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Project MAESTRO

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NoamL
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Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

Hey all,

The interest in Sonuscore's "The Orchestra" and Spitfire's "Bernard Hermann Toolkit" reminded me of an idea that has been tumbling around in the back of my mind for a few months now.

I'm posting about it here on TSB first and then maybe on VIC to gauge interest.

Image

I will probably put a few months of work into Ask MAESTRO in my free time just to kick it off, and then start a Patreon where the more donations I get per month, the more time I can devote to expanding it. One thing I’m determined about is that Ask MAESTRO will be a free website, never a subscription service.


Ask MAESTRO will be a Machine-Assisted Educational Searchable Typology of Real Orchestrations.

So let me explain…


What is the need for Ask MAESTRO?

The idea behind Ask MAESTRO is this: in the old days you had to go to a concert to learn orchestration, or better yet, work with a session orchestra every day for decades like Josef Haydn or John Williams. Now you can sit at home and study recordings and scores.

But the next leap (from paper to computer) has yet to be made. For example, ask yourself “What does it sound like when a muted trumpet and an English horn play in unison at mezzoforte?” Unless you have an encyclopedic memory, no listenable example might leap to mind. If you want to hear exactly what that sounds like you would have to search page by page through all your scores, or just trust your gut and hope it works on the recording stage. Existing texts about orchestration stick to very broad principles and rules of thumb, and can be unhelpful in these specific/rare situations.

To be blunt, many composers today (myself included!) have inferior music educations & less experience with orchestras than the film composers of previous generations. Other than informal apprenticeships and mentorships, there’s no systematic passing down of knowledge from one gen to the next. That is one reason why lots of music today is less sophisticated and variable than scores of the 70s-90s.

So if you have an orchestration question, you can't exactly dial up Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams. But you can Ask MAESTRO.



How does Ask MAESTRO take the next transformative step in Orchestration education?

MAESTRO relies on what computers are good at, indexing and searching databases. The idea is that any piece of music can be broken down into a succession of orchestration “moments,” in which a particular combo of instruments are playing. Any “moment” can be transcribed using a unique orchestration-oriented shorthand. Then, the moment can be stored with hundreds of others in a database. A website front-end interface can then be used to query the database. Complex queries are enabled by AND, NOT, and OR commands.

For example you might Ask MAESTRO: “I want to hear examples of trumpet and clarinet playing melodies in octaves,” and MAESTRO would spit out six or seven examples from real film scores. MAESTRO would also serve up timestamped Youtube links or some other reference to let you listen to these excerpts.

MAESTRO would be an open-ended inspiration toolkit. For example if you know you want your melody to have violins and oboes in unison at a particular register, you enter that information and MAESTRO can give you real examples of how you might orchestrate the accompaniment and bass line. Or if you're unsure of an instrument combination, you can enter it into MAESTRO and see if it's been used or if it's a (perhaps inadvisable) novelty.

What material will MAESTRO include in its database?

I am going to start Ask MAESTRO by feeding it a front-to-back encoding of the entire score of John Williams’ score Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone. I like this score because it’s very colorful and has a good balance of wind, brass and string writing. After that I will probably encode E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial or Star Wars V The Empire Strikes Back, or I might take a poll to see what scores people want.



What orchestration information will MAESTRO encode?

I am still developing the shorthand language that MAESTRO will use, but I have decided there are four dimensions that are important to encode. Remember, MAESTRO is about encoding orchestration combinations, not compositional techniques or harmonic language or anything else.

1. Break moments into chunks Any orchestration moment will be composed of “chunks.” A chunk is a unified, single musical idea performed by some combination of instruments - such as a melody, a rhythmic accompaniment, a set of pad-like chords, a scalar decorative run, etc. The chunk types will probably be Theme, Rhythm, Harmony, Decor, and Bass. A moment might contain more than one chunk of each type (for example if there is a melody and a counter-line, these would be considered chunks Theme1 and Theme2). The main reason to start with chunks is because you orchestrate differently when you want an idea to be in the foreground, the background, or a decorative element.

