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In this article:
Further North
Arranging For Strings, Part 2
Tension Builder Primer Buy PDF
L
ast month, we looked at an extract from a string arrangement I wrote for a song called 'Truenorth' by the UK band
Noman (/sos/jun12/articles/string-theory-pt1.htm). The example I chose was a fairly simple, restrained and supportive
affair based on chord pads. This is something strings do supremely well, as evidenced by countless pop ballads down
the years, but it's only one facet of what they can bring to a track. This month, I'll look at other common performance styles
and discuss how to incorporate them into a strings arrangement.
Further North
Before moving on to more histrionic examples, I'd like to dwell on 'Truenorth' a little longer, to demonstrate how strings can
add subtle rhythmic and harmonic enhancement to a quiet, lyrical composition. This longform song features a flute solo
played over a rolling 16thnote acoustic guitar part. The guitarist (Steven Wilson) had also overdubbed an African hand-drum
part, so there was already a fair amount of rhythmic action going on; however, I felt the strings could add something in that
department, so I wrote the arrangement in diagram 1.
As you can see from the diagram, the acoustic guitar chords
(played in an arpeggiated style) maintain an open high E and B
string throughout the changes, thereby creating the opportunity
for much enjoyable jangling. Sustaining those notes over the bass line of A, C and F adds an interesting harmonic dimension
to what would otherwise be a rather plain sequence. I tried to increase the exoticism by using close voicings in the string parts,
exploiting the mild dissonance of juxtaposed tones and semitones. Play the first Am9 chord on a keyboard to see what I mean
its C and B semitone interval has a nice bitter-sweet ring to it!
A small refinement occurs in the second eight bars, where the stabs on the first beat of each bar are replaced by longer
notes and the staccato accents become a little quieter. That's because, at this point in the song, the flute solo finishes and the
vocal reenters, requiring a more supportive and less rhythmically pointed string arrangement.
Tension Builder
The staccatissimo strings style is commonly used for music of a less subtle nature, being the goto orchestral delivery for fast,
tensionbuilding action film cues. This delivery is highly effective in rhythmic ostinatos (repeated motifs of equallength notes).
I used it myself recently in a short trailerstyle piece, four bars of which are shown in diagram 2.
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the 'tonal centre' (ie. key) of a piece of music is all a question of context and expectation, and, as you can probably tell by now, Live
my personal preference is to avoid the expected and try not to make the context too obvious! Logic
Pro Tools
Hooray For Bollywood Reaper
Reason
Like many people, I'm very fond of Indian film and pop music, and have always enjoyed the wonderful stringorchestra styles Sonar
associated with those genres. The players attack the melodies with enormous gusto, and their trademark style of sliding
between notes adds a fabulous, sinuous feel and (to Western ears) exotic atmosphere to the music. This particular technique
doesn't seem to occur much in the European classical tradition, and some purists might even consider it vulgar, but for me it's
a highly appealing performance style with great applications in pop and rock. I was therefore pleased to be able to employ it in
my string arrangement for Porcupine Tree's 'Sleep Together', a song from their album Fear of a Blank Planet.
The chorus of 'Sleep Together' is based on the simple yet original chord sequence of D, Eb (two beats each) and one bar of
A, played in a slowish, heavy rock style with a thundering, John Bonhamesque backbeat. After a few choruses, the music
subsides and a long, slow, agonisingly tense buildup begins; the bass and drums eventually come back in, and finally, at the
6:20 mark, the guitars are unleashed and the band explodes into the final choruses. I felt that this climactic moment, arguably
the high point of the whole track, called for something unusual and attentiongrabbing, so wrote a soaring, Bollywoodstyle
lead line to be played in unison by the 22 string players.
Diagram 3 shows the first four bars of this tune, featuring the
characteristic 'Indian strings' pitch slides (in other words,
'portamento') between most notes. In order to further accentuate
the Bollywood flavour, I used the notes of Bb and D#
(respectively, the flattened second and sharp fourth) over the
A chord, as, to my (admittedly uneducated) ears, that particular
combination of scale intervals has a distinctly Indian ring to it! Diagram 2: Staccatissimo strings ostinatos are commonly
used as a tensionbuilding device in action film cues. If played
This lead line was scored for 14 violins (eight firsts, six by live players, this fourbar extract would be most effectively
orchestrated by assigning the top line to violas and the lower
seconds), and doubled an octave lower by four violas, and two part to cellos.
octaves down by four cellos. The threeoctave unison created
a big, strong sound which was very effective in this setting, though it's not a technique I'd recommend for general purposes.
I thought long and hard about how best to notate the melody. The copyist advised against "overloading the parts with too
many instructions, but since some notes are played without a slide and others feature a grace note instead, I felt I had no
alternative but to notate each slide individually.
