchestral instruments?
14. Are you familiar enough with such elements to imagine them combined in ways you have not yet encountered?
15. Can you roughly intuit (preferably through some form of experience) the sensations of actually playing these sounds?
16. Can you clearly imagine the sound of an unfamiliar score?
17. Can you flip the coin and mentally reverse-engineer what such a score would look like if just given the audio?

YOUR EXPERIENCE

18. Given that instrumental color is as integral to an orchestrator’s listening experience as the pitch, have you done a significant number of takedowns in your career? (Audio, not midi.)
19. At recording sessions, do you routinely forego precious breaks to grill great players for insights and informational tidbits about their instruments?
20. Do you seek out such information even though you may have no immediate need for it?

YOUR WORK

21. When you orchestrate, do you actually imagine and experience (and hence meticulously detail) the music on scores you produce more thoroughly than even the subsequent session players?
22. Do you resist letting your samples’ capabilities dictate what gets written for them?
23. Are your scores reliably recorded with a minimum of muss, fuss, rehearsal time, and “takes?”
24. Have you ever gotten any of your scores (hopefully ones more sophisticated than “Mary Had A Little Lamb” in whole notes) nailed on the first take?

Assessing your aggregate score is simple, as a positive one leans toward revealing the heart and soul of an orchestrator. A negative one might be more indicative of something else. Either way, the questions themselves might set you to thinking.

Just what does that amalgamation of teamwork, variety, power, and sheer artistic force known as “the orchestra” mean to you anyway?

We’ve all used the term “repetitive stress injury,” but have we ever considered something like “repetitive time injury?” When something wastes large blocks of time, like watching television or sitting in traffic, we readily acknowledge it. But when something devours miniscule nuggets of time, but exponentially more often, do we recognize and address that?

Most such moment-wasters are simply due to poor organization. If we spend 20 seconds every time we look for, fetch, recall, move around, and otherwise interact with the minutiae of our work, it adds up eventually, and the solution is better organization, which is to say better design and more disciplined use of it. All our lives, my father (from his career as a U.S. Naval officer in aviation maintenance) has consistently drilled into his sons the mantra, “Everything has a place and everything in its place.” Can you imagine aviation crews delaying a carrier jet launch because they can’t find the proper tool to attach needed ordnance (i.e. missiles and bombs) to the fuselage of a fighter jet?

I’ve seen literally thousands of electronic music production setups, both in person and through photo layouts in Mix, EQ, Electronic Musician, Keyboard, and the like. As most are variants of the same theme, the inventory and placement of the equipment are already well established. In the world of music prep (copyists, orchestrators, arrangers, proofreaders, etc.,) however, the needs of the job can be different and therefore require some different strategies (and when was the last time you saw a photo spread on the office of a copyist or orchestrator?)

Music prep differs from audio prep in one key way: paper. Wherever the session, as the sheet music person, you will eventually need to place symbols on, re-read, bind, and organize various sizes and copious amounts of paper. Even as the proofreader, you will often need to print out that which you are proofing, as doing it on the screen isn’t always practical or even desirable. Therefore, in addition to the requisite equipment used in digital music production which you will use to input and check your data, you must find a way to have your printer and paper supplies within arm’s reach. For obvious reasons, the printer (I have two, both for different print requirements, and as a backup) should have both manual feed and output tray(s) easily reachable or you will be forever leaving your work to fetch your work.

For paper supplies, some form of filing cabinet is an absolute must. Mine is one of those industrial-strength jobs, much wider than it is deep, legal-size paper capable, and with files that go from left to right rather than front to back. Hanging file folders allow for smooth access to many different sizes, types, and amounts of paper. Placed directly behind my ”throne,“ its three drawers are all accessible and content-visible from my chair without rising. This gives me the freedom and flexibility to change print capabilities on-the-fly.

A second, and arguably equally important function played by your cabinet is to hold all materials and documents of multiple projects in various stages of completion or archival. Remember my dad’s workplace mantra? Clutter is the enemy and your filing cabinet is the cure. Scores, incomplete print jobs, invoices, cribsheets, receipts, faxes, printed emails, project folders, CD’s or DVD’s, media labels, project notes, you name it. All can be stashed easily and quickly as they appear and before they can start accumulating into search-time-wasting piles of hodgepodge.

