Apologies to those who have sent me messages about this series. Unfortunately it takes such a huge effort scouring scores and recordings, reading theory books and compiling the resources for an episode that it became unviable for me to continue making them. The decision was also affected by the waning interest that each episode received. In short, I don't know if I'll ever finish this series. Perhaps someone else could pick up the final parts. Many thanks to those who watched and commented.
Oh no! I was just about to write you a message to ask when you were planning on releasing the concluding parts of this series. I really hope you will reconsider. To me, the best and most important parts of this series, were the ones that were yet to come, on brass, and VST:s to create this genre... Have you considered finisihing this series and putting it up on Udemy or Skillshare or similar platforms as a paid course? Perhaps that could incentivize you to move forward with this project? I would buy it immediately! Please reconsider.
Hi. Unfortunately, because the episodes show original scores that are copyrighted, I can't legally upload it to a service like Skillshare and charge people for it. They'd have to be remade in a different format. Also, I'd be unlikely to get much paid interest on Skillshare given the lack of interest on TH-cam where it's free. Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point, but the huge effort it will take and the tiny (and decreasing) response makes it pretty difficult to find any motivation.
How unfortunate of us! I was so looking forward to the brass episode. I couldn't find those scores anywhere except Light Music Society and I don't live in the UK.
Everything you post, from synthetizers to orchestration is so brilliant, musical, interesting, stimulating and intelligent. Thankyou so much, you are a continuous source of inspiration.
Thank you for this series even if general interest has died down. It's an excellent starting point, and inspires me to do some of my own research. Other genres could benefit from the technique I think. 5 part harmonies applied to multitracked monosynths is one of my favourite sounds, like in Klaus Wunderlich's Sound 2000 album.
Glad you found the episodes I made of use. I was thinking the same thing as you funnily enough, using these techniques with monosynths as they're monophonic lines. Just checking out "Sound 2000" - thank you for telling me about that!
I was going to try to make a joke but instead I just wanna thank you. It's been years since I've had that much fun studying orchestration and this series would make a wonderful introduction or assignment to any orchestration course. Too bad it's a rather obscure topic to get the attention you deserve for the quality of your content. But again, thank you for the laughs and useful content. Cheers!
This Utterly Spiffing Guide to Light Music is simply wonderful, every thing is clearly explained, and yet, it is not too long or boring. It's just the perfect videos to learn light music orchestration. Thank you Alex Ball
Absolutely brilliant series Alex. I just discovered it and am ever-so-slightly inconsolable that it was impractical to continue. Well done on producing such excellent content. Pip pip!
I want to join many others in thanking you for putting this series together. It's one of the best resources I have found for studying orchestration. Pity that there is no more pickup to make it worth developing more episodes. Hats off to you!
Just stumbled upon your utterly brilliant videos. Being in my 60's this was my bread and butter musical upbringing. I compose and arrange but have been truly inspired by you. I have found great difficulty in tracking down original scores and at best have found watered down arrangements mostly from ebay and second hand book shops. Do you have any suggestions as to the availability of original material of this genre. Don't mind paying for the real thing but it is so hard to come by. Many thanks
These videos are some of the best made turorials on TH-cam. Clear and easy explanaitions up to the point, easy to understand to create music in this style. I'd love to see something similar with other genres. Thank you a lot for uploading.
Your Utterly Spiffing Guides are uterly enlightening, they are lessons in orchestration and harmony delivered in a light and humorous way. These guides have been very inspiring and helpful, Thank you!
This series is brilliant and you are too. So well put together, I can only imagine the time it took. As a ”voice guy” myself I’m very impressed by your deadpan delivery of the script. Which is both hilarious and educational. Huzzaa!!
Superb videos, I wish we could persuade you to finish the series. I've been writing this sort of stuff for ages, but largely trial-and-error because I hadn't seen the arrangement excerpts. Interesting how often the strings are divided up and doing a bit of everything: the bass, melody AND the offbeats, but it still looks playable.
