The Post with Maestro Tutorial by Tromblon.

[Corumael]

I think we're only going to play classical music, right? But I only know about the old and most famous ones that we often get to hear on TV, and it suddenly crossed my mind that there should be many many people in modern days who makes classical music too. And also, what about video game music? Doesn't a lot of those sound like classical music too? :)

Sorry, I'm not familiar at all with what's considered classical and what isn't xD The thing is, I happened upon a piece of music from a TV-show, and it's an instrumental that I really like, so I was wondering what kind of music the Starlight Orchestra will be playing, maybe with some clear examples of things that are OK and what's not OK? :)

Also, is everybody allowed to try to make ABCs for TSO? :) I mean, I'm just a beginner and I only know how to use Maestro, but it would be fun to try :)

[Lilikate]

Not only do the TSO encompass the big main orchestra but we will also be branching out to ensembles. After getting to grips with the classical I will be looking to style a "Big Band" TSO. I need to discuss with Forte first some of my ideas.

At the moment wrangling musicians, collecting music and arranging some is first on my list.

If you would like to arrange I would love to have you share it with us! Let your creative juices flow. 

There is advice, information and help at hand within the TSO. Bruzo, Forte and Tromblon are helping me with arranging.

 

I will be updating the main TSO file later this week. I plan to update it as we gather more music. I will however be issuing a single folder for each rehearsal or performance.

[Corumael]

Thanks for the reply! :)

What's ensembles and Big Band?

Oh, I can't arrange music ;) I'm not a professional musician, not even an amateur musician, I just drag a midi into Maestro and fiddle around for hours and sometimes a day or three until it doesn't sound horrible anymore :)

Does this mean I can't make music for TSO? I don't really have any say of which instruments to use, because the tracks are already made and some instruments will sound horrible, some will sound OK, and one or two will sound good, and I can't add tracks, only remove them (Unless Maestro can do more than I have found out about :)). The melody I talked about above for example, it has 14 parts but they're all the same 4 instruments at the moment (still working on it), so there won't be the right parts for everybody to get to play their choice of instrument ^^;

Just thought I'd check first, so I don't waste time doing things the wrong way :)

Oh, and if ensembles are something smaller than an orchestra maybe I can make something fitting for that instead, if I can't handle what's asked for when it comes to the big orchestral pieces :D

[Lilikate]

I promise you that if you arrange something and it sounds good I will find a group or groups to test it for you and then we decide if to include it for a performance...

Oki So Forte was creating the big Orchestra, when he first asked me to continue in his absence I was filled with terror. 

Looking at the music in the main TSO folder we also decided there was more scope for those pieces to be played by small groups rather than the 24 full Orchestra.

Creating a Big Band is totally different from an orchestra, as it based on Wind/brass instruments mainly.

I have played in Big Wind bands so after gaining experience with the classical group I may plan some adaptations to turn us into a Jazz Group probably for one performance, Cotton Tail I would love to arrange.

But looking at our music in the TSO there are movements that would suit a strings only group of 6 or a wind Quintet.

If you want to try and create a set for a small group I would happily promote you and pop you in charge of one! :)

Please if anyone has an idea or a vision come forth, we have a group of 30 people. I am sure we can now start to think about what other projects we may like to try.

[Corumael]

Thank you for the explanation :)

Sounds fun with both a really large orchestra and smaller groups! :D

I'll keep to smaller pieces for now, below the limit of Maestro :) Maybe I'll see if I can find my old MIDI collection from when dinosaurs roamed the earth and see if I find something nice to use!

[Lilikate]

Just remember hehe when your thinking small.

You don't have to include the full orchestra but we are 24 musicians!

3 lutes

3 Harps

3 Theorbo

 

3 flutes

3 clarinets

2 Bagpipes

 

3 horns

1 Pibgorn!

 

1 drum

1 cow bell

1 moor bell

the 24th is the conductor!

 

Lizzy wonders if we can have more music from Frozen? heehee

[Corumael]

Eeep! XD

Too many people with specific instruments for my skills (or lack of) :P

 

Tell Lizzy I'm working on two new "Let It Go", and another song that also is from Frozen, not sure how they'll turn out though XD

[Daffin]

Workin in Maestro, y' CAN change th' instrument playin any track, tho it's not immediately clear how t' do so, an I've not seen a good Maestro tutorial yet...

Basically, y' have t' select th' part in th' parts list, on th' left-hand side o' th' window, an then change th' instrument in the field above where all th' tracks is laid out. Then there's th' whole thing o' getting th' part numbers fixed. It's a bit cumbersome, but it can be done. Probly ye'll need t' mess around with it fer a while til it sort o' falls into place.

