Making great music is like cooking a great dish.

I recently posted some news about my soon-to-be-released album “Music For Stories Untold”©. This will be my first album release. It is music that I have been composing over the past ten-plus years. Needless to say, it has taken a great amount of work getting the music to the point of completion.

I suppose that many writers and filmmakers can relate to the process of creating their art and how it involves the painstaking rewriting and editing to shape your work into something that sounds, feels or looks inspiring.

It has come to my mind on occasion that creating a musical composition is very much like cooking. For a dish to taste perfect it must have the correct balance of spices. While most everyone would agree that adding salt to a dish is one of the more important steps to creating something tasty, adding too much will ruin it.

The same can be said when composing a piece of music. A balance of instruments (spices) within the orchestration (stew) is critical for enabling primary voices (meats) and instruments to be heard (tasted) at their optimum. No one ingredient should be overbearing to the listener. So by the time I reach the end of my creative process, a good bit of “mixing in the musical kitchen” has occurred over an extended time for the sole purpose of getting the perfect sounding (tasting) mix.

Regarding the instruments I use to compose with…

For my compositions, I am not using any live performances. At this point, I cannot hire an orchestra to perform and record the music. (Although I may try to do some crowdfunding project in the future to finance it.) Everything is done with my computer using synthesised instruments and virtual orchestras.

One synthesizer I use a lot is Omnisphere Power Synth created by Spectrasonics. http://www.spectrasonics.net/products/omnisphere.php
Omnisphere is great for film and sound design. Filmmakers should go to this site to listen to samples of what it can do. It is truly one fantastic synth. The sounds are incredibly rich, vibrant, and otherworldly and evoke a range of emotion and imagery.

For my orchestra sounds, I use EastWest-Quantum Leap virtual instruments. http://www.soundsonline.com/
They are quite realistic sounding but the library of instruments is vast and it takes time finding the right sound/articulation to use. Again filmmakers should go to the site and listen to the various virtual instruments they offer. There are many more instruments available besides orchestral sounds. Both of these libraries, Omnisphere and EastWest, have sounds that are “epic” in character, perfect for film.
By the way, it’s also important to mention that these sounds can really enhance live performances too. Musical theatre or theatre plays can benefit with the use of these sound libraries.

I will keep you up to date on the progress of the album release. If anyone has any questions or comments about what I’ve written about, please let me know.
Thanks for reading, Jeff