Hey everyone, let's meet one of Indaba's favorite contributors, the one and only Ashley Witt.

Though curiously lacking much biographical information, Ashley's music speaks for itself.  From classical to electronic, Ashley does it all with enviable skill.  According to his profile, "I work as an arranger, orchestrator, composer, sound designer, programmer. My heart is in classical/orchestral but I have done about every type of music professionally." And who knew, he also does covers.  Ashley was nice enough to put a few of his thoughts in an email to me earlier this week.

How did you, in this day and age, find your way to classical music over other forms?
After schooling I wanted to be a rock star and played several instruments in several different bands, one of which came very close to stardom but was broke up.  Soon after that I found the girl of my dreams and moved to Santa Cruz CA. with her while she went to school.  While working at Seagate I met up with the Chief Engineer, Kevin Monahan of E-mu Systems and after he heard some techno I had done with some pretty crappy gear he decided to lend me an Emulator IV sampler.  I quickly discovered that this sampler had the ability to do some pretty good orchestral stuff so I messed around with several original pieces and some dead composer stuff, sent it over to Kevin and E-mu used it for trade shows which went over very well and the Emulator IV began to penetrate the film composer market.  Now all it needed was some good sample library and because of my experience with orchestral instruments and my familiarity with the Emulator IV I took on the task of programming the Miroslav Vitous library with Miroslav at his house in the Bahamas.  Now I had better library and could sound more realistic and this was very exciting.  I went on to program for several more libraries which gives me quite an advantage at becoming intimate with the samples.  Because of our ability now to create orchestral music that sounds so good using computers I just can't help myself and it took doing it to realize that no other music gives me the feeling of accomplishment, .


Your sample work is pretty varied - from classical to jazz to some electronic - do you feel that spreading your talents across different genres dilutes your focus on classical or do you incorporate these other influences to your classical compositions?
Because most of the work I do is in arranging/orchestration I have to be familiar with basically every kind of music.  For one film I was asked to take a rock/industrial song and turn it into a 1940's German cabaret tune.  I never know what I'm going to be asked to do and I have to be ready or I won't be hired, so many of my sample songs are merely exercises I gave myself.  Most of the time even when I'm doing any other type of music I am in arrangement/orchestration mode and tend to approach the pieces in the same way as I would with classical.  It's basically a vertical approach, I imagine all the instruments and parts that could possibly fit in a section like vertical holes and I fill the holes.  In orchestral music you can imagine that there is a section where every instrument is playing at once, all the vertical holes are plugged, if you take some of the plugs out it becomes less vertical and sounds different.  At times with music other than orchestral I will take the same approach and plug as many holes as I can during one section then use that as a scratch board to create phrases of the song.  In contemporary music since there is basically a crescendo from beginning to end I will start towards the end, build it up big then strip parts out and work toward the beginning.


Walk us through arranging a song.  For some of the less musically-inclined, what does that entail?
This is a pretty tough one since there are so many forms that the project will come to me.  If it's an artist or band I may only get a guitar part or vocals, then I may get a mixdown that just needs orchestration.  If it's a film composer I might only receive a piano part that needs full orchestration or I may get a score that just needs to be mocked-up with my equipment so that it can be heard close to what it will sound like when an orchestra plays it.  With an artist or band I am usually given an idea of what they want the outcome to be, a genre or a specific artist sound that they want it to come out like.  If I'm not familiar enough with that genre or artist I'll buy some of that music, usually three or four songs to get an idea.  I listen specifically to what the drums do, the sound of the guitar, and general fx.  I obviously have to pay attention to what makes that kind of music fit in the genre, like how in reggae the bass line frequently carries the melody.

Occasionally when I am given something by an artist I will start from scratch, replay guitar parts, drums, even re-sing parts that they had done.  This could be because they hadn't recorded to a metronome, I am adding/deleting bars/phrases, or the dynamics don't match.  Really the first thing that needs to be there is some sort of rhythm part that goes through the entire song like a guitar or keyboard, then the lead vocal.  Using drumpads I'll play all the drumkit all the way through.  With these three parts in I'm able to start creating dynamics and phrasing with other instruments.  With all the instruments in I will most likely replay the drums, add harmonies to the vocals and create a basic mix (I am not a mixing engineer, I only do basic mixing!).  If the artist requires orchestral instruments then the song basically needs to be done before those are added. If all I was asked for is orchestration then I would get a basic or even finished mix to start with.  This is when I have the most fun.  I learned an important "trick" very early about orchestrating for artists, always totally over do it.  It's much easier to pull stuff out then give too little and have to go through the trouble of going back and forth with the artist to figure out what it needs.  They will have everything they need to mix, so much so in many cases that the song could carry itself as an orchestral piece.