2. Assign instruments to chunks Any chunk would be “populated” by a set of instruments. Each instrument will have a unique three letter codon (such as HRP, EHN, or VN1) and there will be distinct codons for winds/brass playing a1, a2, or triadically. Also there will be distinct codons for arco and pizzicato for the string sections. I’m not planning to go further in detail than that.

3. Assign register to instruments I have broken down the grand staff into 10 overlapping “registers” which are each an octave wide (C1-to-C2, G1-to-G2, C2-to-C3, and so on). This is important because instruments have different sounds in different parts of their range. Every instrument variable in a given chunk is assigned a number that represents where in the staff it plays for most or all of that orchestration-moment. It won’t be an exact science but it will be sufficient to distinguish, for example, the three registers of the flute. The registry number will also allow the computer to “understand and remember” the difference between instruments playing in unison or near-unison (like thirds), versus instruments playing in octaves.

4. Assign dynamics to instruments. Every instrument will have a dynamic assigned to it, whatever it plays for most or all of that orchestration-moment. Again not an exact science but it’s important because instruments have very different balances at different dynamics as exemplified by the old Rimsky-Korsakov rule about doubling the horns at higher dynamics.



How will the front end work?

Still brainstorming about this as well, but I picture a front-end website where you can click on pictures of instruments to select and deselect them. MAESTRO then searches for moments in its database that match up to what you asked to hear. Using dropdown menus you can assign instruments to particular ranges (e.g. I want to hear a high flute not low flute; I want to hear the flute in octave above english horn, etc). Once the orchestration-moment is encoded and in the database, it’s possible to do very powerful, variable, and specific searches depending on what the user wants to know.



Why John Williams?

JW is acknowledged by pretty much everyone as the living master of orchestration for film music. I like the idea of keeping the database specific to his works, but I might consider adding other great film composers if it’s a popular idea and I can find scores.


Guy Rowland
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by Guy Rowland »

Whoa, thanks NoamL. Just to clarify - what does the user experience at the end of a query? Part of an audio file of a composition? Midi playing? Score? Text?


Topic author
NoamL
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

Two things. (No score or MIDI, for sure as that's a good way to land in hot water.)

First a way to listen to that particular moment of music, which could be a note to listen to X:XX on the soundtrack CD, and perhaps an embedded Youtube that's cued up to the right time (if the score is on Youtube - I don't plan to upload anything myself).

And second a list of the instruments that are playing (basically spitting out the info from that particular database entry). Probably translated automatically back from the shorthand back into plain English like: "English horn and viola playing in unison."

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tav
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by tav »

Very excited about this, just don't want it to be 'JW only'
T.A.V Composer, Producer, Engineer at Artusion Studios


RobS
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by RobS »

I fear you might have too little response to justify the effort... on one hand, the orchestration-savvy will be able to solve his doubts by himself, on the other the user who doesn't have any knowledge won't be able to even formulate the question. But I wish you the best on this, don't want to discourage what looks like a good idea...


Topic author
NoamL
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

tav, what other composers would you like to see? To be honest I'd make them a distant second priority behind Williams but I'm interested in any suggestions.

Rob, I'm definitely not expecting it to take off like a rocket, or even really pay my time. Probably 75% of the motive for this is personal - I'm gonna be sitting down and going through these full scores anyway so I might as well do it systematically and create a reference or index I can look back at later. Doing it this way allows me to share the outcome with other people.

And yep, this would be an intermediate/advanced orchestration resource, and focused only on the concept of orchestral colors & their combinations. It wouldn't touch any of the other knowledge domains.


Guy Rowland
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by Guy Rowland »

Good luck with it Noam - it might be a little niche, but I'll be interested to see how you get on.

