How to Record Your Music With an Orchestra

Very often these days, a media composer career starts at the computer and not in a music university. The main reason of course is that computers and music software are way easier accessible than a music degree or the necessary theoretical/musical knowledge to pass the entrance tests for such a degree.

Personally, I'm absolutely convinced that with enough curiosity and passion, there is no need to study music in this particular line of work these days. The internet is full of knowledge about the subject and there are by now a lot of books that cover any angle of writing music for media.

However there is a drawback. Composers who are good at their job at one point will become too busy with their work to actively focus on expanding their knowledge. In fact I know quite a lot of composers who are simply too busy to dive into the ins and out of for instance orchestration to refine their art in that field. Even moreso, they often shy away from recording their music with more than a handful of soloists as it breaks apart their tested work routine and once the day arrives that their client demands a real orchestra recording, they start to become stressed out about that.

So in this article, I want to break down the necessary steps that need to be taken in order to record your music with an orchestra.

1. Finding and booking an orchestra

I already wrote some lengthy posts about the possible options that I have worked with based on what recording budget is available and what quality demands you have. Basically, in order to find an orchestra and book it, the following factors are important: WHEN do you want to record HOW MUCH music with HOW MANY musicians?

Some session orchestras/bookers can make incredibly short turnaround schedules possible. I've had instances (in the commercial world) where from brief to finished mix of the orchestral recording we had a little more than a week. We were lucky that the booker of the orchestra was able to squeeze us in at the end of another session but these quick turnarounds are quite often possible. Other than such lucky shots, I would say that the shortest booking before a session should not be below 14 days. The earlier you know the more likely it is for the booker to get better musicians. Also, it is relatively unlikely that you get a specific time on a specific date so rather ask for a date range. It is always possible that the studio/orchestra is fully booked so having a plan B is a good idea.

As stated several times in other posts, you can expect to record about 5 minutes of music per recording hour. Many bookers have become more flexible in recent years. Just a while ago you needed to book entire 3 or 4 hour sessions. By now very often you get a minimum call of 3 hours that you need to book and can extend it by hours to as much session time as you need.

You tell the booker as early as possible how many musicians and what specific line-up you need to record so they can book the best musicians from their pool of musicians. 

Just to be clear on that, many bookers offer a full service so you basically send scores and parts as PDF and receive a Protools Session with all takes or sometimes even finished Mix back and don't need to worry about any steps in between (Studio booking, musician booking etc.)

If you are completely new in that field you can also hand this job over to an orchestrator who will deal with these things.

2. Orchestrators

Depending on how much experience you have with notating music and recording instruments, you might want to do your own orchestrations or hire someone external for that. If you have rarely ever recorded with live musicians, it is highly advisable to hire an orchestrator as they will save you from catastrophic notation errors and in such cases save you many times more money than they will costs by simply making sure that the session time is well spent and used most optimal.

If you work with an orchestrator, they will ask you to deliver the music in a specific way. Every orchestrator has their own preferences but most of the deliverables that they will request are relatively similar no matter whom you work with.

From my work as an orchestrator, working with composers who work exclusively in DAW, I usually request the following:

1. Demo - the mixed Audio file that represents that is being approved by the client or that you feel represents your ideas as best as possible

2. Audio Stems per section - The same file split into Woodwinds/Brass/Strings/Perc+Rest/(Choir) stems so I can hear all the details that sometimes get lost in the full demo

3. Midi file - exported from your DAW without any adjustments, tempo track should be included

AND/(OR)

4. Cleaned up Midi file -  Ideally, the following steps should be done in that file:

• reduce Midi tracks to one track per instrument, so basically combine "Flute legato, Flute staccato, Flute trill" etc. all into just one track if your work approach is to have one track per articulation
• remove key switches
• combine all midi events per instrument into one big midi event (especially in Logic)
• quantize note starts (and note ends) without any humanisation
• adjust bar numbers so that the cue starts at bar 1

(I will write a follow up post in the future that specifically deals with these demands and goes into greater detail)

Sometimes, not all of these points are possible due to time restraints or the way the project is set up in which cases the orchestrator will dig their way through the files and probably take longer but get there eventually.

As a word of caution: Proper notation is very important and only because you can export a score PDF from your DAW does not mean that it is something that can be played from. So if you have only little experience with notation, make sure you get an experienced orchestrator on board.

If you have a lot of music to orchestrate you will have a team of orchestrators. Usually, you will then only interact with the lead orchestrator who distributes the work between the other orchestrators and get more orchestrators on board if needed.

3. Session Prep

There are quite a few ressources on these issues available online but in order to record with an orchestra you usually need to send them two things:

Scores and Parts:

Usually they request scores and parts as PDF files and will be printing, binding and sorting them in the studio. On larger projects there are copyists that take on this job but essentially, you most of the time don't need to worry about the printing.

Pro Tools Session:

Almost all studios record with Pro Tools, so in order to get the music to sync with any audiovisual material and to record in the right tempo you need to prepare Pro Tools Sessions to record in. Usually you do one session per cue.

This Session should contain: 

• The correct tempo track and bar numbers that correspond with the bar numbers and tempi on the score sheets/parts.
• The video (in case there is one) synced to the cue in any format that Pro Tools can read
• Any additional or prerecorded elements/instruments so they can be sent to the headphones of the musicians if needed.

Other than that the session should be empty and not contain any MIDI data or anything else that might be confusing.

In most cases it might be a good idea to record to click as this makes takes easier interchangeable when you later edit the music and pick the best takes for each passage.

I have covered the things that happen during the session in a separate series of articles.

4. After the Session

From most recording studios you will receive the data via download link or copied on an external HDD/SSD. This data will include all takes from all cues as Pro Tools Sessions.

From this stage you can go ahead and edit and mix the cue on your own. If you haven't done that before, again it would be wise to hire a mixing engineer. Don't just hire ANY mixing engineer as it takes a very different set of skills to mix an orchestra than for instance mix a pop song. So try to get a dedicated scoring mixer.

These days, recording with an orchestra has become a quite streamlined process and many services compete against each other so the competition has become bigger which benefits the clients who book such services as they really do a lot to make this process as smooth as possible. If you follow the above guidelines, recording your music with an orchestra should really not be as complicated and overwhelming as it might seem at first.