The Controller

I could go on and on about weighted action keyboard controllers but I will try to minimize. First of all and most obvious is the reason for weighted action. For most piano players this is what they are used to and feel that it is the only thing they can compose on. As most of these people would be very argumentative on anything that follows that statement, I must press on. As much as I love the abilities of some of the weighted action controllers, the main reason I would have one is to practice on and to play piano parts into compositions. There are problems with this though, and the most important problem being that I have yet to play or hear any piano samples that I could actually recommend. Every time I have been consulted on piano samples I recommend that a composer use any samples they are comfortable with but ALWAYS use the real thing for the final recording. Most of these people are good piano players and will cover the piano part in one or two passes in the studio, which will obviously not add a significant amount to studio cost. Please don’t send me email about great piano samples, I’ve most likely heard them and I have so many reasons for my impartiality at this point after hearing so many that I may have become immune to piano samples.

Back to weighted action. I have been at studios and watched composers play various orchestral instruments with weighted action controllers. The best way that I can explain what I see and hear, besides a piano player playing an instrument he/she has obviously never touched, is that (with my vivid imagination), I begin to visualize someone ripping the key right out of the controller and hitting it upside the head of a musician innocently blowing into their horn in an orchestra. In some cases you might as well just pick up the controller (with a little help of course) and chuck it over the string players, this is how brutally flat and fake the performance sounds. This is mostly with the wind instruments, I don’t really see this problem a lot with string ensembles. I am not saying that playing a wind instrument with a weighted action controller is impossible, all I’m saying is that it is difficult compared to synth action, wind control, or even a string controller, no matter how good you are as a piano player.

If you know your sample library intimately, if your controller is worn in, if you know the intricacies of the instrument you are trying to emulate with you samples, (hopefully you have played the instrument before), and if you have an open mind and don’t think that just because you are a virtuoso piano player you can play every other instrument just by using your piano abilities, then realistic sounding sampled emulations of orchestral instrument can be realized. Some of you may think I'm over-reacting, but most likely if any of this bothers you, then you are one of the people beating the piccolo player upside the head with the D2 key.

What, the piccolo doesn’t play a D2? I’ll make sure it’s on the test at the end. I really don’t like recommending a synth action keyboard to piano players because I know how difficult it can be to get accustomed to this feel, but, I also recommend a wind controller to people that have never played a wind instrument, or a percussive controller to a composer that has never played percussion. Whatever makes the composition sound more real is the whole point to this article of course. Don’t forget that the ability of a controller to control all aspects of midi is not all that important when it comes to orchestral music, for you don’t use most midi functions. It is most important that the controller can reveal the best quality of the sample. Of course if you buy a controller to increase your ability to make more realistic sounding compositions, I must reiterate re-creating a song that you know totally well, so that you are only concentrating on how to use your new equipment rather then creating something new. You don’t want to have to worry about getting used to a new equipment or new samples every time you sit down to write new music as you may end up damaging yourself by falling into a groove that can be created by a new composition, where your focus is taken away from the composition process, dictated by what you can and cannot do with your samples.

I believe that a wind controller will make the biggest difference in the production quality of a composition than any other tool. When I say wind controller, I don’t mean a breath controller, something you blow into while you play the keys. You might as well have a VC pedal to control volume if you’re using a standard breath controller. There is an advantage to the breath controller, but a wind controller that will give you complete control over breath, fingering, even bite and pitch. There are intricacies of wind instruments that can be mimicked pretty well on a keyboard controller, but just can’t be done to their fullest. They can be programmed, but this would take 50x the time that playing a wind controller would take, even if you have never played one. If you think about it, you will remember that "transpose" parameter on every track of every sequencer, even Performer has it now. On a saxophone fingering style wind controller, the C scale is almost as simple as having your eight fingers down and letting one go at a time starting with your left pinky. So, you’re playing in the key of Eb? Just transpose the track, play the part in C, when you get it right, transpose the object back to Eb for the score. It would be wise to remember to transpose it to the correct key for printing, forgetting could be embarrassing, providing you have to hand the printed score to a real player afterwards. There are also trumpet and violin style controllers, however, the trumpet style isn’t as simple to operate, the violin being even less simple and also has very limited control at this time. In my opinion, and as a violin player, these controllers are very disappointing. I will go out on a limb and make a recommendation for wind control, the Yamaha WX11 is the easiest, but if you want an excellent controller with a little more ability, the Yamaha WX5 is the way to go.

