How To Write Orchestral Music - Epic Percussion & Rhythm Basics
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- In this FL Studio tutorial, I explain how I write epic percussion sections for my orchestral tracks & how I create interesting rhythms.
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» VST/Sample Libraries used:
Heavyocity Damage, Boom Library Cinematic Trailers Designed, Impact Soundworks Juggernaut, 8Dio Hybrid Tools 2 
Видеоклипы
![How to Write Music for Orchestra [with the FREE BBC SO Discover]](/img/1.gif)
1) TRY DON'T USE too much fast-paced rhythms for low / boomish percussion;
2) USE fast-paced rhythm / syncopated rhythms for higher register (like sticks and brush, 'cause they don't get in a way of the clarity of the sound);
3) USE velocities a lot to define your rhythm more;
4) Don't be laze and always remember to USE VARIATIONS and fails between bars to make your percussion's sound more interesting (other way they might sound a little bit repetitive and blend after while by the way if you)
(21:28)
fills*
bland*
"each layer has his own LOGIC and his REASON to be here" That was smart ;)
Haha! You're the second to notice that. :P
you mean ABLE TO Notice?
Exactly. Any layer without a function would yield Fruity Loops.
Sibrand Hoekstra LoL clever
@@moritzgro2442 finally another ableton user xD
heard the mic quality and I was like, oh this will be crap.
and then you played it
Lol. :D
Yeah, should definitely upgrade my mic eventually haha.
I love your explanation here, each layer has it's own logic!
My percussion have improved drastically thanks to this tutorial.
Yes, I've been looking for a channel like this which will teach me this stuff. Thank you so much for your tutorials!
It‘s so crazy to hear how much your English skills increased comparing this one to your new ones! Great improvement Alex 😁💪🏻
This is absolutely brilliant! I came here looking for libraries to check out for percussion/drum sounds and am leaving as a fan of your work, Subscribed
Great video. Seeking to improve my orchestral percussion game. This did just that! Really was enlightened that you take the approach with higher pitch percussion to put in more hits because there is less "boomy-ness" to the stick hits. In contrast you are more mindful with the boomy hits to avoid muddy-ness. Powerful knowledge! Appreciate you sharing your wisdom. Your channel helps me a lot.
You just wrote that piece for the tutorial? That's really talented. I hope you're putting your talents to good use and making money.
James Deal Thanks. I am already, but to be honest, one of my favorite ways of making use of my talent is to spread knowledge and inspiration around. :)
Amazing sound and in depth breakdown . Thanks!
I think, you make best tutorials in youtube. Thank you Alex!
+Сергей Галенко You're too kind man, glad this helped you out! :)
I love the use of the Taiko drum
Very well done!! Definitely informative, and extremely useful. Thanks a ton for doing what you do brother!!
+Mikey Rothenberg Glad it helps! :)
These tutorials are the best omg
Very! Very! Awesooome!! thnx for upload all this stuff for the new ppl in this. You're the best mate!!
+Un Loco Cualquiera You're welcome mate!
Very informative. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Please do more.
Great tutorial! Thank you very much for this!
Amazing tutorial, helped a lot. THANKS!!!
2:28 each layer has it's own Logic and Reason to be there :D
Haha, that pun wasn't intended! :D
Great vid, very educational! I will definitely be writing a percussion bed using this as a guide, thanks a lot
Love your channel
Wow that's awesome and very professional
You just became my new idol. This is awesome!!
Cheers!
Great lesson Alex!
AYYYYYYYYYYY
its you
10 months ago
;-;
AYYYYY! It's my guy Schematist :)
Wow, nice tutorial🙌👏
Thanks dude. :)
I’m glad I found this video! thanks!
Amazing class... great drums...
This is so dope! 😲
I'm starting to make orchestral music, and this tutorial was something that I needed! Very good stuff :D
Glad to hear that, Alvaro.
Stick around for more! :)
Definitely will! Keep it up :]
Great video Alex, a great insight in percussion driven trailer music, great work as always
+Raffz Vieira Glad you enjoyed it!
Great job, Alex. As a guy who writes orchestral scores, I think you did a really fine job explaining the best use of each element type.
These drum percussions can be found from stormdrum or drums of war, the latter being used with the free konkat player. What i can hear from the track might be taikos, daikos, shakers, and some metals.
