Learning to Color: Stumbling Across Orchestration

The fifth grade was not kind to my artistic soul. I remember when we were given the assignment of coloring-in the outline of a large maple leaf. Unsatisfied with the results of my project, I grabbed a handful of gold and silver crayons and began to add highlights to my red and green leaf. My fifth grade teacher bounded up to me in a huff and accused me of scribbling. Little did I know it, but the little creative person inside of me had just received his first challenge. Normally quiet, I argued my point. I was not able to express it at the time, but I was seeking the realistic gleam of a leaf after it had begun to dry.

Not buying my poorly given argument, my fifth grade teacher made me stand in front of the first-grade art class, to learn how "good children" do their art projects. I've been obsessed with color ever since...

***

There was a time where I was silenced at the sight of a blank Orchestral score. It was simply too much to deal with, and my brain couldn't wrap itself around such a behemoth of color, sound, and passion. The ideas fizzled, and I was left standing in humble silence.

To this day, few compliments please me more than being told that I have orchestrated something well. As I approached the end of my Masters studies in composition, I was still handicapped by the large ensemble. This meant that I was essentially incapable of writing the orchestra piece that I needed to write in order to graduate.

Certainly I could have written a bad piece, but I promised myself long ago that I would never kow-tow to academic requirements in a way which sacrificed creative quality. Never.

Part of fearing the Orchestra and Wind Ensemble was fearing what monstrosity might come about as a result of my bringing my ideas into such a huge creative space. Inside of my head there were great colors, shapes, and swirls of energy brewing, but I was unable to open the door to fully access these ideas.

It was digital audio editing that changed that. I began to compose a piece called "Blood, Forgotten," for solo Violin and multimedia. The multimedia portion consisted of a video element, and a massive and continually evolving sound-world derived almost entirely from the sound of a single violin.

In the process of shaping and layering the hundreds of sounds clips which eventually became the full eleven minutes of "Blood, Forgotten," I ended up with something resembling -- but greatly outdetailing -- a classical orchestral score.

As I put the finishing touches on "Blood, Forgotten," I began to compose the Orchestral version of the piece. Still mired in trepidation, I was shocked to find that the floodgates had burst, and I was dancing joyfull on the the 11X17 field.

In the end, the orchestra piece was mediocre at best. The significance of the situation, however, is that working the digital medium helped me make the leap into writing for large ensembles.

Working with a digital-audio editor, you begin with recording sounds and manipulating them into new sounds. You work in a top-down-left-to-right approach as in an orchestral score. You are concerned with pitch, balance, color, layering, and progression.

Sound familiar? Such are the concerns which we encounter in any piece, with the concerns being multiplied to extreme levels with large ensembles.

Some might suggest that I was simply suffering from a lack of familiarity in the Orchestral Repetoire. In my case, this is untrue, as I had been ingesting large amounts of music for many years. I had done my score studies, made numerous sketches. I just couldn't ever get past the first idea in a large-ensemble setting.

The problem was comfort: I could not synthesize all of the necessary elements without being overly critical about myself as a composer, or being worried of the potential train-wreck which might result from such efforts.

The digital realm allowed me to experiment endlessly, with instantaneous results available. It helped build the confidence my inner-ear needed, and allowed the necessary mental-dancing to develop over ever-larger soundscapes. Soon I was thriving, and the transition was not a difficult one to make.

I wonder if any other young composers have had similar experiences. Perhaps one day, I will be afforded the opportunity teach a course dealing with such subject-matter. Orchestration is an art that one can continually improve upon. I'm just glad that I accidentally stumbled across the way to my own ability in this realm, and hope to help others do the same in the future.