_And here we get a rare glimpse of the fabled cor anglais in its natural habitat. Long thought to be only a legend, this evolutionary cousin of the oboe is a solitary being. None has ever been seen to mate in the wild, leading many to speculate that there is only one. Some have claimed to have heard its lonely call, but this remains, to date, an unconfirmed rumor..._ Great video, old chap. Please save me a seat at the Rotary club. We must catch up! Cheers!
En verdad muchas gracias por todo este rrabajo que has realizado muy divertidos y muy didacticos para aprender y enriquecer la composición espero sigas haciendo mas un fuerte abrazo desde Guadalajara jal. México
Very good guide, Alex! It's so informative and useful for understanding how to compose and orchestrate this type of music. And it is also very funny, so I laughed very much. Waiting for the next episode. Greets from Kyiv, Ukraine.
shame there isn't more of these. It's like good orchestration in general. Only few good tutorials since most don't people don't have deep understadning on orchestration and this is of it's own kind of thing making the series on of a kind in the whole world actually :(
This series was great, a shame it won't continue but it is totally understandable. I honestly did not realize how good the writing in this era of popular music was, definitely will be digging further into it.
Just wanted to let you know that you definitely woke up my interest for orchestrating! I really liked the series just wished there more content like that out there..
Hey Alex! Thanks for continuing this excellent series. I haven't watched this episode yet, but I'm sure it's superb like the other episodes. To reduce the likelihood of getting your videos blocked in the future, you may want to try to upload your videos set to private at first and let them sit for a while, maybe a day or so, and see if the video gets blocked. If everything works okay, then you can either re-upload the video or just change the setting to public.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what I did. I hadn't finished the notation but had the rest of the video so uploaded it privately a week ago to test it. It sat there for a week with no copyright flags at all. Dropped in the scores and uploaded publicly and it was only there for a couple of hours before being blocked. Identical audio. My Terminator and Predator videos got a notice that they'd claim any monetisation, which is fair enough, but this is the first time I got an actual block.
Yes, I wonder if the fact that it was private was actually the reason why it didn't get flagged. Possibly a difference between private and public? Either way, makes it a bit of a gamble on this sort of video. In earlier videos I remade the music and that avoids copy blocks from labels, but it obviously takes a huge amount of effort to do that on top of all the analysis that takes weeks and weeks for me to do! Bit frustrating.
No, I don't think it got flagged because you went from private to public, because I once uploaded an episode of 'Two and a Half Men' that my mom wanted to watch, and I had it set to private even as I uploaded it, and it still got blocked worldwide.
Sorry to say that I don't know when I'm going to do it. They take so much work and have been getting smaller and smaller responses with each video. This one has a whopping 3.5k views after 7 months. My latest video was 100k in two weeks. Makes it a bit difficult to summon the motivation to trawl rare scores and spend weeks analysing them. Maybe I'll do it this year, but can't promise. Unless someone is willing to help.
@@AlexBallMusic Ha! To be honest, I thought you were going to end with a dismissive joke about the brass at the end of the woodwind video. It's not like the brass section plays a huge role in that style of music. Thanks for the videos... They are highly entertaining!
Ah right, cool. Well, the brass do in fact play quite specific roles that would make a hole if they were missing. Maybe I'll make a video on it one day. ;)
Part 5: Brass Part 6: A full composition And that's it. The full composition will be a full length version of what I've been developing episode to episode. Might try my luck and see if a real orchestra might perform it.
Another excellent video in an already excellent series! By the way, do you, or anyone else here in the comments, know how that brass sound in A Canadian in Mayfair, at 5:26 in this video, is achieved? Block chord of trumpets, and maybe trombones, with cup mutes?