 

[Lilikate]

If you can manage to experiment with the Piece from Frozen (sorry I forgot the title). You could (if you wanted too) arrange that for us.  You have all the voices perfectly, all you need to is apply them to our set up... A suggestion, not an order! :)

 

 

[Corumael]

Daffin: That's how I've been choosing instruments for the different parts up to now :) Though since the tracks are fixed and can't be changed in Maestro (by me at least xD) I can't pick whatever instrument I want to :) Most of them will not work for the way that track is so I'm quite tied when it comes to choices, and can only do my best to make it sound as good as I can, and what instruments I end up with will be a surprise even to me :)

 

Lilikate: I think you lost me there xD Apply what to what setup? Sorry, my English skills are a bit lacking xD

 

Oh, and I did my best to set Maestro after the info in Astleigh's "How to submit a song to the playlist"-thread on the LMB forums. It was very hard, but I found the settings and made the changes as I understood them :) I hope I can use the same settings for any TSO songs I manage to make, because if I change the settings in Maestro back and forth, I probably won't be able to ever be sure they're correct since I can't remember what I'm doing if more than a day goes past XD Go on, ask me what I did yesterday ;P

"Let It Go" is made with those settings so I hope I got them right :)

[Lilikate]

Hi Corumael,

What I was pondering, was the notion of taking a song for 4 to 7 musicians and duplicating the tracks using Maestro. Giving these new tracks to different instruments.

So you could take the theorbo part and double it with a new horn, you could take the middle chordal section and spread it to lutes and harps, using the octave ranges to fill out the sound. Doubling the melody possibly or the counter melody. 

You can even layer the parts, by then going into the abc and changing melody or accompaniment to rests to create a crescendo of sound. So that the song starts simply but then more "voices" enter at a later bar.

Even with Maestro and abc player you can experiment and see what happens. 

[Corumael]

You can duplicate tracks with Maestro? How do I do that? :D Or do you mean for example: Horn for track #2, and Flute for track #1 and #2? So two instruments play the same track? :)

Maestro messed up all my work on my first ABC-file since I didn't know it would merge the tracks together so I couldn't continue to work on it the next day since I had saved and closed Maestro ^^;

Now I leave it open until I'm done, and keep my fingers crossed that it'll sound good in game and not have to be remade from scratch :)

I have no idea how editing the ABC manually works. I tried reading instructions here and there, but I didn't understand at all. It's very hard to understand English as soon as it enters specific areas. I mean, they taught us everyday English, not sport terms and music terms and no computer language either, but I always install English versions instead of Swedish on all programs, so I'll be able to go through Google for help with errors XD

[Lilikate]

I learnt to always work with a copy of the original the tough way too.

I did mean building the tracks, using add track and selecting a used part again.

I think you did a wonderful job with the song "Let it go", that was a brilliant transcription and much admired in the Buggins house. We look forward to hearing your next song.

Whatever you create will be respected by me :) 

[Corumael]

Aww, thank you :)

 

I'll be having lots of fun making ABC's with all the good advice I've gotten! :D

[Tromblon]

Alright, for a starter, I'm really not all that a fan of Maestro personally. Best thing I can say about it is that it gives the chance to starting song transcribers to achieve pretty good songs without too much investment. Now, before making my mind on the subject, I forced myself to ONLY use Maestro for two whole weeks to produce my songs for Les Beaux Chapeaux. So I got to learn how it works pretty well.

First, I'll explain how to set up Maestro's options properly so it numbers the parts according to most bands' used template. In Tools>Options your Part Numbering tab should look as such:

This way, the software will number all of your parts as they should, according to that "standard". Next, let's take a song as example. When you first open a midi, you'll have a *lute track created, no Midi track(s) yet associated with it. Let's say I want to start with the Harp which I select from the drop down menu at the top of the window, then checks the box of the track I want for my Harp.

I must add that I always edit my midis thoroughly through Anvil before having them translated to ABC. So all of that example midi file's track names are the ones I labelled to help into the next step. Now, to add an instrument, you click on "New Part" on the left side of the interface, which will by default bring back again a *Lute. This time I'll pick Drums from the drop down menu at the top.

Resulting in:

So you can go on and on like that. Now you can also link 2 of the midi's track to a single track/instrument in your ABC.

You will notice that both horns had to be lowered by one octave because Maestro automatically presumes that the horn will need to be raised one octave up because in the game, it is played one octave down. Since I work my midi files before-hand so every parts fit in the game's allowed range, in Maestro, I have to put back down one octave the track I had raised in Anvil for the Horn.

Here's the game's acceptable note range, from the third C on a piano (C3) up to the sixth (C6), or one C bellow middle and two Cs higher.

The highlighted notes are respectively too low and too high for the game.

Keep in mind that in-game, the Flute and Bagpipe always will be played one octave higher than what's written while the Pibgorn will be played two octaves higher. The Horn will be played an octave lower and the Theorbo two(or one? not 100% certain on this one) octaves lower.

Now, I believe that covers most of the important stuff to start with Maestro, aside from talking about that Triplets/sing rhythm check box at the lower left side of the interface. Some songs will work, others won't, rhythmically speaking. Try checking or unchecking that box depending if the results satisfies you or not. It mainly is an optional way to count beats for Maestro depending on which type of rhythm is used in your song. Essentially, computers don't like to think in stuff that is not divisible by 2.

That being said, should you like to read my "review" of Maestro, you can find it at: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Songbook_of_Laurelin/topic/5226471/1/#new

The review is very shortly written as I just looked back at it since it aimed to answer other experienced song transcribers, already working songs before the appearance of Maestro. Should you have any more questions, feel free to ask me anytime.

I do hope this will be of use to anyone that wanted to see any tutorial on Maestro.