Building a Sample Based Orchestra and God Save the Queen

My goal of getting back into writing and producing music has been challenging so far. Initially, I found that the range of options for composing with computers these days is literally mind blowing. We have access to many thousands of sounds and what you tend to find is that you start off with an idea in mind but then after 3 hours of finding the right sound that inspiration has gone.

The key seems to be in developing templates, so that you can use the same groups of sounds over and over. This concept seems particularly prevalent with orchestral music. So, with that in mind I set off to create my first orchestral template.

In my experience, this is not a task for the fainthearted, it literally took me a few weeks from purchasing the sample libraries, auditioning them and selecting the numerous articulations and playing styles.

Even creating the template within the DAW software with the various routing options and processing options was enough to make my brain ache.  Furthermore, once you have the sounds stacked up, you need to play something to test the levels and see if everything blends.

For me, as an ex-trombone player, I chose something that I recall playing many times in my youth, God Save the Queen. My arrangement is my own, but similar in sound to the BBC version of God Save the Queen. This was the sound I was aiming for with the Orchestra template. I know it will need some tweaking for other styles but I am pleased with the start. Whether licenses of my version of God Save the Queen will ever repay the time I spent is doubtful but at least I have my first orchestral template under my belt.

Here is the final track for your scrutiny 🙂

Great help, thanks Guys!

During the process I found some great videos from other composers who put time into explaining various aspects of the process. Here are a few that I found most helpful.

• Alex Moukala – This guy is totally inspirational and shares loads of great tutorials and walkthroughs.
• Rick Beato – This man knows and shares so much about music creation and music theory.
• ThinkSpace Education – Lots of interesting and helpful stuff on this channel too and Guy Michelmore is very entertaining.

Whether you are a composer or music user, comments are welcomed.