Glad you enjoyed the video. That brass chord is three trumpets and three trombones (including bass trombone) with cup mutes, yes. It's an Eb6/9 chord voiced (from top to bottom) Bb, F, C, Bb, G, Eb. So it's not a block chord. They play staccato and add wah with the mute at the same time and Bob's your Uncle. Will be covering brass in the next episode.
Glad to hear. I haven't actually come across a book or even any material on orchestrating this specific style. I had some jobs doing 50s stuff a couple of years back and went looking for books or tutorials and found nothing. So I've wound up tracking down scores, studying them and making the material myself! I'm learning it as I make the videos basically.
It isn't focussed on quite the same style of music but the book by Henry Mancini called "Sounds and Scores" is really good. It uses excerpts from his soundtrack work from things like the TV series Peter Gunn. It's a bit more jazz/beat oriented than the British light music Alex is looking at here, but there is still a fair bit of overlap in the harmonies used and the orchestration techniques. Alex, thank you so much for making these videos, they're an absolute gold mine of information. Do you mind me asking how you managed to track down the original scores for these pieces?
@@AlexBallMusic , I learned a lot of big band orchestration from making reductions of scores. I'm comfortable finding big band music, but when I look for the scores to these all I find are band or solo piano or other weird arrangements. Any tips for where you tracked the original conductor scores/reductions?
Alex, can I ask if you've found modern pieces in this style useable as library music? Or do music supervisors just go to the archive libraries and use the original pieces?
I've made a start on it, they're just so huge to research what with finding scores of relevant pieces, working out the common techniques and scripting them into a bite sized video. They take me months. Hopefully by the Spring time I'll have it, although I've got a massive project I'm halfway through first. Percussion - I wasn't thinking of doing a percussion specific episode, but the final episode will be a whole composition with accompanying score and I might make some general pointers in that episode.
@@AlexBallMusic Makes sense, and they're really worth waiting for. I think you mentioned you were hoping to see what others could do with these instructions. I'd be happy to send you the short attempt I made with these videos as a guide.
I've made a start, it's just these are the hardest videos to make and they take me absolutely ages. Got two more planned and they're on my list for this year.
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Apologies to those who have sent me messages about this series.
Unfortunately it takes such a huge effort scouring scores and recordings, reading theory books and compiling the resources for an episode that it became unviable for me to continue making them.
The decision was also affected by the waning interest that each episode received.
In short, I don't know if I'll ever finish this series. Perhaps someone else could pick up the final parts.
Many thanks to those who watched and commented.
Oh no! I was just about to write you a message to ask when you were planning on releasing the concluding parts of this series. I really hope you will reconsider. To me, the best and most important parts of this series, were the ones that were yet to come, on brass, and VST:s to create this genre... Have you considered finisihing this series and putting it up on Udemy or Skillshare or similar platforms as a paid course? Perhaps that could incentivize you to move forward with this project? I would buy it immediately! Please reconsider.
Hi. Unfortunately, because the episodes show original scores that are copyrighted, I can't legally upload it to a service like Skillshare and charge people for it. They'd have to be remade in a different format.
Also, I'd be unlikely to get much paid interest on Skillshare given the lack of interest on TH-cam where it's free.
Maybe I'll pick it up again at some point, but the huge effort it will take and the tiny (and decreasing) response makes it pretty difficult to find any motivation.
How unfortunate of us! I was so looking forward to the brass episode. I couldn't find those scores anywhere except Light Music Society and I don't live in the UK.
Everything you post, from synthetizers to orchestration is so brilliant, musical, interesting, stimulating and intelligent. Thankyou so much, you are a continuous source of inspiration.
Thank you SO much for the effort you put in to this. Gave me so much to work with. And you're an absolute programming monster!! So much respect!!
"I'm joking, of course. There's no such thing as a 'cor anglais'."
You earned yourself a like right there, sir.
It's a mythical instrument but I've never played one. Have you? No? Case closed.
@@AlexBallMusic As mythical as French horn, indeed.