As always, phrasing was an important consideration: string players usually play all the notes of a phrase under one
continuous bow movement, followed by a short gap as they lift the bow prior to starting the next phrase. These gaps
(analogous to the breaths a singer or wind player takes between lines) give shape to the music. Phrases are notated by
placing curved lines over groups of notes. As you can see in diagram 3, the second and third phrases start on the second
eighthnote of the bar rather than the downbeat, and the last bar is made up of a triumphal high note followed by two fast
descending phrases.
In the end, such notational issues proved largely academic, because as soon as they read the words 'Bollywood Chorus' on
their parts, the players instinctively knew what to do. From the moment their bows hit the strings, we were transported from
cold, drizzly Islington to the humid, sultry climes of Mumbai, the temperature in the control room rising by a few degrees as
a little bit of India was grafted onto the music of an English rock band.
Articulation Switching
Whereas successful acts can command a budget to hire live string players for their albums, most musicians aren't in that
privileged position. However, with the creative and intelligent use of samples, it's possible to bridge the gap between real and
sampled strings. When working with orchestral samples, one of the keys to creating a successful MIDI arrangement is instant
switching between performance styles (aka 'articulations') in real time, emulating the sudden changes in tone colour and
dynamics one associates with a real orchestral performance. To make this possible, most sample libraries now utilise
a technique called 'keyswitching'.
Some manufacturers allow you to create your own keyswitch setups by assigning individual patches to a keyswitch note of
your choice, while others provide preprogrammed 'keyswitch patches' combining all the articulations for a particular
instrument or section in a single patch, with each articulation preassigned its own switch. In some libraries you can alter
these default keyswitch pitches, which is essential if you want to make your keyswitch articulations identical across different
libraries.
One of the most flexible articulation switching systems was designed for the Vienna Symphonic Library's Vienna
Instruments sample player by Christian Teuscher. Software for this proprietary player is provided free with every VSL library.
A 'matrix' (roughly equivalent to a Kontakt 'multi') holds up to 144 'cells' containing single or layered articulations, and you can
switch between the cells via keyswitches, MIDI control change (CC) commands, pitch wheel, velocity or even playing speed
(ie. the elapsed time interval between notes, as opposed to the speed/velocity of a key press).
CC Rider
Keyswitches have their drawbacks: being commonorgarden
MIDI notes (albeit silent ones), they will appear in your score as
extraneous pitches, requiring a major tidyingup job before Diagram 4: The keyswitch displays of (from LR), Cinematic
a score or part can be printed out. An alternative switching Strings 2.0, Audiobro LA Scoring Strings 2.0 and East West
Quantum Leap Hollywood Strings. Keyswitching allows you to
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method that avoids this hassle is to use MIDI CC commands switch instantly between different articulations, and keyswitch
notes are often depicted in a distinctive colour on the sample
rather than keyswitches for articulation switching. Not every
player's onscreen keyboard.
library supports this method, and to do it in real time requires
a MIDI controller capable of generating userdefinable CC data.
but you can add individual CC commands after the event by inserting them in the MIDI 'event list', 'controller display', or
whatever your sequencer program calls its itemised display of MIDI data entries.
Although it's a bit of a faff, it is possible to create custom CC commands without owning a dedicated MIDI controller: simply
hit 'record' on your sequencer and perform a quick upanddown move on your keyboard's mod wheel, which will generate
a string of CC1 (modulation) numbers. Then open up your sequencer's event list, select one of the entries, and edit the
controller number from CC1 to a new number of your choice, as shown in diagram 6. I often use CC23, but it can be any of the
'undefined' numbers in the MIDI Control Change table. If your
sequencer can't display this, examples of the table can be found
online. Having altered the CC number, copy and paste the edited
CC command to the desired location in your arrangement,
placing it just before the point where you want the articulation
switch to occur.
The choice of which orchestral strings library to buy is a big question, and depends largely on what style(s) of music you
want to create, as well as on your budget. Listening to the manufacturers' product demos should give you some useful
pointers, and our indepth SOS reviews aim to throw further light on the subject! To help give you an overview, I've listed the
most prominent orchestral strings libraries of the last ten years, along with links to their SOS reviews, in the 'Which Orchestral
Strings Library?' box.
In Conclusion
If we go back in time to the 1970s, string arrangers (then
considered a star turn almost on a par with the producer) would
simply write out their scores by hand, pass them to a copyist and
proceed straight to the studio, where the recording artists (if they
bothered to show up) would hear the arrangement for the first
time. If the artists didn't like what they heard, it would be too late
to do anything about it because although you can make
microchanges on the day, it's not practical to completely rewrite
a string arrangement and scribble out new parts for 30 players in
the tight time-frame allotted to an average string-recording
session!
