Learning orchestration by ear

Are there any composers/orchestrators who might be able to give me advice?
 
I have always dreamed of being able to compose and/or arrange "orchestral" music. I've always been very good at playing almost any instrument by ear (including many orchestral instruments) and have also always taken in as much theory as I can while being a more "rock" oriented musician. For example I understand chords beyond your basic major and minor (I've always been partial to the major 7th in JAzz and Rock although she's boring me a bit lately ;-)
 
I can read music, but NOT sight read, and can "hear" chord progressions and arrangement ideas in my head quite well. I beleive what I hear is creative and interesting.
 
BUT... is it realistic to think that I might be able to learn orchestration when I'm really an ear player? Are there any resources like schools online which would allow me to use my ear rather than more traditional methods of composition/arrangement?
 
I hope I've asked the question clearly, and I look forward to any and all advice! I would love to be able to get to the point where I can do something meaningful with what's in my head with and for other musicians.
 
Oh, and my favorite composer is Franz (Schooby Dooby) Schubert. I love "The Great" Symphony and know every note in my head :-)
 
Gavin

I am definitely not an orchestral composer:
 
I can see how it would be difficult or impossible to learn or do successful orchestration if you could not "hear" the music either internally or by solfege or performance; like if you suffer from amusia. But there is nothing essentially impossible about doing so without using standard music notation. You would need to find someone who would write everything down for you as you sang or played it to him, or engage a large group of competent musicians who would be willing to have you whistle a tune for them to memorize as their part. Could you write a novel if you are illiterate? Audiobook? It has been done, but it requires at least one collaborator to make it readable from text. But more to the point, it might require a superhuman memory if you were not going to write anything down, for you to be able to remember all the parts as you progressed and edited them. Written music, like written language adds a dimension of power by giving you a handle to grasp that persists as a static external representation of the slippery stuff that appears and disappears within the mind. And much of the good teaching material depends heavily on notated examples, so facility with notation is useful in learning as well. 
 
Of course with modern technology you can accomplish much of the same effect with multichannel MIDI recording and editing. There are certainly composers for orchestra who use DAW software and samples to organize and perform complex parts. The cost of rehearsing an orchestra is prohibitive for many composers, but they can put their stuff into a DAW and get a pretty good idea that the sound they hear in their mind is more or less accurate. In some cases this cybernetic performance is the only one a work will receive. So notation skills are arguably not necessary, even if you do not have the musical memory of a savant, but probably are really, really useful.

Are we talking full symphony orchestration? Like a full orchestra utilizing all its members (not all at the same time but as needed) and writing things down for each instrument section (and their various members for things like chords, harmonies)? Like following classical theory and writing with those confines or branching out into the work modern composers do?
 
Orchestration can mean a lot of things... even down to a simple three piece rock band.
 
If you are talking about symphonic orchestration I'd say study what a classical orchestra is comprised of (all it's units and members). Then study how full orchestra music is written and spread out amongst all those parts (this is HUGE stuff because each musician has their own little bit to play obviously) right down to seating arrangements. Get accustomed to what instruments traditionally do what in an orchestra. Look how various composers create their harmonies, melodies and "leads" (you'll see part of one or multiple instrument sections create/hold/move chords while others of those SAME sections may or may not branch out and be part of the melodies combining with other parts NOT participating in the harmony). Study intervals, inversions, cadences, the range of each instrument and what their particular timbres are useful for/traditional used for.
 
and so on...
 
Then figure out what type of compositions you want to create and dig into how similar composers viewed theory. Classical stuff revolves around Major Ionian and then melodic/harmonic minors (you have to understand the differences and where they fall in the step sequence, when they are used, what ALL the possible chords/intervals/triads are on each step... not just Major/minor/7ths, how cadences work with each other to create moods and movement, how timing works and how to write it in notation, etc). You gotta learn all the bizzarro quirks of the keys, notation staff, the roman numeral numbering system that works around the limitations of the Major/Minor system to express chords/harmony (as opposed to modal theory which is much easier to digest).
 
Really, it's a lot of stuff to learn and keep track of. It requires a LOT of knowledge to write for a full orchestra in the "proper" manner and worth it to take proper courses in. Your local college will likely have courses you can sign up for.
 
That said... it's all much easier these days (and you can "fake" it) with the proper cumputer programs. One program that gets brought up a lot around here is the Garritan Aria Player stuff which, if I understand it correctly, is capable of full orchestral performances using MIDI and then there are notation software tools (I think Finale is one that gets mentioned a lot).
 
Sonar... unfortunately, is not the best DAW for this type of work though. I cannot say what is but I think the Mac ones (Logic? Reason?) are what a lot of these guys use and I believe Cubase is supposedly to have really good notation MIDI input.
 
That way you get to play around with the sounds, concepts and theory involved. These tools are expensive though so expect to spend probably close to $1000 to really get into it... and that does not include lessons/instruction on how to do it correctly/by the book.
 
Contrast that to how those lunatics hundreds of years ago used to do it though (just a quill and paper and a piano if they were LUCKY... AND they did not have volumes of educational material on the craft they themselves were inventing) and this is all MUCH easier to acheive these days.
 
It's a laudible goal and I'm most certainly not posting all this to deter you but if you TRULY want to be a composer for orchestral type mayhem then put aside a bunch of time and a bunch of money to get the education and the tools to make it happen.
 
