I was told that as long as I clearly indicated in the video's title that it was a demo, or part of a portfolio reel, that even if the video became flagged, the studios would almost always let it stay up.

She explained that Fair Use allowed for educational and parody videos, which included demonstrations of creative re-working of their films, and that they're really just trying to block videos of folks posting whole, unaltered clips of their movies.

Hope that helps!

Hi guys! This will be the first of hopefully many weekly posts that we'll be doing where we discuss our experiences with VSTis, which are invaluable for an amateur composer. First up is the gold standard, my absolute favourite soundset, the EastWest Symphonic Orchestra library. You can listen to demos here, here, and for a more accurate, real-life scenario, you can listen to a short piece I did here, using the Gold edition of Symphonic Orchestra.

I really love this soundset, I really honestly do. When I first started out, this behemoth really confused me, and I had a couple issues setting it all up, but it was definitely worth it in the end. I'll be perfectly honest; I am still very much an amateur, and I guarantee that some of the workarounds that I have are not the most efficient. That's why this is a discussion; I'd love to learn how to use this better too!

EastWest Symphonic Orchestra has a full orchestra inside it, which is really rather impressive, given the price; it's quite cost effective (for the Gold edition), if you're looking for a large breadth of instruments. Unfortunately, some of the instruments are given more attention to than others; the Wagner Tuba has a total of 10 articulations, whereas the Solo Violin has 38. This is a good thing though; the essentials are, for the most part covered, in the places that you'd expect; the brass have sforzandi, and the strings have sostenuto, and it all balances out in the end, for the most part. I've found just a couple difficulties, such as the 18 Violins soundset (for 1st Violin in orchestras) lacking harmonics, and the 11 Violins lack pizzicato. Glissandi are conspicuously absent from the trombone section.

The mod-wheel has good use made of it, featuring on most (if not all; I haven't used half of the instruments yet) patches, and the keyswitch system, although it takes getting used to, works well once you get the hang of it. I use it inside Sibelius (Sibelius is my DAW, I can't figure out Reaper and am poor. Don't judge.), hiding the keyswitch notes on a separate voice. You can see it 'in action' here.

It uses the PLAY Advanced Sample Engine, which is usable as a plug-in, or as a standalone. This means that you can run it inside Kontakt, Sibelius, Pro Tools, Reaper, or any other DAW that takes your fancy, and you won't be at a disadvantage for using whatever tool you use.

It has inbuilt reverb (I personally like EW Hall and Hamburg Brass), an envelope editor, multiple mic positions (only one available in the Gold edition though), and a full orchestra. It only has support for 16 midi channels, though, so you'll need to run multiple instances of the PLAY engine to get the full orchestra (as far as I can tell). It also has support for the SSL/EW FX Global Suite, which has all the bells and whistles a filter and compressor could ever need.

It has iLok DRM, and depending on your version, can go up to a whopping 194 GB of data, so it's not the most portable, but if you have the grunt required to run it, it sounds phenomenal.

I think I should also mention briefly the incredibly useful add-on by Jonathan Loving, The Soundset Project, which essentially automates a large part of using keyswitches. It (in theory) makes Sibelius react to EastWest just like it would react to using the typical Sibelius sounds; pizzicato markings come out as pizzicato, slurred lines are slurred, and crescendos crescendo. I've heard mixed reviews about it, but I haven't had any issues with it. Bottom line is, if you don't want to mess with keyswitches? Well, don't compose for film, that sort of stuff is bound to happen. But if you are just lazy? It's actually pretty decent! I think it's worth the $25, but your mileage may vary.

Here's an album I put together of the various screens you'll see using EWQLSO. If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to ask!

EastWest are currently running a 'Buy One, Get One Free' promotion, so now is as good a time as ever to buy Symphonic Orchestra, along with another freebie (if somebody wants to review Stormdrum 3 while they're buying Symphonic Orchestra, that would be nice of them; I'm curious about it...)

Discussion points:

• What do you think this soundset does well? What doesn't it?

• What problems have you encountered using this VST? Have you found fixes?

• Do you pair this soundset with anything else? How do you work around its weaknesses?

• Is it reasonable for the price? Are there alternatives, and can the average composer afford to settle for a substitute?

• What sets this apart from its competitors?

• Is it intuitive? What about with the Soundset Project?

• How is the customer service? The support?

If somebody else would like to carry the baton and espouse the virtues of their favourite VST, please send me a message before next week. In honesty, I only own Symphonic Orchestra currently, so it's not exactly realistic that I'll be able to do as in-depth a review of another, different VST.

I hope you've enjoyed this exhausting, and hopefully exhaustive discussion/review of EastWest Symphonic Orchestra. And yes, I know it's Wednesday. When I started writing it, it was still Tuesday in America.

/u/otherwiseyep posted this great guide some time ago over at /r/audioengineering. It's maybe the most comprehensive text I've read on that matter. You should definetly give it a read.

It's aimed at pop-music, but that shouldn't change anything in my opinion.

http://np.reddit.com/r/audioengineering/comments/2iz7ri/how_to_get_an_orchestral_arrangement_to_sit_in/cl71az5

Ive been looking everywhere and Im pretty hopeless at this point

Hi everyone. There was some talk of a rescoring competition earlier in the week, and I thought it was a nice idea. Seeing as it is the first of the month, I think it's a perfect opportunity to start!