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The moral, as ever, is to keep focused on the music and try to be imaginative and exploratory in your musical ideas, at the
same time as keeping a firm hand on the technical chaos that can ensue when working with MIDI and samples. I hope some
of what I've written will be of help for both of those endeavours. Next month, I'll be joined by the gifted composer and arranger
David Hearn, who'll serve up some useful masterclass tips, while I continue to give you my personal take on the big subject of
arranging for strings.
'Truenorth' (Bowness / Wilson) is from the 2008 album Schoolyard Ghosts by Noman www.noman.co.uk.
'Sleep Together' (Wilson) is from the 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet by Porcupine Tree www.porcupinetree.com. Thanks
to the composers for permission to use extracts.
(Quiz answer: the four major triads that can be constructed on the scale of G, A, Bb, C, Db, Eb, E and F# are A major (A, C#,
E), C major (C, E, G), Eb major (Eb, G, Bb) and Gb major (Gb, Bb, Db). Their minor variants (A, C, E, and so on) are also
possible, making this a very adaptable scale indeed!) .
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Order Of Play
String arrangers are expected to be a onestop shop for recording strings, and the logistics are complex: the copyist,
studio, arranger, session fixer and players all require paying (the biggest single cost usually being the players).
Availabilities of all parties need to be checked well in advance, and coordinating dates can be a nightmare: successful
musicians are busy; some acts work abroad a lot of the time; and there's usually at least one band member who'd like to
attend the session. so you need to plan well ahead. Here's a suggested starttofinish procedure for creating and
recording a real string arrangement:
1. Before committing to the work, ask for a demo of the song, including vocals, and imagine the kind of string arrangement
you think it needs.
2. Estimate how long it will take you to write and demo the arrangement.
3. Decide how many players are required and how long it will take to record them, bearing in mind that there are
restrictions: for example, you can't book musicians for a threehour session and expect them to record two and a half
hours of material!
4. Check the current session rates, session fixer fees (a fixer will give you this info over the phone), copyist's fees and
studio rates, and decide how much you'll charge for the arrangement.
5. Make a spreadsheet budget and send it to the band's management and/or paymaster.
6. Once the budget is approved, ring a fixer and check the players' availability. (It's advisable to plan at least six weeks
ahead.)
7. Ask the band's producer to send you stems (submixes of drums, bass, guitars, vocals...) of the song, so you can hear
exactly what's being played on the track. The same stems can be used as a backing track for the strings session.
8. Ask the band to send you a demo of any ideas they have for the strings I usually ask for a MIDI file as well as
a stringsonly audio file.
9. Check the availability of copyist, studio, favourite engineer (if you have one) and members of the band or their team
(including producer) who would like to attend the session.
10. Book the players, studio and copyist.
11. The important bit: write the arrangement.
12. Send a demo of the arrangement to the band for comments. (I usually send a mix and a stringsonly version.)
13. If necessary, send a second demo incorporating the requested changes.
14. Once the arrangement is approved, send a score, MIDI file and audio demo to the copyist.
15. Check the copyist's work well before the day of the session. Typos often creep in.
16. Make sure the stems and copyist's parts arrive at the studio in good time for the session. Even if everything is
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technically perfect, it can take almost an hour to put out parts, check backing track balance, sort out click track, etc.
Although a little daunting on the face of it, most of these are merely logistical tasks which can be solved by sensible
forward planning. The most important thing is to create a string arrangement that works well for the track. Once you've
nailed that, you can proceed with confidence!
Budget Measures
Budget versions of some allinone orchestral libraries offer a more affordable solution to those whose income stream
doesn't quite measure up to their professional aspirations. Though the lack of fancy performance styles could be
a problem if you want to recreate a full orchestral score, these slimmeddown volumes (which offer upgrade paths to the
full libraries) maintain the high sound quality of the originals and can deliver very good musical results:
Vienna Symphonic Library: Vienna Special Edition (80GB)
This contains a full orchestra of instruments and sections presented in
cutdown form, though still featuring VSL's excellent legatos and
portamentos. The supplementary SE Plus volume introduces more of the
atmospheric articulations media composers require.
www.vsl.co.at/en/211/261/314/183.vsl
/sos/oct07/articles/sampleshop_1007.htm
/sos/oct08/articles/sampleshop_1008.htm
East West Quantum Leap: Symphonic Orchestra Play Edition
(Silver) (11GB)
This library focuses on essential instruments and articulations, and
contains only one mic position and 16bit samples, thus offering a more
affordable alternative to the full 24bit Platinum version.
www.soundsonline.com/Symphonic-Orchestra
/sos/aug09/articles/symphonicorchestra.htm
For composers who don't require a fullon, Hollywoodstyle sound, I can
recommend:
Garritan: Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 (2GB)
Although not as sumptuous or lushsounding as the top-end libraries,
the complete instrumentation and flexible sections of this easytouse,
modestlypriced set are a great educational asset for wouldbe
orchestrators.
www.garritan.com
/sos/jun10/articles/personalorchestra4.htm
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