Knowing how to read notes on the staff and what a 7th chord is just ain't enough... but it's a start.
 
PS: I am NOT an orchestral composer but would like to be before I die so I've actually researched this stuff. I know a TON about music stuff and the only way I can figure how to become a proper orchestral composer is literally by going to school for it... which I intend to if I ever get the opportunity.
 
I wish you the best of luck.

Try this Beepster: https://archive.org/details/principlesoforch00rims

I have a PDF of the Principles of Orchestration (sorry, I don't remember where I got it from) that's annotated by a modern expert. It's been especially enlightening, explaining things that are unclear in the original text due to archaic language as well as noting where the "rules" have most often been revised by current composers. Still, I am impressed by how the vast majority of the original text remains applicable today. 

PilotGav
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I can read music, but NOT sight read, and can "hear" chord progressions and arrangement ideas in my head quite well. I beleive what I hear is creative and interesting.
 ... 

I can read music, but sometimes I don't know what note that is ... but give me a score, and I can follow it easily enough opposite the music playing! I did this for creating the film version for Tosca's Act 2 ... and can still easily do this with most music, except most pop music does not have a score/script anyway. Well, it does, a few years later, but most of them are not creative enough to help create a film/idea that matches, like some opera and symphonic works can. Too much of the rock/jazz ideas are too strict around the solo, to be able to justify and flow and any "story" behind it. In fact, a friend of mine that played jazz in the band, said that the best part of jazz was that it didn't have a story!
 
Always found that weird, since for me, ALL music is always a visual exercise, and even the avant-garde, and experimental that has no discernible anything in it, I appreciate forever, because I can see/create inner worlds that are not dictated by my time, place and experience. Thus, even sound effects, "tell me" a story! And so does all music, although there are some jazz forms, early Garbarek, early Yokko, and even some Miles (not all of it at all!) ... that are totally beyond my imagination ability to see anything.

slartabartfast ...
I can see how it would be difficult or impossible to learn or do successful orchestration if you could not "hear" the music either internally or by solfege or performance; like if you suffer from amusia. But there is nothing essentially impossible about doing so without using standard music notation.
...

Specially nowadays, when you can compose with a DAW, and or by the "sound" alone, and not have to worry about notes, which your own DAW, might be able to translate after you are done.
 
This is the part that is difficult to discuss, since, by now, you can see how many folks doing rock music, that do not know music at all, but are putting together rock songs, or rap songs, which by all concepts and ideas, are VERY EASY since they only have 4 lines, or 5, and all the VST's create the music for you easily enough, even if that drum beat is so boring as to put you to sleep, and it's in there simply as a metronome type of thing that the DAW adjusted for that person, even.
 
Composing, and I will accept that I have not been near the academic areas in the past 30 years, is not a "note" thing anymore ... because there is no need for it ... you can test out the instrument on the note you thought and its next note choice ... you did not have that pleasure 30 years ago.
 
This is the problem with some DJ folks that are now composing their own music, and most of them do not know music like a classically instructed student might know ... and yet ... there is a full composition, and while not as good as Jean Michel Jarre, it's still pretty impressive compared to what you hear from music students at any advanced college in America that I have heard (mostly CA and NY).

DrLumen
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I have resigned myself to listening as closely as possible to various parts and learning from recordings. The tower of power type brass style is currently a fascination for me.
 ...

You should have seen it live back then when it mattered even more ... it was ... no words for it!

Amine Belkhouche
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I've taken a couple of orchestration courses at my school and it's just like any discipline. It can take a long time to become a great orchestrator just like it can take a long time to become a great guitarist.
...

 
I think the secret here is how you "make sense" of the music itself as a whole, not separate parts. This is the harsh and sometimes very poor part of both rock and jazz music, when the instrument is out on its own, and what is underneath is ... kinda nothing ... and it distorts the completeness of the image (FOR ME!!!), which the piece of music would naturally give, that is the most glowing part of a lot of classical music and its history.
 
The 20th and 21st century, are changing that some, but I think they are expanding it, not changing it as much.
 
The good example is the pitch bend wheel and the guitar strings, being moved/stretched to create something different, that no instrument on an orchestra does, and no one would even consider doing that to a violin, for example, or any other long string instrument (only the bass, I think).
 
As another example, on the Tosca 2nd act's first part, is doing the aria, you will find a very subtle solo violin in the midst of it all, and it is doing single notes, and in my "film version" I made that tears falling down the character's face, and falling on his arms, and then the rest of the body ... a sort of drop, drop, drop, drop and drop and drop ... and even Peter Mark, thought that was excellent, helping solve all the problems and details that opera has on any stage ... the details are lost, and they are the best part of it all!
 
Very little rock/jazz music is that well defined instrumentally, for example, and that makes things tougher. However, I can see things improving. Mike Oldfield, is very good at small details, and so was CAMEL in their opus, "Snow Goose", as is Vangelis in many of his soundtracks and longer pieces that do not use a "song" as a format, which is 66% of his output! I seem to think that "Close to the Edge" makes it as does all of "Tales of Topographic Oceans". For me, these pieces are all the "symphonies" of our time, and the music that will be remembered from it.
 
I imagine, that it teaches you to "hear" everything, and this is the part of rock and jazz music that is mostly sad for me ... the rest is there as the carpet for you to step on, and it's old, dusty and ugly already ... sometimes!