Waking Courage

In 2012 I wrote a piece for the Okemah High School, which is where I was teaching at the time.  The students wanted to play something "epic," and this was my attempt at that.  :)  In November I began experimenting with moving the piece into Logic and arranging it for orchestra.  I learned a lot from doing this in that virtual instruments seem to be less forgiving when it comes to blending.  I found out while working on this project that arrangements intended for Logic need to be a little thinner.  My previous Logic Pro projects were fairly simple, so I didn't run into any issues.  This one turned out to be much more difficult to mix due to the large instrumentation.  I decided it was a good time to try out EastWest's "Hollywood Choir," and that was a learning experience in itself.  The choir sounds are impressive, but it took many hours of tweaking to get the pronunciations somewhat accurate.  Once again, I feel like I was being too ambitious.  I used EastWest sounds for the entire project, and I have to say their "ComposerCloud" is most likely the best product for the money.  After using them for a few years now, I can say that like any instrument, virtual instruments require practice.  I can't write for them the same way I write for live instruments.  It's a little like taking something written for trumpet and moving it to flute without making any adjustments.  The flute player might be able to play it, but the overall effect will be sacrificed.  Virtual instruments can give a better idea of what live musicians would do, but in the end, you can never replace real musicians.  (We should all be glad about that, right!  No one wants to be replaced.)  This is why I find it best to write for either live instruments or virtual instruments.  In some cases I feel like live instruments can exist a long side the virtual instruments, but I'm finding that it is actually possible to write music that is, for lack of a better term, "idiomatic" for virtual instruments.  Writing specifically for these instruments seems to allow them to shine the way EastWest intended, which makes for a more realistic recording.  Anyway, the video is posted below, and three more piano pieces were uploaded to YouTube today.  I'll discuss those later.  There are a couple of more projects on the horizon, and I'll talk about that at a later date.  Until then, stay safe and warm out there.  It was around -10 in Northwest Oklahoma last night.  Yikes!