This an arrangement of Tommy Walker's "All The Saints Join In" (Psalm 148). The overall orchestral arrangement is by my friend Ray Gomez.  All the re-harmonization and electronic realization was by yours truly. Between the two of us, we're one smart guy!  There is a male vocal melody that is played by the "electric guitar" sound.  The sung lyrics would give this a lot more interest.  We're hoping to get this played by a real orchestra in the near future.   http://www.audiorecordingandservices.com/All_The_Saints_Join_In.mp3
 
Here's a link to a video of the original composition so you get the context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0VKMhq-tsM
 
 
 
 

That's pretty interesting stuff. I'm not sure I understand how you did all of that...but it's cool! I would like to hear it again if you get a full orchestra to play it.

Ray did an arrangement with pencil, paper and piano; the old-school way. I entered it into Sibelius. His original did not deviate much from the original harmonic framework, so I added all the harmonic substitutions to give the orchestral rendering an added dimension.

My harmonic thinking is primarily derived from the intervallic logic found in the overtone series. I could try to explain it (which I've attempted in the past in the forum) but you'd probably get a headache. Hopefully the music speaks for itself.

I used NotePerformer, a specialized modeled orchestral soundbank made for Sibelius. No addtional sequencing or mixing was done. The sound is straight out of the box.

Very nicely done and some nice textures and voices throughout. Nice mix for being straight out of the box. Good one!!
Wonder want this sounded like when David played it on his harp? Praise in the Lord from Creation- Psalm148
 
Peace and Blessings, John

Nice arrangement and recording!

This is beautiful.  I hope you can get an orchestra to play it.  I think that would be fun!  

@theguitarplayer, Leizer and Janet: thanks for the kind words.

I was hoping for a live performance during Thanksgiving services. Our platform is too small to accomodate an orchestra of this size so we're going to have to do a Broadway-style pit orchestra/synth reduction that'll be played in the spring, possibly Easter weekend.

loads of work involved in getting an orchestra on it, but well worth it. Hope you get it sorted. :)

I've started dabbling in orchestral stuff and in particularly virtual orchestration...I think we need to stop worrying about "real" orchestral musicians personally, the virtual stuff can do the job these days.  I'm not sure about the sounds, I use notion which is suppose to have the superior sample set over Sibelius.  I also do a lot of audio engineering stuff to improve the sounds too, you'd be amazed at how a little transient shaper can make things pop and zing.  I tend to take all the individual orchestral sounds and give them their own track either via rewire or bouncing.  This allows me to use better verbs and in most cases two verbs for a realness you can't get with the orchestral propriety verb.  Then slap tape sim an console sim.  I'm only just beginning too, there is arguments for double tracking as well.
 
Ben     

Yes Ben BUT the big question here is did you like the jonas arrangment. That is far more important than virtual instruments in fact. My ears tell me the arrangement sounds good and would translate over to a live ensemble very well.
 
The most important way to make any virtual instruments sound as good as the real thing is to get them doing the same sort of things that they would do in an orchestral setting. It is not about the sounds/production techniques so much but more about what they are playing.
 
Also it is great to listen to classical performances live a lot as well. You can learn a lot from doing that. I still think the real thing is hard to beat though. Whenever I come out of an amzzing classical performance I always think OMG that was amazing. It would be just so hard to do that with all virtual instruments. There is just so much human input it is quite incredible. I also often think too that musically classical music represents the ultimate art from and nothing really very good has happened since 1900. 
 
(except for electronic music of course! )
 
Tangerine Dream are coming to Melbourne. Now there is a band! They are doing two gigs in one week and I am booked in for both. OMG! They have not been to Australia since 1975 would you believe. And I saw them then too.