EastWest Quantum Leap Stormdrum
My music is improving nd the reasons behind tht is your tutorial videos ,
I am so happy that i found you
Wonderful tutorial. Interesting video. I like your humility especially when you acknowledge that you are not clear with some of the terms. Syncopated in definition is binding a strong beat to a weak beat. Probably what you can term your arrangement of notes on the piano roll is "irregular accents" as opposed to the regular accent of the Taiko drums on the first beat of each bar. But nicely explained video thanks brother 😊
Awesome
Man waking up to this was awesome! Seriously you've helped me the most alex thank you very much!!!!
+Berchi Oh, I'm happy to hear that! :)
Hey alex btw i've seen on your patreon page that u say that u've read alot of books and courses and things do you have any you would recommend to me?
And btw just so you know i would love to become a patron it's just that i'm just a kid and i'm not really that rich so i can't :( But anyway thanks for all the tutorials and everything that u make it truly helps me alot and if u could tell me about some books or something that would be great cause i really want to learn and work with these kind of things when i get bigger :D
Hmm, it depends. Since music composition is a multi-faceted skill, there is no "one" course that will help you learn everything, rather, you should check as many knowledge sources as you can, but be careful who you learn from.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to see if the artists you look up to offer courses/private lessons/tutorials. If they do, invest some money on that!
You'll have to spend some bucks for sure, which might be uncomfortable for someone of your age, but it will save you an insane amount of time in terms of growth.
Otherwise try to find as many RUclips channels like mine where you can learn, but before learning from someone else, listen to the music they make first and see if you like what they're able to do. Always be careful of who you learn from. :)
By the way, I forgot to mention my favorite sources of learning:
SeamlessR's channel (even though if it's mostly for EDM stuff): ruclips.net/user/SeamlessR
DJ Vespers's channel (EDM stuff again): ruclips.net/user/DJVespers
Evenant (a new website run from a few friends of mine): evenant.com/music
you are very talented
Yay! New video..
Wow, that was quick. :D
Awe.......someeeeeeeee
Thank you very much, Alex.
sweet tutorial, I have such a hard time with this!
Cheers man!
Thanks man!!!
Love it
learning bit by bit:)
That is the right way to do it!
This is one of your earlier videos (2016) so I'm hoping you have another recent video that explains your choice of plugins and parameters used to create the final epic and cinematic sound during the mixing process.
Great Tutorial !!! I was tired of Using loops , wanted my own !!! Thanks to You !!!
You're welcome!
I wanted to ask which library did you use in this tut ?
Libraries list's in the description of the video.
Another great tutorial. If you keep up this quality, I'm sure you're going to get big.
Thanks!
love the no bullshit straight to the music start :)
Big thank's!!!!
That's some good fucking sounding percussion amazing!
Wow... Subbed
This came very useful to me. Now I see why I can't figure out my percussion. Geez 😁. Thanks.
When will lessons make a return? Im interested in learning how to make this type of music!
Fantastic video! Subscribing instantly! :)
Thanks for the sub!
Thank you for sharing great content, looking forward to more videos! =)
Thanks Alex...
+Varun M.S Cheers, hope you learned something out of this!
Noob question: what are those sticks & brushes actually? Are they just different articulations on the snare? I'm trying to create those sounds with other libraries (strikeforce)
Just a suggestion, you can hear parts better when you start to do a mix by mixing against pink noise. What you do is start or use a pink noise generator or a audio of pink noise, then for each track, bring the volume up so that you can barely hear it below the level of pink noise. This works because pink noise has even volume across all ranges of the audio spectrum. Once you get a general mix, then fine tune to taste like you would normally mix. Works great for those parts that intended to be subtle, but, hard to bring out because of the weaker characteristics of the instrument. (look at the noise in a spectrum analyzer to see) Great tutorials.. thanks! (also, do it one track at a time, in solo, i.e, the tracks by them selves)
That's an interesting tip, thanks for sharing :)
Could you do a video on how you do velocity automation? How do you make your decisions there?
Hallo! Do you convert percussion to mono when mixing? If yes what other instruments you advise to convert in mono? Thanks
This tutorial is so good, you got a new subscriber :). Could you maybe make a tutorial about how to use Choirs?
Thanks! I'll surely make one eventually, in the meantime, take a glimpse of the tutorial I made about my track "The Landing". I do explain how I wrote choirs in that track there!
