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

Sure you can. I can't read or write music (quickly; I can figure some stuff out), but was able to write a piano and orchestra piece a few years ago.
It's not as intricate or expressive as some folks who post their orchestral music in the Songs forum, but I got it done. And it was about the hardest song I've ever done, too.
Knowledge of chords and scales is all you really need to write simple orchestrations.
 

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.

I should think it's possible, although you would have to do a lot more experimentation and trial & error than you would if you were coming from a trained background. For example, whether or not certain instruments (like trumpets) sound better in close harmony or open harmony. It's probably going to require an intimate knowledge of each instrument's character and range, and which instruments go together in certain circumstances. 
 
But what I'm thinking is, once you really start getting into all of this, you're going to get curious and are going to seek out academic texts on the subject, for example the Hindemith composition textbooks. 
 
I have a method of learning which I'm sure many of you will recognize. This applies to all subjects, not just music. I will:
 
1) Start reading a book or watching a tutorial video
2) A little way into the lesson, I get really excited about the couple of things I've learned so far
3) So I put the book down or turn off the video and dive right into the thing
4) I'm immediately confronted by a series of problems and questions 
5) So I go back to the book or the video and continue watching. 
 
What happens is that the answer to the problems and questions that I've encountered in my own amateur explorations, are then answered in the remainder of the tutorial. But since I've encountered these things on my own and have actual real world experience of them, the tutorial makes more sense than it would have done had I just watched the whole thing all the way through without experimenting. 
 
This might work for you as well. Learn a little of the basics from a book, take that knowledge away with you and start experimenting. This experimentation will raise all sorts of questions, so you'll go back to the book for the answers (and learn even more new stuff in the meantime). 

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.

Creating a good orchestral piece does not require formal training with the tools available to the modern hobbiest. But SCORING a good orchestral piece to be played by other trained players is a skill that must be diligently learned. In a DAW all things are possible. You can have any instrument play passages that they either could not play or at the least find problematic in an actual performance. All instruments not only have limited useful ranges...they are also bound by their own structure. In short...certain passages, note groups, runs etc...are a booger bear to perform. I learned early on when I was writing parts for the horn players in the jazz band I was in at the time. These were all first call session guys having to put up with a cocky neophyte like me. In short I wrote things that the horn "wouldn't do". But creating something in your DAW generally holds no such limitations.

I grew up listening to classical music. It was all Mom & Dad allowed in the house. That, and comedy records. Consequently, my unconscious instincts always revert to the classical forms regardless of what style of music I'm doing. But even with the classics burned into my basic programming, I'd gone about as far as I could on ear training alone until I had an epiphany, which came in the form of a book.
 
That book was Principles of Orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. It's been the basic primer for composers and orchestrators for 150 years. Fortunately for us, it's also in the public domain and available online for free.
 
Of course, any rules set down in the 19th century have been subsequently bent and augmented by adventurous composers over the intervening years. But even the most avant-garde modern pieces are branches off the Rimsky-Korsakov tree. The Beatles knew R-K intuitively, and George Martin knew it technically.
 
 

bitflipper

 
That book was Principles of Orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. It's been the basic primer for composers and orchestrators for 150 years. Fortunately for us, it's also in the public domain and available online for free.
 

Awesome! I am unfamiliar with this site though. I see a mountain of PDF download links of varying sizes (I usually snag PDFs when I can) and there are a ton of MIDI, MP3 and other file types. Not quite sure how or what to snag.
 
Or maybe my scripblockers are blocking some download widget.
 
I'm also not quite sure how such old book would have MIDI and audio files but maybe those are additional companion supplements put together over the years by educators.
 
Anyway... just a nudge toward the what's and how's would be cool. Looking forward to checking out what otehr gems may be lurking on this site.
 
Cheers and thanks again.

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

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

Wow. That's a big PDF, eh? Looks like they used full color images of the whole book. Thanks, I'll snag that unless bit comes back with more info on the other site.
 
Thanks, dood.