To give your hanging file folders maximum muscle and flexibility for this kind of temporary, changeable storage, dump those little plastic tab label holders that clip onto the folders (or use them for your blank paper supplies.) Undoubtedly designed for permanent archival, they take relatively forever to write the label, fold it over, sandwich it into the plastic see-through tab, and hook both ends into slots in the folder. Instead, cut some cardboard strips the width of a small “post-it”-style note pad and twice as long vertically. (If you’re really in a hurry, playing cards could function, I suppose.) Staple one to the inside surface of each folder so that the height of one post-it note would be visible above the top edge.

Now, every time you are finished, even for the moment, with any clump of papers, you can stow it quickly and reliably into an empty folder, scribble a label on a sticky note, and slap it onto the oversized cardboard tab. Periodically, you can empty out inactive folders, archive or dispose of the contents (shred, if there is sensitive data on it,) and peel off the label. Voilà! No more clutter! (Just make sure you follow through and use it!)

Using this mindset, scrutinize your setup for other sources of “repetitive time injury.” and for ways to keep your materials, tools, equipment, etc., organized and accessible, letting function prioritize their placement. When you find yourself having to think faster to stay ahead of your new organizational regime, pat yourself on the back for your vision and discipline. And always remember: Everything

I once had the misfortune to rupture a disk in my neck due to the massive music prep workload for the music performed by the Atlanta Symphony for the entire opening and closing ceremonies of the ’96 Summer Olympics. The protocol of that job required that we do it all by hand, and I worked for 36 days without a break, 8-10 hours a day. Despite our usual precautions of slanted table-tops, good posture, adequate lighting, etc., I still found myself about a week later conducting a recording session with a right arm that was growing more sluggish by the minute. The quick of the story was that 36 days of being locked into a position had caused the muscles in my neck to inflame and spasm, pulling it out of position enough to rupture a disk, with consequent pain and diminished nerve flow. Fortunately, most such neck problems relax and work their way out in several months. (Mine did.) The moral of that story is that too much of anything, even work, isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Obviously, now that we do the job with lasers and toner instead of pens and ink, our posture has changed, but not the potential hazards of physical overwork due to poor planning. Let’s start with the basic setup. For each micro-task we do, if we could mentally draw a graph, with one axis measuring time spent and another showing how often we do it, the resulting plot would help us prioritize and strategize the positions of our tools to save time and avoid personal injury. Take into account things like standing and sitting (knees,) leaning (spine,) head position (neck,) unvarying depth of visual focus (eyestrain,) chair height (leg circulation,) speaker placement (ear strain,) etc.

Here’s how my analysis dictated my basic setup (your mileage may vary…)

(1) Monitor placement: directly in front and slightly down, since my emphasis (scores, parts, etc.) is graphic and therefore visual. I use two monitors stacked vertically, as notation primarily demands vertical real estate, compared to sequencing’s obsession with the horizontal.

(2) Computer keyboard/trackball: at elbow level, directly in front of and nearest to me, as more time is spent editing than strictly inputting.

(3) Midi keyboard: front-to-back, between computer keyboard/mouse and computer monitor, and slightly elevated. (Not the optimal position for hours of playing, but the need to maintain body orientation through constant back-and-forth on the two keyboards wins out.)

4) Workstation orientation: When possible, and for both acoustic and ergonomic reasons, placed with its back to one of the short sides of a rectangular room, but not forcing one to look at or out a window (glare and shadow.) Allow space between workstation and back wall to minimize speaker/wall interaction, allow access to component/network wiring and, not insignificantly, for video monitor placement at a different focal depth from the computer monitor, forcing you to change focus frequently to avoid eyestrain.

(5) Telephone: within easy arm’s reach without leaning, preferably on the same side as the more skilled arm (for dialing.)

(6) Printer: Again, within arm’s reach, both for retrieving completed prints and for manual feed access.

(7) Easel: For holding scores, manuals, etc., at eye level. Since this is used less often, but for longer stretches, I built one onto an old-style computer/video monitor platform with a swing-out arm to be available when needed, or quickly swung back and folded out of position when not.

(8) Chair and floor: Rolling chair, obviously, and raised enough to allow feet to rest comfortably on the floor without folding your legs back under (leg circulation.) Pick one with arms, so that you don’t fall in the habit of resting the weight of yours on your wrists. Create a hard floor surface, even a plastic floor mat, as carpet strains your body and your chair through castor-level resistance when your propulsion is higher up.

(9) Lighting: Both overhead and swing-arm lamp are needed for the different requirements when relating to paper music on an easel and data on a monitor. For the easel, you want the light coming from over your shoulder for maximum brightness but with minimal reflective glare. When your focus is all-monitor, light from overhead works fine.