For composers that "trick" can't really be used.  Composers usually have the complete idea already in their head and straying from that doesn't usually end up working out.  The state of composition that I receive music from composers varies as much as from artists.  I have done a complete film just from a piano score that was eventually played by the Prague Symphony, and I have gotten scores played by an orchestra that just needed fattening up with my equipment.  Many of the orchestral scores you hear in film today have samplers playing along with the orchestra, just to fatten it up or because the composer just liked what it sounded like are two examples.  If I get just piano the I really have my work cut out for me, especially if the piano isn't even one of the instruments that will be in the score.  I have to build a full orchestration from what was played by two hands.  The most important decision right off is which instruments will take melodies, luckily most of the time the composer has a preference for that, mine are the oboe and french horn.  Once that melody has been taken care of the musical training kicks in, harmony, counterpoint, and build a basic structure.  I'll send that back to the composer and we'll go back and forth to come up with what needs to be done/undone.  It's usually at this point that I add my own taste to the piece, which so far has not caused any problems.  I will stray from the musical training and rules of classical theory to hopefully add to the piece.  From that and the edits made from the composer and I talking I will send it back and at this stage it is usually a good representation of what the composer wanted.  Usually it will just need mixing and some parts will need to be replayed to improve performance.  If the score is to be played by an orchestra then my job is mostly done except to hand over to a MIDI copyist where they will create the sheet music for the orchestra.  If my mock-up is to be used then I will have to spend extra time making it sound as real as possible, play some real instruments myself and even record a small group of players.  From that I will create stems for the mixing engineer.  Stems are groups of instruments and usually depend on the mixing engineer.  Most of the time they are grouped as the orchestra are, strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, then by frequency, bass to treble, then melodies and solo instruments are usually on their own stems.  The hardest part for me is that these stems won't have reverb on them and it's painful listening to orchestral samples with no reverb.

One thing that comes up a lot is that the composers or artists are usually nice people and if they don't like something I've done they will be apologetic.  I always have to make sure that they remember that it is their work, I am here to help it get realized, I take no offense to them not liking what I've done and will try again without thinking about it.  Even as a composer for a film I have a saying that goes right along with that, "Music in film must enhance what the viewer is seeing... it should be the icing on the cake, my goal is not to show an audience how good my music is, but to show them how good the film is."


What are your thoughts on groups that try to bring classical music "up to date?" Trans Siberian Orchestra is one that comes to mind.
I have done some of that myself so obviously I am a proponent.  I'm not so sure that it brings awareness to the dead composers as many believe.  I believe that since it was most likely a well written piece to begin with that the up to date version already has that advantage.  This isn't meant to be a blanket forgiveness to anyone that does this.  There are recreations that I would consider offensive to the original compositions but I am not the only judge.  I do believe in a musicians hell and do have a personal list of who I think should be there, then again, I may be on that list for someone else.  At the least, the people doing the recreations will be improving their skills, becoming more intimate with the people that were the first rock stars, and spending time on something which hopefully we will all get to enjoy.


Finally, judging by the pictures on your stage, you have a pretty serious set up at home computer-wise.  Is it as important these days for a musician to be familiar with computer music programs as it is for him to be familiar with playing music itself?
Some of the greatest writers in history had no musical training whatsoever so at it's face, I'd say it's not important as a musician.  It only depends on what one wants to accomplish.  For someone that just plays an instrument, the only thing they may need to know is how to import an audio file, record, save, and upload.  They could make a living doing music with just that knowledge.  For orchestral music the computer allows a composer to hear with their ears what they create in a short time without having an orchestra.  Some excellent composers aren't able to score by paper and pen so this may be the only way we could ever hear what's in their head.  I use as many tools as I can to force the computers to create what's in my head.  I can't even think of having too many tools.  I have created tools in the Environment for Logic to make composing faster and more realistic and there is no other sequencer that gives me that ability, I have no choice.  If another program comes up with something better for me I will switch without thinking.  I use as many MIDI controllers as I can to make sure what I do remains "human," and I quantize as little as possible for the same reason.  I have to use several computers (Mac/PC) because there isn't a single computer that can handle the load of all the instruments I need playing at once.  I have programmed instruments that crossfade dynamic levels (pp-ff) of samples using a wind controller, this takes a lot of audio channels, CPU, and MIDI data.  It may seem silly to put MIDI data in that statement but it is a factor, MIDI can choke even the fastest CPU still, don't forget that it is the only thing that hasn't changed in the personal computer since it was put in the first one, twenty-five years ago.  For what I do, I have to be an expert with both Windows and MacOS, every available software sampler, sequencer, and audio editor.  None of this makes me a better composer than anyone else, it does make me more efficient than most and in this business time is money.  However, I'm not going to be the one to tell John Williams or his arrangers/orchestrators that they should be using computers, they seem to be doing a decent job without.  I am truly not avoiding the question, I have worked with people that still have no computer experience and although frustrating for both of us at times they are amazing musicians and I'm not about to tell them to spend time learning a computer at the cost of the time they could be spending with their art.  Until Talent 2.0 comes out the computer isn't going to make people more talented and Auto Compose 1.0 is still a long way off.  Lastly, a good composer could still create from pen and paper and have an orchestra record their piece to create demos.  The only difference between him and someone that uses a computer is the cost of creating the demos and of course, the sound of the orchestra is going to be better.  The people that either composer needs to impress will be looking for talent and ability to put music to picture quickly.  In the case of the person using samplers, the people that the composer needs to impress know the sound of samplers by now and are forgiving since they also know what it will sound like when an orchestra records the score.  If samplers are to be used for the score the composer needs to show the ability to work quickly and produce a very good representation of an orchestra.  I know several people trying to get into the business that are able to produce a good representation of an orchestra but they aren't able to do it quickly so even if they impress someone with their sound they could get kicked off a project because they can't get it done under time restrictions.  You really have to know computers and controllers very well or even better, know them intimately, there's no way around it.

If you would like to suggest someone for a user spotlight, please email me at Streeter@Indababmusic.com and let me know.