Sonic Academy proudly welcomes back Nate Raubenheimer aka Protoculture for a look at a different type of genre this week as we check out How To Make Orchestral Hybrid.
Stepping away from his usual tracks, Nate guides us from start to finish in building this epic and grand masterpiece using both EastWest Play and NI Kontakt orchestral sections.
We start with looking at templates and how to set up different articulations within your DAW and lay down an initial sketch over some vocals before breaking down the MIDI chord progression into its individual string sections.
Using constantly evolving automation lanes to create realistic expression we add brass sections and lead lines along with orchestral percussive elements to help with transitions. Once the orchestral sections are complete we layer in synths, pads and arps to build on the wall of sound before mixing down the track and carrying out a master.
This is a masterclass in using orchestral elements in a digital environment and the tips and tricks Nate shows us here can be transferred to all kinds of genres.
This sounds amazing! I’ve been looking for tutorials that cover the more organic, orchestral side of music. Basically soundtracks or stuff like Asura - Golgatha.
I can’t wait to stay up waaaay too late watching this.
I like the way the tutor is working, discovering ways to make things work. I learnt a lot. It’s a shame that the videos keep stopping due to the website being so slow. Best fixed as no one likes stalling videos.
good course . very helpful to know how to use same Kontakt plug with 1 midi channel on different strings with expression ,took a while to work it out in Logic though . I skipped quite a lot as once I understood the technique there was no need to watch all his edits on every track .Are the vocal samples from a pack for sale somewhere ? Brilliant Thanks
My ears telling me that the vocals are coming from this pack
I own this one & there’s an entire folder for Dmin vocals & Add Libs in this pack matching the provided sample.
It’s definitely a good pack IMO, check it out, the pack is available here on Sonic Academy :
yep got it thanks and yes they are good ! another thing I noticed in this course … he purged kontakkt ,if I do this does that mean only the samples in the song are being used leaving memory spare for other stuff ? it doesn’t mess up anything in future projects ,if you see what I mean ? many thanks Stepane :
Yes, the “Purge” feature within NI Kontakt is intended to work dynamically on your active session, it’s just to save RAM & processing power by unloading the Kontakt Instrument samples that you’re not using in this session from memory.
So when you load a new instrument in Kontakt you can see the amount of RAM used by all samples in the “Memory” field, if you use the “Purge All Samples” option, you will see that it falls down to zero. Now if you play any new Midi notes on a controller or if you just playback your Midi sequence from your DAW, Kontakt will only load those samples into memory, therefore saving RAM.
This won’t affect the Kontakt instrument library, so no worries for other projects. Even loading the same instrument again in your instance of Kontakt or in a new one will load all the samples again in fact, and you’ll need to purge this second instance of the instruments too if needed.
It’s also good to know that the Purge options are not only usable per Kontakt instrument but for a all rack as well, click on the “New Instrument” menu ( the Floppy Disk Icon ) and you should find a “Global Purge” Menu that will offer the same options for the all Kontakt rack.
1.) Instead of extracting automation, just have automation record to Automation track.
Click “MIDI”, choose “CC Automation Setup” and set it to “Automation Track” instead of “MIDI Part”
Now you can record directly to the Automation Track.
2.) Instead of deleting tracks, or disabling, flushing libraries etc. you can just Right-Click the track and Disable it then Hide it.
All of the VST instruments & automation associated with that track will also be disabled.
there is a great product called Vienna Ensemble Pro that helps offload the cpu of orchestral samples in your DAW - find out more - plus on youtube there is videos showing from users how even on a single computer you reduce CPU load tremendously using VEP…
I am not affiliated. I found this indepedently a few days ago - hope Protoculture explores this software in his tutorial series