These are only the most fundamental concerns of the healthy music prep workstation, allowing you to function safely and comfortably on those parts of the job you encounter most frequently. Elements beyond these fall more solidly in the time-saving/efficiency arena, and will be discussed more widely next time. Until then, take a critical look at everything you stare at, touch, or listen to throughout your workday with an eye to maximizing variety (of eye focus, muscle tension, ear sensitivity, etc.,) minimizing repetition (of task, limb or sense activity, mental process, etc.,) and minimizing physical

Be honest, how many of us make fundamental commitments to important software, based on little more than a sales pitch or passive communal hearsay? Doesn’t that reveal a tacet acceptance of some form of “they’re all alike” or “I don’t really plan on getting too involved with this software anyway?” And then, once committed, how many of us actually put it through paces beyond what we immediately need to get this day’s/week’s/month’s tasks done? How many have gone through the manual, virtual cover to virtual cover? And, ultimately, how many keep tabs on the outside world for ongoing development by producers and aftermarket innovators? (And if one doesn’t, how does one sleep at night?)

I recently was asked by a friend and colleague for some help with a Finale problem. After a little probing, I discovered that it grew out of his own personally-developed shortcuts to the repetitive and time-consuming layout tweaks on myriad instrument parts for each score produced. The design of his workaround was not important. What was lay in the fact that, once his approach had been finalized and adopted, he had changed neither it nor the version of the Finale he had used in years.

Now I’ll be the first to grant that the pace and cost of upgrades can seem at times to serve software companies more than their customers. Depending on the needs of each user, the bang-for-the-buck factor in every upgrade can fluctuate wildly. I’m sure I’ve hardly been alone in wondering how some companies decide that it’s showtime (at least until I look at the calendar…)

But many of us seem to have developed a schism in our attitudes. When we perform, we take it as gospel that pursuit of excellence requires a constant struggle to improve both our tools (instruments) and our abilities on them. Pablo Casals, the legendary cello soloist, when asked by a friend why he continued to practice even into his eighties, had a reply that was telling: “Because I think I’m beginning to show some improvement.” However, many of us, when seated in front of a computer, drown that same restless urge in a vat of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Professional or amateur, does it matter whether our tools are made of wood and metal or ones and zeros? A comfort zone of consistency often morphs into a dead zone of complacency and, in an arena of constant change, we don’t.

Notation software gets used because we hold out at least the possibility of an eventual performance, so we owe it someone to supply the best output possible. The look and feel of yours will speak both for and about you, and your mastery of the tools which generate it impacts on your overall reliability, competitiveness, and fulfillment in the process.

Any software package can misbehave in mid-gig, or turn out to possess insufficient headroom to let us go beyond its original design when the urge strikes us. In such cases we face three choices: complain, compromise our style or standards to fit the tool, or improvise. As the combinations of possible interactions in any complex system are simply too numerous, no team of programmers or beta testers can anticipate all contingencies. Neither can they provide documentation vast enough to even cover most of them (although, early on, Finale’s three bloated manuals sure tried…)

Hence, there is an added value to software which, by design or gradual evolution, packs sufficient assets to allow “more than one way to skin a cat” (gad, what a metaphor!) Along those lines, another barometer of programmer prescience is built-in capability for retasking (within the software) features by the user, with its promise of enhanced personal power when needed and appropriate.

Workarounds are a fact of software existence, but they should only have a life as long as the problems they address. With each upgrade, I go through my whole arsenal of macros and scripts to see which can be scrapped or adapted. When the programmers develop a better way, nine times out of nine-and-a-half their solutions are accomplished at more fundamental conceptual and code levels, and tend to be more elegant (and better behaving) than anything we can cobble together from the outside.

It behooves us, then, while perhaps not grabbing at every upgrade thrown at us, to at least keep a constant vigil on them for what they can do, and their potential for improving our user experience. Software producers, either through their online “what’s new” webpages and chatrooms or through freely-distributed demo versions, allow, no practically beg us to look under the hood and take a test drive.

And what of the “Fin-Sib” debate, and perhaps others? These issues of depth, redundant capacity, and retaskability and scriptability, while often overlooked, can yield greater depths to your evaluation of these competing products.

I had occasion once to perform a concert work by a very successful composer of fully-orchestrated episodic television and jingles. The piece was 4-5 minutes long and, after every complete run-through, my chops could feel the exertion. A cursory analysis revealed why: a sum total of 24 beats (not bars, but beats) of rest in the whole piece, with dynamics running the gamut from forte to fortissimo.

