So we have a new project on our hands! It's Orchestration!
Today we were given the task to recreate the Skyfall Theme written for the James Bond films. The task was also to allow us to start drawing up a template that we can use for future projects. To find some inspiration, I started with Junkie XL's YouTube guide to composing for Mad Max: Fury Road.
He mentions that he uses Cinematic Strings (6:50) and sometimes uses Berlin Strings, but prefers the quality of Cinematic Strings. I decided to venture off and find one of these. In the end I settled for Berlin Strings. One thing I noticed in the video was that he is using a small mixer to control the volume and other parameters in real time. In doing so this would naturally give it that human quality. I decided I would try my best to humanise the Skyfall melody in this way.
I played all of the string sections in, to control volume and tone of the strings when they are initially hit. I had to use several different patches for the same instruments as I needed to get different qualities out of each section. The piano was drawn in with the score that we were given. After I played all the string sections, I decided to play in the MIDI controls, such as pitch bend, volume and change velocities slightly (my keyboard doesn't have velocity range). This is mentioned in Pejrolo and DeRosa's book for arrangements for MIDI orchestras.
