So he really uses it as one would do when writing by hand on paper where most staves aren’t for a specific instrument either, but more used for jotting down ideas; instrument names/groups are written where needed. It’s indeed a sketch template.
This isn’t really just about Alan Silvestri, but I’m going to say it here anyway:
My skin crawls every time I hear about a composer sending his “sketches” off to the “orchestrators.” When I compose for orchestra, I enter the notes directly into each instrument’s staff, because that’s how I hear the notes in my head. I don’t invent a tune and then ‘assign’ it to some timbre. The timbre is integral to the tune. I could no more work the way Silvestri, Williams, Horner, et al, work than I could swim underwater for an hour without some air to breathe.
To me, the orchestration is PART of the composition process, not something that gets tacked on afterwards.
–L3B
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I doubt these composers hand their “sketches” (17 staves worth sounds pretty complete) off to an orchestrator and forget about it. Remember that A.S. conducts his own work and has a traveling studio upstairs at the recording studio for any last-minute changes. He likely also works with orchestrators he has worked with before and who know what he wants them to do.
If I write 4 horn parts on a single staff, for example, I think I can usually trust someone else to split them into individual parts. I imagine the process of “handing off” is not as cavalier as you may think.
I say this as one who has always done my own orchestrations.
In the world of film music the term “orchestrator” covers a lot of ground. With Alan Silvestri specifically, he has always fully worked out his sketches so that they are essentially fully orchestrated, just written in shorthand. As Derrek says, he then hands the sketch off to an orchestrator he has worked together with for years, who knows exactly how to set it up for the music prep team. Alan writes every note that ends up on the players’ parts.
I’ve seen sketches from film composers that are handed over to their orchestrators and they contain lots of info about how it should be orchestrated, yes. It’s never only the material after which the orchestrator has to make up his mind. I do the same with my own first orchestral sketches and I assume lot of composers work this way.
I think it very much depends on what is being composed and how the composer wants to work. If the intention is to compose an orchestral work, obviously orchestration is part of the composition process. If the intention is to create a show, a song or a theme, that can subsequently be arranged for an orchestra, it can happily be left to others. Richard Rodgers never orchestrated a note of his music, even for something like Victory At Sea. He preferred to leave that side of things to some of the best orchestrators of the last century (i.e. Robert Russell Bennett) to do the task - he knew they’d do far better than he ever would.
The process of bringing Broadway musicals to the stage quickly during the “golden age” via various composers, arrangers, and orchestrators (aptly documented by Steven Suskin’s book The Sound of Broadway Music, Oxford, 2009) is not the same as what composers of music for the screen typically do; and these days far more Broadway composers have a greater hand in how their music is scored.
I once had a lovely lengthy conversation with Conrad Pope who told me that when one works for John Williams, the short scores are so unbelievably complete that you become, in his words, “a very well-paid secretary”. Yet, the role of putting it all in a long score is time-consuming. The workflow of complete a feature film movie score rarely allows for the composer to complete full orchestrations because they constantly are under the clock to compose new cues or revise old ones. Howard Shore did his own scoring for Lord of the Rings AFAIK, but that was a an unusually lengthy post-production schedule. So yes, I know that it is part of composition. I’m an orchestrator who deals with adaption and arranging in particular and I’ve also taught orchestration at University level, so I don’t want to sound as if I think final orchestration is an unimportant issue. But writing every note on a Hollywood score is not realistic in the majority of circumstances (I believe Jerry Goldsmith, when he started up, brought a fully orchestrated score to the producers who were very vexed as they felt this would slow down the whole process if he kept doing it - at least I think it was him, but don’t quote me!). And all these finished scores go back to the composer who can then cast a final critical look and make last-minute alterations. This definitely not about any lack of skills or artistry. Some of these composers started as orchestrators themselves and they understand the requirements.
You hit the nail on the head Claude.
Hollywood film scoring is a weird world, where composers only have a few weeks to compose an hour or more of original music. They get feedback from the director and producers, and based upon that feedback, they revise the cues, usually in their DAW. There are typically dozens of cues, which makes the whole process complex to manage.
To make it more interesting, in addition to feedback from the director, the picture is being edited by the picture editor, which may result in changes in timing which can be critical. So that has to be taken into consideration as well.
There are many moving targets, and as a practical matter, given the short amount of time, it is physically impossible for one single film composer to do everything … composing the entire score, orchestrating everyting in detail. And that is why Hollywood composers rely on orchestrators. There’s just not enough time to write out every individual note.
Yes, I’m very aware that a lot of Hollywood composers start out as orchestrators for other composers, and then ‘graduate.’
I once had an extended conversation on this whole subject with Michael Kamen, who did a lot orchestrating before landing any composing gigs, and who still did orchestrations for other composers up till the day he died, even though he was a well-established composer himself by then.