This is not intended as a slight against this composer; his career bankroll could surely buy and sell me and most of my colleagues many times over and that kind of success “ain’t hay.” It’s possible that, without the usual aid of an orchestrator on this personal concert work, the endurance aspect may have been overlooked. Or perhaps a bread-and-butter career of cues in the two-minute-and-under range may have numbed certain instincts. Whatever the reason, it was a bit of a workout.

I also noticed that, as principal trombone, my notes were, almost without exception, doubled in the first trumpet an octave up. This combination carried a desired effect certainly, but the consistency began to take on a subtler version of the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic/arranging repetitions we discussed last time.

Brass players, much moreso than their colleagues in the other sections, produce their tones through physical exertion of abdominal and facial muscles. Generally, exertion rises with pitch and psychological stress runs the gamut from minimal (low, loud, and tutti) to maximal (high, soft, and exposed.) Recording protocols being what they are, time to recover between rehearsals and “takes” can be short. As industrial composers whose music will be executed (in either sense of the word) by relative strangers, we would be wise to be careful what we demand of them. As a gauge of what one is asking, I always advocate a mental read-through, end to end, of each part. Even if you aren’t a brass player, pretend to be one as you skim and you will probably sense when you’ve gone too far.

However, beyond the strictly practical, there is also a subtle yet potent aesthetic principle to be assimilated as well, particularly for the midi orchestrator. The western ear, surely due to the mechanics of tone production, has evolved into one of strings with woodwind/brass/percussion embellishment, not the other way around. Samplers will, or course, do your complete bidding without complaint, but always bear in mind that existing listener sensibility which must process and accept the effect of your music. It evolved first and, unless you have the guts and creative genius of a Copland, Ives, or Stravinsky, it’s a mistake to arrogantly assume that it will twist itself into a pretzel to accommodate the seemingly endless horizons of your digital rig.

This means that, although you can blast your audience with nonstop rhythmic pounding or unending thicker-than-the-Great-Wall-of-China melodic stacks of seeming armies of brass, maybe you should think about whether you should. When you are honing the short strokes of your sampled magnum opus, solo the collected brass tracks and play the sequence all the way through. Could any brass section this side of heaven rehearse and comfortably record successive takes of such a monster? Does it end up sounding too good to be true? If so, do you risk, in addition to player burnout, subconscious overload of that precious listener psyche? Could your cue be made more interesting (and intuitively believable) by some judicious surgery or rearrangement of the building blocks within all the aural pudding? As variety is the subtlest, least-appreciated aspect of good orchestration, it often separates the true craftsmen from the mere sampler owners.

If time is too tight, at least take a quick look at the graphic view of the brass tracks. If you don’t see a fair number of “holes,” in each track, chances are it would be problematic for a live player and, by extension, should be rethought for your sampler. In the above story, if all one could see is 24 beats of space in a principal brass track of a 5-minute piece, it should certainly ring a few bells.

Ultimately then, if you look at the samples-versus-live discussion as a mere examination of the limitations of either one, you’re missing a fundamental aesthetic point. It’s not the humanity or lack thereof in your performer (real or sequenced) which should ultimately control what you do, it is that of your listener. It can be what makes some sampled cues sound like Saturday night at symphony hall and others like a cheap commercial. And when you do hear a piece performed live, carefully weigh its “authenticity” quotient. If the piece “feels” real and satisfying, chances are your traditional ear is hearing a balance, variety, and “mix” with which it’s already comfortable, and that’s the challenge.

Remember the song “Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve? A huge hit, with an even bigger afterlife for its violin “hook“ which has become a staple as bumper music in radio, television, and jingles. The entire song consisted of a two-bar chord progression which got repeated, sometimes with and sometimes without, its violin theme, forty-nine times without variation.. Hip-hop and other dance music is littered with “songs” that have two- or four-bar phrases, kick-drum rhythms, progressions, etc., which are vamped literally from one end of the song to the other.

Now I know that sequencers and loop-based production practically beg the artist to shortchange the “polishing” phase of composition. Small wonder so many music-makers have become so seduced by the quantity they can crank out (and the speed with which they can do it) that they’ve lost focus on true quality. It’s as if they’ve become, to steal a line from “Jurassic Park,” “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Here’s the rub: Initially, vamp-like repetition seizes the ear’s attention as it anticipates the inevitable left turn into new material. When it fails to come, the listener’s attention starts to wander, and you’ve just lost your key advantage. Plus, as I listened to that chase scene, I began to agonize for the players who had to endure recording it. Wandering attention affects them, too, and there is nothing like the terror of suddenly realizing you may be unsure of which repetition you are on, or of having to play something with perfect repetition 28 times.