Link: ruclips.net/video/7wI6AwFvEWM/видео.html
Alex Moukala
I definitely will!
hei alex, First of all thanks for sharing your great knowledge with us, i want your help on percussion can you please make video on how to mix our percussion and drums in any orchestral track although they are recorded but when i mix it it does not have that vibe in it.
Very nice work! i have been learning to try and write percussion rhythms like this for a long time but hadn't really gotten anywhere. Up until now I always believed that you had to play in the notes with a midi controller and then use the quantization function to keep the timing but it doesn't look like you sis that here and still produced great results!
Also, did you have to use much EQ and other mixing techniques here or just use the presets as they were?
You can also do it that way as well, I prefer to sequence by hand via mouse and keyboard. :)
As for mixing, I just applied a high frequency boost on the percussion a bit, but nothing specific really! I tend to be very parsimonious with EQ when I write orchestral tracks.
@Alex Moukala This video was almost what I was looking for. I wanted to learn how to create the exact sound you have in your video. The biggest problem for me with your video is that you haven't really explained what each patch/drum sound is. It would be great if you could either provide a MIDI file (for us Cubase and other users) with instrument-named tracks or perhaps elaborate more in the description. I for one still don't know if the first set of drums are orchestral snares, bass drums or something else entirely. Likewise when you mentioned brushed instruments - it would be good to know what exactly. I'm pretty good at making rhythms but I struggle to figure out the actual sound palette sometimes.
What sample library are you using to write this? In my college I've access to some Kontact libraries which are great for strings/brass/choir, but nothing really on the kind of percussion you're getting here! Thanks!
Hey Alex,
I really like this Video/tutorial, and just want to ask if I can use this for my Videos, without Copyright Problems.
Hey great tutorial! I have been looking for a way to make epic orchestral percussion but all the plugins and sound banks are so incredibly expensive. Do you of any orchestra percussion sound banks that are a reasonable price? It is just hard as a student to drop $200-300 on plugins.
+Danny Johnson I'd say get EastWest Composer Cloud!
It costs about 30$ per month, but it gives you access to a huge variety of quality Orchestral sample libraries from EastWest, Percussion Libraries included. ;)
ok thanks a lot!
I know you make your own trailer hits. Do you have a library recommendation for whoosh sounding trailer hits?
how do you pan the sticks and brushes? I tend to pan them opposite of each other in the freq spectrum
What version of FL studio do you have? SO amAzing! 😊
How did you get your grid to look like that? What snap to grid are you using>???
Hi! what are the instruments you are using? what are the names? taikos, bodrhams, what are you using per line? I need the names so i can using it and experiment with them. thanx.
this tutorial is great. but tell me how to write those Short strings and brass? If the tutorial is there. link me please. Amazing channel. Subbed!
one question pls, when you USE velocities to define your rhythm, did you define with the mouse or did you played it on keyboard ?
Hi Alex. Great tutorial, very helpful. Can you tell me what libraries you use for the "whoosh-bang" type effects and samples? Thanks and keep up the great work! - Jeff
Replying to my own question - I see the answer now in your VST/Sample Libraries used (click on "SHOW MORE" above).
Can you please help me, how did you make the last pitch down bass?
Whats that instrument that you used in the first explanation of the "root percussion"
How did u get 5 cells per bar? If u know what i mean? Its nog 1/3 or 1/4 but u have like 5 sections instead of 4 per bar
what plug in do you use for the percussion?
lmao i seen an ad about you for your course
i see the samples stated in the description but i cant find them,how do i get them?
Cool Video. Can you please add the libraries to the description with actually telling us what they are used for. I wasted 30 minutes with searching for every single library and i still dont know where you got your drums from.
Hi Alex, can i ask what VST/sample packs you used for getting the RFG tension hit 5, whoosh- shut the door , HIT gun blade sounds from?
RFG Tension Hit 5 is from Impact Soundworks ReForged.
The other two are custom samples I built by layering samples from various libraries together (mostly used sounds from Scenes From The Multiverse & Boom Library Cinematic Trailers Designed)
Hey buddy good job
I just suspected to your channel
What’s the name of the first instrument you used ?
Hi Alex...nice video,I was just wondering how did you equalized your percussion here or even better if you could make a whole video just about EQ,using Parametric EQ and so on
Hey Damir, these percs are almost untouched in terms of EQ, I only applied a little boost to the sticks & brushes's high-end, and a little cut to the big percussion's high-end instead. :)
The point being that, when it comes to percussion, I leave the high-end of the spectrum for the thinner percs and use the low-end for the larger ones.
