Recording - August 2012 - 36

By Gary Eskow

Several years ago the equipment required to pull off convincing orchestral mock-ups carried a price tag that placed this work almost exclusively in the hands of professional composers who used it to make a profit... and I’m not even going back to the late ’80s when you had to throw down $100k for a Synclavier or Fairlight to get the job done. My, how things have changed since those days, and even the first decade of this century. No longer are you required to house a half dozen computers, multiple digital audio and MIDI interfaces, monitors, and keyboards. A fast Mac or PC outfitted with 8 or 16 Gigabytes of RAM yields all the horsepower you need to create beautiful-sounding orchestral tracks. I just finished recording the third movement of my orchestral piece “4,3,2,1,” and Recording’s Editor asked me to outline the process I went through to create the stereo master. Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to speak with some of the best orchestral mock-up arrangers in the film and television business. They’ve been kind enough to share their tricks with me, and it’s a pleasure for me to discuss my work method with you readers. My workflow from idea to completion can be broken down into three major stages: Composition (pencil and paper), notation (performance-ready score in Finale), production (Cubase and sample libraries) followed by mixing. Composition—pencil and paper At this point in my career, every piece I write starts out as an idea that gets transferred to score paper and developed. No computer is used at this stage, just my imagination, pencil, paper, and the occasional session at the piano. I have good—not great—ears, but I have learned how to isolate the essence of an idea and I’m able to hear and develop it away from the keyboard. This allows me to come back to the piano with new thoughts. “4,3,2,1” began with the idea of writing a symphonic work from the last movement back to the first—just a conceit, really, a way to get started. I spent four or five months writing the piece.
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RECORDING August 2012

Notation—Finale Once I had the composition down on score paper, I then inputted it into Finale 2011. I didn’t use the samples that come with Finale in this process, nor any other sounds that could have been made to work at this stage. I simply prepared a printable score in great detail, emailed the score to Staples and had them print it out on 11x17” paper, and took it into a set of two lessons with my friend and teacher Richard Danielpour. Don’t know Danielpour? Check him out on Spotify. He was one of Leonard Bernstein’s last students, and even those who don’t embrace his style recognize that he’s a master orchestrator.

Richard liked what he saw, but he thought my decision to use a saxophone section (because I wanted to give Broadway Big Band, one of my favorite sample libraries, a workout) in place of four french horns and a pair of bassoons was a mistake. He told me to keep the saxes but add these instruments, and he was right. I labor exhaustively over the details of notation, spending hours making sure that the articulations I write into my scores reflect my intentions as accurately as possible. Again, it was Danielpour who drummed this into my head. Why this level of detail? In case I get real players to perform the score.

Recording - August 2012

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