So how best to cope with the forces which conspire, innocently or not, to get you to “send in the clones?” Yes, I can hear it already, these examples are all from hugely successful projects, and who am I to judge? Actually, the second-guessing I bring to bear is an internal one which I hope to encourage in you, for in that continually-varying chasm between the almighty dollar and true satisfaction with your writing, isn’t the latter ultimately more important?

Consider your audience. Whether conscious of it or not, variety, development, and richness (not merely wallpapering with sound) will draw them into your music and hence the story your are supporting. Eventually, the industry will notice that your scores are just more interesting. Even your players will certainly appreciate the richness of your cues by giving them greater attention and effort when performing and recording them, a little-discussed but distinct advantage.

So set a new ethic for yourself. Get in the habit of noticing all the variety and richness in the scores of others as ends in themselves. If you are an orchestrator, even when given a midi file or sketch which seems to mandate static repetition, bust your hump (following a discrete discussion with your employer) to find ways to introduce some variety and direction to it through systematic addition or substitution of instrumental colors, textures, or even tonalities. They don’t have to be big or obvious; in fact, subtlety works better (and shows you as a class act.) For instance, that cello figure mentioned above could have used occasional punctuation (or even total substitution) by another section (low brass, for instance.)

If you are the composer, your options and artistic responsibility to both your director and audience are greater. Make it your mission in life to give them more than they seem to have gotten in the habit of receiving.

The lesson here is that meaningless repetition is the lazy way out. Variety is your friend. Embrace it. Invite it into every project you accept. Further, don’t treat your players as machines; don’t even treat your machines as machines. Unless, of course, your audience actually becomes a bunch of machines, or something like them…

The task required transfer and/or reinstallation/upgrading of both data and applications. Data is simply a collection of (hopefully) well-organized and backed-up data files, libraries, preference files, etc., and can be moved either to the new platform directly or stored indirectly to media and restored to its place on the old. There are even automated approaches available to do all this for you. On my Mac, the officially sanctioned approach did not work, and I wouldn’t want to use it for applications anyway. Applications, because of their delicate and exquisitely well-choreographed dance with the operating system, really are too complex for manual or even automated transfer, especially across generations of operating systems. What’s really called for is a complete re-installation of their component parts in multiple places. As most users routinely employ many dozens of applications, the complexity of the whole task becomes obvious. Plus, if one of your applications gets corrupted, it’s a usually a rotten time to organize the reinstallation process.

In my case, I found myself searching all over my office for original installation disks, stored disk images of downloaded software upgrades, and printed registration materials, as well as on the internet for available/advisable upgrade options (forcing decisions on possible changes.) This was interspersed with needle-in-a-haystack searches on my computer for emailed registration and installation codes, purchase dates, serial numbers, etc.

There are probably more than one way to skin this organizational cat, but here is the one I developed: (1) Organize application installation materials physically. Sounds simple and obvious, and it is. As you obtain original installation or upgrade disks from manufacturers, dedicate some safe location where they (and any written materials, but more on that in a minute) can be archived for easy retrieval. (2) Create a master folder on your computer to store all pertinent elements for installing each application. On mine it’s called (arbitrarily) “Application Install/Upgrade Elements.” In it will be a folder for each manufacturer (i.e. “MOTU,”) which in turn will contain folders for each application (“Digital Performer,” “MachFive,” etc.) Within each of those will be a folder for each generation of the software you might conceivably need. In my case, I have many generations of Finale and Sibelius, and I may need to reinstall even the oldest (perhaps even on an obsolete platform,) depending on the needs of my clients. Within each version’s folder will be all necessary disk images, complete programs, serial/registration numbers, installation codes, purchase dates, etc. Instead of some form of word processing file, I just created folders called “Serial Number,” “Activation Code,” “Emails,” etc., and within each will be a folder whose name will be that particular number or code, or whose contents will be pdf’s of any correspondence or website pages. In all likelihood, the file structure concept will outlive any particular file format, so the data will be readable far into the future. If you worry about hacking, encrypt the folders containing the codes.

