Sound libraries....................................................................................
With many computer programs, such as Apple’s Logic Pro, a variety of sounds
(called sound libraries) are included in the program that allow you to audition
your parts played with simulations or samples of actual orchestral and non-
orchestral instruments. You can try out dozens of ideas with these sounds
and get a general preview of how they will sound when a score is printed and
parts are performed on real instruments.One potential drawback of having all of these different instrument sounds at
your disposal is that if you’re writing music that will eventually be played by
real instruments, there is the danger of writing a part that seems easy on
your keyboard or guitar but that your average tuba player or saxophonist
can’t easily, or even possibly, play. The keyboard and guitar are both very
quick instruments on which it’s not a big deal to rapidly play up and down a
wide range of notes for long periods of time. However, when you hand it over
to a saxophonist or a tuba player, you may be greeted with a very angry glare
and a declaration of surrender, simply because you didn’t take into account
that these musicians need to occasionally take a breath.When composing on a computer, the sounds provided by the program are
limited in their verisimilitude, owing to the fact that they are not subject to
the physical realities of performance on actual instruments. There are no real
bows bowing, no real breaths taken, no limits of range, and so forth. You can
only get a rough idea at best of what will happen when you get real musicians
to play the parts, unless you compose with these limitations in mind.On the other hand, perhaps you don’t want real instruments to ever play your
composition. With a computer, you have an entire orchestra at your fingertips
that likes and respects you and doesn’t get huffy when handed impossible
parts. Thanks to our friend technology, you can invest in massive third-party
libraries of excellent orchestral sound recordings. Some even have elements
such as “bowing” for strings that can be manipulated through MIDI control
and that sound just like the real thing.These libraries are quite expressive and expensive, but they take up a lot of
hard drive space and require powerful computers to access all their attrib-
utes for a lengthy composition. Many film composers, such as Cliff Martinez
(Solaris, Narc, Traffic) and John Murphy (28 Days Later), exclusively use com-
puters to compose and record music and prefer to do so simply because they
can work on their own schedules and creative whims and don’t have to deal
with any other musicians’ foibles or creative interference. If you know what
you are doing with sound libraries in conjunction with a good music pro-
gram, you can avoid the real orchestra altogether.234 Part IV: Orchestration and Arrangement