Improve your STRINGS in 20 mins | Full Bootcamp Tutorial

00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - String Chords vs String Lines
07:50 - String Writing In Practice
19:48 - Outro
20:14 - Orchestral Composition Bootcamp

Orchestral Composition Bootcamp: 8-weeks of tuition, live webinars, and personal feedback on your work from professional orchestral composers.

Curious about how professional orchestrators approach writing for string sections? In this 2-part tutorial taken from our Orchestral Composition Bootcamp course, we discuss techniques for rapidly improving your string parts and taking your arrangement from block piano chords to rich string arrangements!

Orchestral Composition starts June 3rd - we look forward to meeting more of you there!

[ThinkSpaceEducation]

8-weeks of tuition, live webinars, and personal feedback on your work from professional orchestral composers.

[jloiben]

This is one of the things I like about Studio One. It has a score view that makes things like string writing much easier than just using midi

[squeakD]

Excellent vid Guy! I realized it was time for me to break away from the bad habit of block chording my strings using ensemble patches. My arrangements have greatly improved because of it.

[grahamzebedee]

Thank you Guy, that has opened my eyes to getting a much better string arrangement, even though it's on "twee" little tracks that no one is likely to hear. As all my stuff has been rejected so far, but I will keep writing. They say if you keep throwing enough stuff at the wall something at some point is going to

[-Deena.]

I use the chords, duplicate and edit techniques quite a lot. Very fast and it works. I generally then delete the original chord track, which creates so much space in the composition to work in. I also often then forget the original progression!

[nightfrightshow]

great video tutorial Guy. Far too often "midi scores" are made by keyboardists that paly their string parts like a piano. Then blame the samples because it doesn't sound "real". The samples are present today to make a realistic mock up and then some. What's lacking are the skills. You provide the latter. Folks take Guy's courses and watch your skills for composing improve exponentially. Bravo Guy!

[matrixmedia]

I am researching becoming a composer after playing and writing for 30 yrs. Composing is where my heart has always been.

Thank you for this video...awesome!

[jacekkarlowski]

Thank you sir, always great info delivered in a friendly manner. Cheers

[deltavistastudio]

Thanks again Guy; I always look forward to your videos. Helpful and informative!
FYI 16:42 as an orchestra player through college, I discovered that string players are able to make "faux" vibrato on open strings (by utilizing a simultaneous octave vibrato). So that is actually an option.

[keithgardner]

Your videos are appreciate what you do in them…thank you so much😊

[The-Skyking]

This is the video I needed but didn't know I needed.

[jaywoelfel]

Guy this is one of my favorite on-the-fly compositions that you've done. It's interesting how the way you voice/orchestrate it turns it from what starts as kind of a peaceful folk melody into what you call a hero piece/military theme. The music is mostly the same but as you build it, it shifts entirely. I take that as kind of a lesson too. I came to keyboards through organs with literal pedals, and tend, when not using my feet, to probably underestimate a pedal tone use, so you're reminded me of that.

[sunnyflutemusic]

Great, thank you so much for sharing Guy. Got some good content out of this. Can’t imagine how much more there is in the course. 💜🎶😊

[MikJames-dg]

I know you prefer traditional composition rather than sound design/cinematic section building, but either way you're very skilled at both methods.
The lines/sketching in particular are something we don't get to see a lot of on the channel and it sounds great for the amount of time required to do it that way vs building out every instrument from scratch.
It seems all too often composers will take an either or approach when it comes to cinematic vs traditional mockups, when both can work together quite well as shown here, especially for people who have been playing instruments all their lives and prefer improvising vs theory.

[nightnoodler]

Thanks Guy, very interesting, I just downloaded some free Bach midi files. All harpsicord, with no velocity or modulations, very mechanical sounding, so as an exercise I was just splitting them apart and changing and modifying the voices and transposing some lines for the lower mid strings, and oboe or french horns for harmonies. And even playing with some synth voices. Its Plucky Bach vs Breathy Bach. Thanks for your vids always inspiring and fun to watch, and you have lots of great older vids as well, interesting how to see how you have changed your approach since your first vids.

[petersvan]

Awesome and inspiring video, thank you Guy!

[ministryinsong]

fantastic great advice will be watching a lot. thank you.

[homeofcreation]

You can play chords on an ensemble track and then open the score editor, just to open it and you can now chose the scores>functions> explode menu item in the score editor window. You now have separate tracks with midi regions for each line of the chords at the bottom of the arrangement window that you can simply copy paste to the instrument track of your choosing.

[jeremiahlyleseditor]

Great Video Guy.
Very Helpful those demonstrations of pedal tomes

[samaltima]

Thanks for this, it really helped my string compositions.