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Jaap
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by Jaap »

Sounds like a very neat idea Noam. I can see reason in the points Rob is making, but on the other hand who knows what it might trigger in interest. Could it be that it would be also interesting if it would be a sort of contributing system, like that people with the knowledge (and time and dedication) who could contribute to the database to expand?


patrick76
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by patrick76 »

I think it's a great idea. I have wished that something like this existed. It would be really handy and convenient at times.

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KyleJudkins
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by KyleJudkins »

Piqued my interest, as I'm more and more interested in fixing levels with orchestration than volume levels these days :)


Topic author
NoamL
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

Did some prep work with it today just to see if I can nail down how I want the orchestration short-hand to work (it has to be notated in a way that's easy for computers to crunch from pseudocode into actual data arrays).

Decided on this for the range-finder:

Image

Any piece of musical material is going to be defined as occuring between 2 nodes (this works better than pre-defined ranges when it comes to shorthanding things like open trombone chords).

Then I tried to shorthand 3 "orchestration moments." In each one I've done the breakdown to musical chunks, then populated chunks with instruments, and the instrument-dependent variables are in parentheses (so in the first example, Violin 1 plays between nodes 7 and 10 at forte, Violin 2 plays in unison, Violas an octave lower, etc). Some extra searchable data is added as well like a2/a3 (3a1 = triadic playing, 2a2 = four horns split playing 2 notes etc).

It's pretty unreadable but the point is the computer will be able to fetch entries that match. For example the computer "knows" that the 1st and 3rd entries are examples where the harmony is fulfilled by trombones playing in their midrange, while the 2nd example doesn't fit that description.



HarryPotter - "Harry's Wondrous World" - 4:02-4:08

Theme1: VN1(7,10,f); VN2(7,10,f); VLA(5,8,f); HRN(5,8,f,a3); BSN(5,8,mf,a1); CLR(7,10,mf,a1); EHN(7,10,mf)
Rhythm1: OBO(7,8,p,2a1); TPT(7,8,p,2a1)
Rhythm2: VCS(3,6,f)
Harmony1: TBN(4,6,mp,3a1,noroot)
Decor1: FLT(10,12,mf,a1)
Bass1: TUB(3,4,mp); DBS(3,4,f)



HarryPotter - "Harry's Wondrous World" - 4:08-4:15

Theme1: VN1(7,9,f); VN2(7,9,f); OBO(9,11,mf,a1); OBO(7,9,mf,a1); EHN(7,9,mf); CLR(7,9,mf,a1); FLT(9,11,mf,a1); VCS(5,8,f)
Harmony1: HRN(6,8,mf,4a1)
Rhythm1: CLR(7,8,mf,a1); VAS(7,8,f)
Bass1: DBP(2,6,f)



HarryPotter - "Harry's Wondrous World" - 4:15-4:21

Theme1: VN1(9,12,f); VN2(7,10,f); VAS(7,10,f); VCS(5,8,f); HRN(5,8,mf,a3); EHN(7,10,mf); OBO(7,10,mf,a1); OBO(9,12,mf,a1); FLT(9,12,mf,a1)
Decor1: FLT(8,11,mp,a2); CLR(6,9,mp,a2)
Harmony1: TBN(4,7,mf,3a1,noroot)
Bass1: TUB(3,5,mf); DBP(3,5,f)


The Saxer
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by The Saxer »

Cool idea, big project!


byzantium
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by byzantium »

Interesting idea NoamL. Just thinking out loud (if I understand it correctly, and I may not):

Apart from how one might legally reference recorded audio - maybe it's not an issue - might it not be difficult to find passages that have only the desired (and all permutations of) combinations of instruments (and at different dynamics), with no other instruments playing in that passage?

I guess another option would be not to reference existing material but to specifically record those combinations and permutations, but that would be a lot of work and expense (unless it could be sneaked in with some other recording project) - or unless one used sampled versions of those combinations, which would of course be a lot easier, cheaper and do-able, but obviously not the real thing.