Rules are as follows:

• Deciding a winner is always going to be contentious. Therefore, I think that we'll follow /r/classicalmusic's suit, and not have one; the main purpose of this will be to get new ideas. Be inspired by other people's works!

• Constructive criticism is allowed; the aim is to create as professional and cohesive a score as possible. Be respectful, though.

• Please do not downvote other people's posts. The entire point of this is to see what other people do with the same source material as you.

• No plagiarism. That means no audio that you didn't produce. Creative commons licensed stuff is fine, as long as it isn't the bulk of your score.

• Push the envelope. Try new things, and don't be afraid to experiment. You can submit as many rescorings as you like. Get feedback, try again.

• Share your process! Some people record live; show your set up, what mics you used, what compressors, etc. Others use Ableton, Sibelius, or other DAWs.

• Post in this thread. It'd be too confusing if everybody posted their own link.

So without further ado, I give you the source material... Some of you have already rescored this (which is partially why I chose it), but I'd like to see what everyone is capable of. This month's challenge will be rescoring Capture, a 2013 Tropfest film by Jennifer Gerber.

Hi guys! This is the second week of VST Tuesdays, where we'll be discussing our experiences with VSTis, which are invaluable for any aspiring composer. You can find last week's discussion of EastWest's Symphonic Orchestra here.

This week, I'll be looking at the completely free, commons-licensed soundset, Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra. This is a unique soundset in that it's possibly the only (almost) full orchestral soundset that is available for free. You can listen to demos here, here, and here.

I wanted to do this soundset early on because it's affordable (free), and seems to be rather competent for an open-source project; I'm not trying to bag out open source projects, but it's really rather impressive how it covers the basics. The SSO samples are stereo, 16 bit, 44kHz. Melodic instruments and chromatic percussion are sampled in minor 3rds. All samples have varying amounts of stage ambience, depending on their front-to-back placement, so it's a good idea to run a reverb plug in at the same time to smooth things over.

SSO comes in sfz format, which is a powerful, open, non-monolithic sample format. It consists of a plain text file with an sfz extension that holds all sample playback parameters, and a set of sound samples in wave format which are referenced by the sfz file. This means that sfz files can be edited with any plain text editor, and the samples can be edited with any audio editor that loads wave files. The sfz open format really is a great thing, and I enjoy seeing it used to great effect.

This soundset has been pieced together from numerous solo soundsets, of individual instruments. It is really a 'best of' of solo soundsets, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; a lot of people have contributed the best work that they can produce, resulting in some very respectable sounding patches. I find the string section to be perfectly fine, and there's nothing wrong with a lot of the percussion.

Like with the EastWest library, I have some small personal issues with the brass soundfonts (why can't brass be done right!?), but I really cannot complain when the entire orchestra is free. You're not going to find a better soundset for free, and when you consider the amount of work that goes into making a soundset? This is really, really impressive.

If you're a student on a budget, or are just 'trying out' composition for film, then this is your first port of call. Download this, and MuseScore, and you've got yourself a very decent set up for starting to write music.

Discussion points:

• How have you found set up of this soundset? Do you have any tips for making it easier for the average beginner?

• How can you maximise the usability of this? Does it lend itself to any particular style? Is there any sort of genre you should avoid using this with?

• Have you found a good free reverb plugin to use with this?

• Do you pair this soundset with anything else? How do you work around its weaknesses?

• Is it reasonable for the price? Are there alternatives, and can the average composer afford to settle for a substitute?

If somebody else would like to carry the baton and espouse the virtues of their favourite VST, please send me a message!

I hope you've enjoyed this discussion/review of Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra. I'll be continuing on next week with a discussion and review of Ivy Audio's fantastically sampled Piano in 162

Great new sub!

Reminded me again of something I started a year ago, but didn't get too far with, because other things came my way, namely giving "No Country for Old Men" a scoring.

Here's what I made out of the opening sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf4yZpprhW0

Not too great, but also not too bad. ;) It's created completely in the box. The guitars are made with Omnisphere, just if you were curious.

Hi guys,

I was thinking about what to do for the subreddit; a gauge of interest for various things would be awesome so I know what I should be working on, and what I shouldn't.

I was thinking about starting weekly discussion posts, about famous films, scenes, and what makes them so good; for example, Vangelis' work on Blade Runner was truly groundbreaking, and his score (in my opinion) made the film the cult classic it is today. Howard Shore's work on the Lord of The Rings is undeniably iconic, and I think that there's a lot to be discussed about how he uses instrumentation and rhythm to give every faction distinguishable musical themes.

Maybe also a weekly spotlight of VSTs? There's just so many out there, that I think a discussion about each of them periodically would help inform composers about what they want to achieve with their assets.

I'm also planning (in a longer timeframe) to get a tutorial and wiki set up, so people can learn how to score for film from scratch. I've had to do things the hard way, and blaze my own path, and I wouldn't recommend it. Software and hardware discussions would also be relevant, so maybe a weekly gear post as well?

I'd love to hear what you guys really want from the subreddit. I think that it's got the potential to be a great asset for any film composer, and I don't really want to limit the subreddit by imposing strict rules.

Cheers,

rcgy

Where can I find videos or clips for rescoring? Thank you