Awesome!! subscribed!! Question! do you record the sounds yourself? or do you get them somewhere? if you do, can you get them for free?? What sotfware do you use? to create your tracks?? Thanks!
I use FL Studio (the DAW software shown in this video) plus a big list of orchestral kontakt libraries and sample libraries which I always mention either in the description, or the top comment of the videos. ;)
where exactly did you get your short whooshes
this tutorial is really useful and really informative. just wish I could get FL on mac :( I have some really cool ideas but logic just doesn't cut it for this type of music
To be honest, I think logic is more fit than FL for this stuff. I have friends who use it and compose the most awesome orchestral music. ;)
Alex Moukala really? I never seem to be able to find a good tutorial on how to produce music like this on logic. I mean I know how to write the music, just not how to get specific sound. For example the action percussion, realistic string sections and choir elements.
Check this friend of mine's tracks, all done with Logic: soundcloud.com/danielbeijbom
As for tutorials, there generally isn't many tutorials about orchestral music on RUclips, so I wouldn't know where to point you at if you're looking specifically for Logic Orchestral tuts, but the stuff that I explain here can be applied to any DAW really.
I use FL on my mac. The only way to do it is through a virtual machine or through a wine wrapper. I use VM (VMware Fusion and Parallels).
Careful with the trailer hits at the short rises when it hits with the cymbals and also its only the two hits playing, the woosh you were talking about, have a automation clip making the woosh a little quieter so that when the impact happens, it has more emphasis. But i love this tutorial its great :D ik i sound critical and sorry if i do it's learned from expierence...
+WhenTeenagers GetBored Oh, this was just a fast-written sketch for the purpose of this tutorial, so I chose to not get super detailed about it production-wise. :)
+Alex Moukala true true, great tutorial though
Nice man! What VST Plugins do you use for the percussions?
Heavyocity Damage!
This is brilliant and really helpful, thank you very much for sharing. What time signature is it in? is it 5/4 or something?
Just adding on to that, I see each bar breaks into 5 beats (I think), but then each beat breaks into 3 or 6? Is that correct?
+IAMIAN Yes, it's a 5/4 time signature and the percussion is playing third notes.
+IAMIAN but you can apply this technique to any kind of rhythm. ;)
Perfect, thanks for the reply. Keep up the good work, I'm subbed! :)
How did you make your grid have 5/4 rhythem? all I can choose is 1/6 /1/4 /1/2 etc @@AlexMoukala
WHich Instrument within Damage did you use?
I'm your 1000 subscriber! What's your time signature?
Wohoo! You're right, we just reached 1k subs, congratulations guys! :D
Anyway, the time signature here was a simple 3/4 183 BPM.
@@AlexMoukala You meant 5/4, I think?
what damage patches are you using exactly :)
Hi mate,
Where do you get your trailer hit samples from? I feel like that's what my percussion tracks have been missing!
Check out Audio Imperia's Scens From The Multiverse and Boom Library's Cinematic Trailers Designed ;)
Great tutorial! What libraries are you using for the trailer hits?
+Pyry Mäkinen Thanks! For the trailer hits I used Boom Library Cinematic Trailers Designed and Impact Soundworks ReForged. Also, a little bit of Hybrid Tools 2 for the massive Taiko Rolls. :D
The library I'd recommend most out of these three is cinematic trailers designed. That thing is insane, and also not that much expensive. :)
Wow
+Efisio Cross | Orchestral Yooo my man! :D
What is the name of the sounds that are shown at around 16:18? I've searched for them so long and couldnt find any of them.
Trailer Hits!
I talk about them more in depth in this video -> ruclips.net/video/0Fb3nXuCo1k/видео.html
That is Great ! But how can i know what the instruments pressets you chuse in damage, there is a lot of single presets instruments (( , Thanks
I mostly used the Armageddon Ensemble in this one.
Thaaaaaaaaaanks
what is the name of these percussion in damage?
quelle vst vous avez utilisée?
It's it possible to do this without the expensive Kontakt packs? Either with free packs or with what's included in the Producer version?
Hmm, I guess you can but they will sound nowhere as good.
FL Studio factory sounds can be good for EDM, but when it comes to this kind of music, I don't think you'll find useful samples in there. You could google for some free orchestral soundfonts and VST, like the Edirol Orchestral Suite, but you'll surely notice a difference between the percussion of that library and, say, the percussive sound of Damage.