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KyleJudkins
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by KyleJudkins »

Not that I'm advocating this, but if you used creative Commons pieces recorded by different groups - it would atleast fragment your sources away from the big publishers.

Probably literally the only person who cares is big publishers, only because they see it as a potential way to make more money.

In a perfect world, you would just explain to them that you're helping educate, not provide free access to a piece for the sake of entertainment. Likewise, more talented composers means a better market for them to extract talent from anyways.

Smaller entities are much more approachable about this.


Topic author
NoamL
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

Good questions Paul and Kyle, let me break it down into the legal side and the why-John-Williams side.

Legally: the one line I don't want to cross is hosting copyrighted audio on my webserver. I think that posting text citations is 100% in the clear: like, HPSS - The Sorting Ceremony - 1:20-1:27. This is nothing more than an instruction to go buy the score and listen to a particular bit. I'll definitely have at least that level of citation. Let me rethink the idea of linking other people's Youtubes.

For the reason of "why mess with scores at all" and specifically why John Williams: I think that a lot of interesting patterns will emerge once I have a large enough pile of data from one composer, and I consider JW the best living orchestrator. I have larger ambitions here even though MAESTRO will be able to help beginners. Questions like "what do a clarinet + violin sound like in unison" are great for a beginning orchestrator, and MAESTRO will also be able to give examples of what this sounds like at different registers (which is very important considering the different tone qualities of the clarinet at different registers). The examples won't be in isolation, but that's useful in its own way And, from the more ambitious perspective, it's one of the advantages of this project. One of the next-step questions is to ask "When John writes Cl+Vn in unison, does he have a pattern of choosing a certain set of other instruments to accompany them?" and "When writing Cl+Vn, what other instruments does he typically choose to add into the unison if any? Does this depend on register?" and so many other questions. The idea is that by being able to see (& hopefully hear) a bunch of Cl+Vn citations right side by side, instead of separated by 100s of pages of score or minutes of listening, that a whole bunch of other insights will naturally arise. Maybe even stuff that can be statistically crunched. For example, in the case of the clarinet, I already know (or - let's be correct - I expect to find ;) ) that John Williams emphasizes the chalumeau and clarion registers and writes relatively little for the middle register. Having register info for his entire clarinet use across a score lets me test that hypothesis, and also look at whatever middle-register excerpts there are and see if I can learn the reason why he used middle clarinet at that point. And so on. :)

The way I look at this, it will be slightly like "DEEP BLUE" for Orchestration. Except instead of teaching a computer to play chess, we are feeding it a list of 1000s of valid positions and hoping that we can learn something about the rules of chess and how pieces move. And we are assuming that the 1000s of positions that we are giving the computer, represent both valid and wise development of teh pieces, because we're only studying the games of a world champion :)


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NoamL
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by NoamL »

Jaap wrote:Could it be that it would be also interesting if it would be a sort of contributing system, like that people with the knowledge (and time and dedication) who could contribute to the database to expand?
This is a great idea and I'd definitely accept other people's work! But right now everything is just in the initial viability-testing stages (I'm working with a friend on the database back end and how my shorthand can translate into computer code) so it's too soon to ask/accept volunteer help. In regards to how it would eventually work, I think it would be best if people were working on different scores at the same time so there'd be no danger of accidentally overlapping work. Other composers than Williams could be considered, Randy Newman, Jerry Goldsmith, Don Davis etc anybody who is respected in the orchestration world.

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KyleJudkins
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Re: Project MAESTRO

Post by KyleJudkins »

Actually, I can't imagine linking a YouTube video (even at at certain time) would break any copyright issues.

They make money off of it anyways, as long as it's an official (or monetized) video.

There was that one online trailer course that used it, and while the course was next to useless for most people, it still seemed pretty popular.

News atsrticles post YouTube videos often, especially click bait.

If they don't want the player to be embedded for their video, there is an option. (So I'd be hardpressed to see Disney VEVO let you embed videos and then come after you for them)

Downside is that they would almost defiantly have ads.

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