With a wind controller some might say that mod samples like on a Yamaha VL series are the best way to go, but what if you don’t like the sound of the pp oboe and want to change it? With a sampler obviously you can choose that sound rather easily. Always remember that the way a sampler reacts to control is important, especially wind control.

Arranging

So playing a C1 on the Bass Clarinet is out of the instrument’s range? Well it’s great if you know the exact range of every instrument, but don’t forget that a virtuoso on any wind instrument can have a wider range than most other players. Playing out of the range can be considered in bad taste, and an arranger or a transcriber can criticize you for it. However, it can add a new and interesting element to a composition. Just be ready for the arranger, orchestrator, or transcriber to point out your mistake. Now, when I say "interesting" it is being used as a good word in this sentence, as opposed to:

Composer: "How do you like my new song?"

Composers friend: "Oh... it’s... ummm... interesting"

You will be surprised what kind of melodies you can come up with using a wind controller and will find yourself commonly creating the first line of a piece this way. It is best to go in knowing that you will be re-recording the wind-controlled part when other instruments are recorded. Remember that you are adding many new parameters to your sound when using a wind controller, you now have your diaphragm, lungs, lips, arms, and fingers all affecting the sound. This feeling you created before any other instruments will most likely sound better if re-recorded after the other instruments are added, because now you’ve added ambience to the other elements.

The most important paragraph

So you know the range of every instrument, you know what rosin is, you know that an oboe is a double reed instrument, you know that a trombone can have valves and that there is a wooden coronet, that a Faggot is a common word in the orchestra before our century. Even though you may know all of this, I cannot stress enough that all of this knowledge is only a small percent of the equation. You can be the most incredible piano player in the world, you can have a degree in music, but if you’ve never picked up an oboe or french horn and exploded some blood vessels in your head then you only have a minor understanding of the instruments.

So what if you don't own any of these instruments or have easy access to them? Fortunately, most music stores rent just about every orchestral instrument for very reasonable prices - you'll be surprised at how cheap rental rates can be, considering how much you can learn by simply renting an instrument for a couple of weeks.

Maybe thinking of it like this, imagine the Bassoon player that has never played the piano making a polyphonic song for the piano in one pass. He may know how the piano works and the theory surrounding it, but none of this matters, because he’s never played it. The Bassoon can hardly cover the intricacies of the piano, especially the polyphonic one. What about the great composers and conductors that do their composing on paper? You will find that most of these people have at least picked up a good percentage of the instruments that they compose for and have a physical understanding of every one of the instruments they write for. Please don’t even consider that I am saying that you HAVE to be able to play the instruments that you are composing for. I’m saying that having a physical understanding of a good percentage of the instruments will most likely improve your production and resulting quality of your composition. Even if you just pick up a trumpet mouthpiece and get a decent buzz sound from it, this can be very useful in understanding the amount of time it takes from the time you start blowing until the sound comes out, how long a player can play a note, how quiet the trumpet can be played before the lips stop vibrating, and if blown through long enough, how the sound changes as the lips warm up. All of this and even more can be learned from such a simple and quick blow into the mouthpiece. How could this be bad advice except if you’re in a car and someone slams on the breaks and you swallow the mouthpiece? Even then I could probably come up with something that could be learned by swallowing a trumpet mouthpiece, assuming one lives through the experience.