PG Music Home Forums User-to-User Post your own Tips and Tricks here From BIAB to orchestration: some tips from my current project

In a few months, I will be the featured artist at the pops concert of our regional symphony orchestra. They called and asked me to orchestrate four of my original Brazilian jazz compositions and perform as soloist along with my guitarist and pianist. After I fell out of my chair, I got back up and started work on the project. BIAB has been invaluable in all parts of the preparation, and I thought it might be helpful to others if I made a few notes about how I have used it so far. Sorry in advance for the length.

Writing the songs

Not to overlook the most basic use of BIAB, I composed all four of the songs in BIAB. Three have been recorded and are available on iTunes, Pandora and Spotify. Two of those are played regularly on Music Choice TV on the jazz channel. One was among the twelve finalists for best jazz composition at the 2009 Los Angeles Music Awards. I play horns but not piano, guitar, bass or drums, so BIAB is invaluable to me in hearing those parts during the creative process.

Getting a starting pitch

This job required writing instrumental parts based on some of the playing that was improvised in the studio during the recording sessions, so I did a lot of transcribing from my own CD. Since I don’t have perfect pitch but do have great relative pitch, all I need to do transcriptions is a starting pitch once in awhile. I usually keep BIAB running, so instead of picking up a horn (no piano, remember), it’s quicker to just use my mouse and the built-in keyboard of BIAB.

Voicing chords

In BIAB, you can write a chord and then use Shift+ENTER to hear the chord. If you keep pressing Shift+ENTER, you hear alternate voicings of the chord (some more open, some more closed), and see them on the keyboard display. I did this frequently on some of the more complex chords to help me decide how to voice them for a full orchestra.

Reharmonizing soli sections

For some soli sections, I let BIAB make suggestions by taking the soli lead line I wrote back into BIAB. I placed that over the chords of the song, and used the Soloist Harmony to select the style I wanted (for example, an open-voicing trombone section). BIAB produced some great ideas for section harmony parts. BIAB should get a co-arranger credit!

Double-checking the song form

To make sure I had not missed any measures, I compared the measure numbers of major events in the BIAB song to my notation program. Sometimes, I played back the notation program and BIAB at the same time and listened to make sure all was well. Doing this with audio from different sources will occasionally result in one of the programs getting a bit out of sync, but I can make small adjustments of the BIAB tempo on the fly to keep it sounding good.

Changing a melody to cut time

Here’s a nifty trick that may be unique to BIAB. I wanted to redo one chart in 2/4 time that was originally notated in 4/4. I was surprised to find out that my notation program would not do this conversion. Instead of re-keying in the whole melody and written soli, I remembered that BIAB had the Edit Reduce and Edit Expand Duration commands. I saved the melody as MIDI, took it into BIAB, made the changes of duration and tempo, and then plugged the exported MIDI back into the notation program. This saved a lot of time.

Preparing a recording for the orchestra

The orchestra conductor requested a recording of each of my arrangements so she could focus on the string, horn, brass and woodwind parts she would have to cue. This recording was primarily made from the notation program. By itself, though, it sounded pretty sterile, so I used BIAB from my original tunes and muted some tracks to supply just background percussion and piano/guitar backing to put the parts into context.

Super big congrats from me, that sounds like a major accomplishment (and pretty scary too -- ha, ha). Sounds complicated, but you given us all a few tips to consider in our own songwriting.

Thanks, Kevin. It occurred to me I had not played first chair in an orchestra in 42 years. If I live through this, I'll let you know how it went!

"Also thanks for the Shift+Enter tip on alternate voicings, I didn’t know that."



Matt - I didn't know that either. (Although I'm just a novice with the programs).Thanks!


Knock 'em dead at your concert! What an honor.

(Do I have to call you "Maestro" now?)


Regards,

Bob

Excellent writeup Matt and congrats. Lets hope someone videos this concert and it can be put up on YT so we can all see it.

Bob

Quote:

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Sorry in advance for the length.

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no problem

thank you for the informative documentation

have you thought about an encore? you know they'll want one

hope all goes well

Yes.

And thanks again, everyone, for your good wishes.

Hi Matt,

A MIGHTY CONGRATULATIONS!!! That's fantastic news. Also, thank you for your guide to using BIAB for orchestrating. I wasn't aware of the Shift+Enter tool. I dare say I'll be using this in the near future.

All the best,
Noel

Er....Noel....that's "Maestro" now.

First chair? That's worthy of such respect!



Regards,


Bob

Hey Bob,

Thanks for the heads up! I'll watch my words in future posts

Noel

Hello Matt,

You are obviously a very talented and dedicated musician and someone who is very deserving of “the featured artist”. I am very happy for you and can't wait to hear what the experience was like.

Congratulations!

Mike

Matt - please let us know the details of the event. My wife and I were looking to do a trip up to New York (state, not city) and if the timing works out, we would love to come hear it.

Congrats Matt! And thanks for the tips.

Hey Matt:

Congratulations. That's a nice honor. And Thanks for the tips.

John

Awesome, Matt!

--Mac

Congrats on the accomplishment and thanks for sharing the good news with us! Another great testimony as to what BIAB can do in the right hands! If it is possible for you to get a video of the event, I am sure all here would love to see it.

occasionally i'll be reading a post and be deep into the replies when someone will thank either the original poster or one of the respondents for mentioning a biab or realband feature i don't know about or missed when it was originally posted

i copy the item and then use ctrl-F to find all mentions of the item throughout all the posts related to the topic

in this case it was Shift+ENTER

Quote:

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Voicing chords

In BIAB, you can write a chord and then use Shift+ENTER to hear the chord. If you keep pressing Shift+ENTER, you hear alternate voicings of the chord (some more open, some more closed), and see them on the keyboard display. I did this frequently on some of the more complex chords to help me decide how to voice them for a full orchestra.

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thanks matt

Funny how so many have picked up on this little Shift+ENTER tip that I've used for more than a decade and considered pretty ordinary, although what it does is quite remarkable. I'm pleased it helps some of you to know about it.

And once again, many thanks for all the kind wishes.