Over time, as you add each new application or upgrade to your computer, it takes just a minute to add more folders to archive the new elements. It’s a simple matter to back up this omnibus collection as you would any other, and not nearly as often (only when adding new applications or upgrades.) I’m not a PC person, but this approach should work similarly on both Macs and PC’s. Most software seems to be downloaded, which leaves a compressed package and consequent disk image or file which can be stored easily by this method. It will also work for hardware drivers, which experience has shown can be important if your manufacturer goes bye-bye. (However, it’s up to you whether or not you want to keep a complete set of the automatic upgrades that come in through the internet as you work.)

The primary advantage here over written logs or files is infinite reproducibility, reliable backup-ability and (if a complete reinstall becomes necessary) faster, easier, and more accurate input of codes via cut-and-paste instead of manual entry. For a quick log of all your codes, you can even do a global “open” of all the folders and print out the file structure. By its very structure, it will reinforce good organization.

Obviously, there will be massive installer disk collections and sound libraries require physical storage, but these can either be backed up to other media or, at worst, insured and replaced by the manufacturer. This approach is for the majority of your bread-and-butter applications (with more turnover) which get you through the day.

As I discovered, reinstallations need not be all that traumatic after all. Properly planned, organized, and maintained, your process can have you ready to go in no time.

Non-tapered note endings: To achieve graceful and authentic (not the gulping-for-air variety) note endings, live players almost always taper off the phrase-ending notes, and in a manner relative to the tempo. While most synthesis technology allows tempo-agnostic control over release times, most samples do not. The note-off command in the midi spec makes no allowance for rolling off certain note endings with a very short diminuendo, so you will want to find a way to achieve one.

“Ghosted” short notes: All things being equal, the short notes in a mixed phrase tend to get swallowed up in the reverberant sound. Players have learned to slightly accent them to give them the same perceived presence as their longer siblings. When sequencing, listen for “ghosted” notes and goose their velocities as needed to bring them out.

Uncool Swing: Good swing is highly tempo-dependent. The slower the time, the more uneven the long/short-long/short ratios of the note durations. The faster the time, the more even, to the point where be-bop became essentially straight eighths. Compensating for weak keyboard or improv chops by sequencing slow and playing back faster can, if not done with great care, result in a weird groove.

Wind Instrument Organs: No matter how unbelievably homogeneous professional orchestral wind and brass players strive to become, no two sound exactly the same. Why should your samples? When you stack the same waveforms vertically in an ensemble, you’ve got an organ, not a consort. If you want a three-voice trombone section, use three different samples on three tracks. With unisons, unless you have a section sample that matches your individuals in timbre and character, build your unison one track at a time.

Unheeded Sample Anomalies: In their attempts to make their samples more life-like, many companies introduced effects into their products which, with constant repetition, can become downright annoying. A much-vaunted string library from years ago recorded a reverse-taper (swell) into their note beginnings. It sounded cool the first couple of times you heard it, but hundreds of times later it felt like Johnny-one-note-on-the-kazoo. Beyond the obvious considerations of intonation, quality of recording, and practicality, really give your library a going-over for consistency and, believe it or not, neutrality.

Inadequate Panning: If you can get your hands on both a midi mockup that got approved and the finished recording by live players, do it, and study them carefully. As most mockups are done in some state of haste, shortcuts and compromises are inevitable and they will teach volumes. With the live players, close your eyes and notice how you can almost point at individuals and sections in the stereo field. Then notice how difficult that becomes with poorly- or hastily-panned and processed sequences.

Diversity, Diversity, Diversity: If the three most important considerations in business are “location, location, location,” for convincing orchestral simulation it’s the big “D.” Real fundamental evidence of mediocre sequencing is an overall, dull sameness to the sound of the performance and the production. By the sheer nature of the beast, live players abhor playing the same notes, at the same dynamic, with the same phrasing and the same color, in the same combination, at the same tessitura, with the same… Well, you get the picture. Part of the solution is to avoid the temptation to cut-and-paste anything, unless you really are on a deadline (with an emphasis on dead.) Another part involves playing your notes rather than stepping them in, even if you have to “record slow/play back faster.” Innovations such as Kontakt’s “scripting,” which allows control and automation of advantageous anomalies (human-like, for instance) into the behavior of the sample library, will also go a long way toward realistic tracks.

Well, enough for now, with perhaps more to come in the future. As I said, it’s a tall order to use a machine and not spill the beans on “Is it live or is it Memorex?” However, a little common sense, some reverse engineering of the performance process, and a lot of hard work and attention to detail can go far in helping you “get real” with your tracks.