Having gotten to the the last two chapters of the Counterpoint course I started a few weeks back I realized its going to take a great deal of practice for the majority of the techniques to sink in. The instructor reckons on allowing about one year for each half of the course book (two and three voice compositions respectively). Theres alot to cover but its damndably exciting stuff all the same. As I’ve gone thru the individual species I’ve started to grasp how you go about writing three consecutive independent lines that still work harmonically. Its all fundamental film scoring theory but seeing as I have’nt studied formally I’ve never fully understood the principles. From January on I’ll have more time to put into composing and orchestrating and I’m really looking forward to experimenting with the various techniques.
Apart from the theory I’m also starting to plan out reliable orchestral (sample libraries) and MIDI (controller) templates for the studio. Hopefully this will make for more realistic sounding music both in the quality/mixing of the samples themselves and in how the MIDI is input (as much of it controller related as possible). On the live front, if the budget allows, I’ll hire individual session players to record the top-lines for each section. I haven’t yet had the chance to do this and I’m very curious to see how it blends with the sampled sound. The plan is to complete around eight 3-5 minutes pieces during 2014 loosely based on some of the short story/fairy tale themes I’ve been mulling over.