I also understand the incredible time pressures that composers allow themselves to be put under in getting all the cues done and in keeping up with the constant revisions and film or tape edits. (Although I feel certain that Williams for one could get away with demanding as much time as he needed if he stuck to his guns on it.)
What boggles my understanding slightly is trying to wrap my head around the notion that having more people involved in the process (composers plus orchestrators) can possibly save any time at all over having ONE person involved in the process. Every time someone enters the same note (again) in some other layout, it just means that more time is consumed. Perhaps if I ever was fortunate enough to watch a film composer at work, DOING the process, I might become enlightened, but at the moment I just don’t ‘get it.’
But thanks, everyone, for trying to explain it to me.
–L3B
It’s just arithmetic.
If you have 10 people working on something, and each of them is only half as “quick” as a single person doing everything, you still get the job done 5 times faster.
And if you have many separate cues, it’s easy to organize several people working individually on independent tasks.
Even Mozart worked that way when up against a deadline - each page of score was passed round a room full of copyists each producing one part, as soon as he had finished it.
Classical composers used orchestrators as well as music prep people. For example the brass and timp parts in many of Haydn’s symphonies were written by his composition pupils, not by him. In some cases there are even multiple versions produced by different assistants!
Who knew? Lol.
I’ve often wondered about Bach pumping out all those cantatas. He obviously wrote every note in his fantastically beautiful manuscripts, but he had to have had pupils copying other things out for him. The amount of music that man wrote under short deadlines boggles the mind, even by modern standards.
Bach wrote every note and his output is extraordinary. But he also used parody when running out of time. Lully, especially later in his career, would frequently write top, bottom, and figures; he would then let his assistants fill in the three inner parts.
At his peak, the unofficial word on the street was that Williams wrote roughly 10 minutes of music a day on average, which is astonishing. But this can only be properly realized with assistants since almost all of it is for large orchestra. That number does seem very elevated to me though, so it could simply be hyperbole on the part of a fan, but that gentleman has written a lot of music.
We still play Fauré’s Requiem in its full orchestra version even though it was likely scored in large parts by Roger-Ducasse. Similarly, since I mentioned Lully, he is certainly not wanting in numbers of performances nowadays. I myself only work doing my own scoring, but I also don’t work under the kind of pressure some of these musicians experienced. There’s more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to composition.
To use an analogy: Steve Jobs had very specific ideas about the way Apple products should look like, and what the consumer experience should ultimately be. He was a control freak when it came to the execution of his ideas. Apple has hundreds of thousands employees worldwide … it would have been physically impossible for Steve Jobs to manufacture even one single iPhone, if he had to do it all himself.
To go back to the world of film music, when John Williams hands off a sketch, it is very complete. He doen’t write out all the notes, but his orchestrator knows exactly what he wants, how many horns for this or that passage. And after they are done, he checks their work and gives feedback. This goes on to the performance of his works with live orchestra … if the orchestra has 6 horns but he only wants 4 horns, then that means that 2 horns will have nothing to do during the concert. He’s not a control freak but he knows exactly what he wants, and that way ultimately the music - no matter how complex or how many instruments or how many parts - will be ‘his’ voice.
Working in a DAW and in a notation program are two very different things. When you score first the output of the notation program doesn’t sound good. When you mockup first (working with good sounding samples) it sounds good but it doesn’t look good (probably in most cases it’s even non-playable… like polyphonic trumpet tracks or short notes on separate tracks from legatos). You need the mockup-level to communicate with the director and producer. And you need the scoring level to communicate with the musicians. There’s always a level of analysing and rebuilding from one world to the other. That’s a time consuming process.
It’s a different thing if you ‘just’ write or ‘just’ produce. In that case a single person might be faster. But in movie world you need both.
… and if the Apple main board hadn’t eventually fired him for trying to do everything his way, Apple would now just be a bit of computing history, like Commodore or Atari.
Jobs was a minimalist. So we get a one button mouse because user couldn’t possibly handle any more than one button. So we have to use two hands to right click.
It’s all so intuitive you don’t need instructions. So how likely would you intuitively know to shake an iPad to undo typing? Or what to press to shut down a new iPad Pro now that there is no home button? Top sleep button + ?. Turns out the ? Button to press is the up volume. My ESP failed to inform me of this. I had to google to find out.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to highjack the thread.
Nothing to see here. Carry on. As you were.
Does Alan have a direct personal helpline to Steinberg/Dorico? I can’t imagine him patiently reading the manual or searching for info online on how to do stuff when he is stuck while the clock is ticking in the background.
Alan has the same direct personal helpline that you all do – he contacts me.
And you listen to him, and everyone else who has suggestions, similarly to when you still worked for Sibelius. Whether it’s the big people like Alan Silvestri, or the not so big people. Sometime even including village idiots like me.
That’s why we all love you, and that’s why people trust you and the team, and the product.