Thank you for this series even if general interest has died down. It's an excellent starting point, and inspires me to do some of my own research. Other genres could benefit from the technique I think. 5 part harmonies applied to multitracked monosynths is one of my favourite sounds, like in Klaus Wunderlich's Sound 2000 album.
Glad you found the episodes I made of use. I was thinking the same thing as you funnily enough, using these techniques with monosynths as they're monophonic lines. Just checking out "Sound 2000" - thank you for telling me about that!
We need Part 5. ^ ^ Please and Thank You!
This is one of the best orchestration videos I've ever seen. Had me in stitches the whole way through :P
😜
I was going to try to make a joke but instead I just wanna thank you. It's been years since I've had that much fun studying orchestration and this series would make a wonderful introduction or assignment to any orchestration course. Too bad it's a rather obscure topic to get the attention you deserve for the quality of your content. But again, thank you for the laughs and useful content. Cheers!
Wow what a wonderful video this is. This whole series is amazing. Many thanks for making it.
Thanks for tuning in!
This Utterly Spiffing Guide to Light Music is simply wonderful, every thing is clearly explained, and yet, it is not too long or boring. It's just the perfect videos to learn light music orchestration. Thank you Alex Ball
This is such an amazing series, I really hope you'll reconsider giving continuity!
Agreed
Absolutely brilliant series Alex. I just discovered it and am ever-so-slightly inconsolable that it was impractical to continue. Well done on producing such excellent content. Pip pip!
Magnificent 🎉You are such a generous and talented educator. Thank you for this splendid quartet. Your explanations are so clear 🎶
I want to join many others in thanking you for putting this series together. It's one of the best resources I have found for studying orchestration. Pity that there is no more pickup to make it worth developing more episodes. Hats off to you!
Just stumbled upon your utterly brilliant videos. Being in my 60's this was my bread and butter musical upbringing. I compose and arrange but have been truly inspired by you. I have found great difficulty in tracking down original scores and at best have found watered down arrangements mostly from ebay and second hand book shops. Do you have any suggestions as to the availability of original material of this genre. Don't mind paying for the real thing but it is so hard to come by. Many thanks
Loving this series, the production and teaching style is phenomenal. I hope you'll cover other musical styles in future.
I'll have to work on some other accents!
These videos are some of the best made turorials on TH-cam. Clear and easy explanaitions up to the point, easy to understand to create music in this style.
I'd love to see something similar with other genres.
Thank you a lot for uploading.
Thanks. Good to know they translate. Probably will do some more film score ones.
Alex Ball that would be fantastic!
Your Utterly Spiffing Guides are uterly enlightening, they are lessons in orchestration and harmony delivered in a light and humorous way. These guides have been very inspiring and helpful, Thank you!
Thanks for tuning in, glad they're of use!
Thank you so much for the effort you put in these videos. They're great!
These videos should have way more views, the lessons learned here can be applied to multiple genres
This series is brilliant and you are too. So well put together, I can only imagine the time it took. As a ”voice guy” myself I’m very impressed by your deadpan delivery of the script. Which is both hilarious and educational. Huzzaa!!
I love easy listening music. So spiffy! Eagerly awaiting the next instalment. Great work!
Superb videos, I wish we could persuade you to finish the series. I've been writing this sort of stuff for ages, but largely trial-and-error because I hadn't seen the arrangement excerpts. Interesting how often the strings are divided up and doing a bit of everything: the bass, melody AND the offbeats, but it still looks playable.
_And here we get a rare glimpse of the fabled cor anglais in its natural habitat. Long thought to be only a legend, this evolutionary cousin of the oboe is a solitary being. None has ever been seen to mate in the wild, leading many to speculate that there is only one. Some have claimed to have heard its lonely call, but this remains, to date, an unconfirmed rumor..._
Great video, old chap. Please save me a seat at the Rotary club. We must catch up! Cheers!
Don't be silly! There's no such thing as a cor anglais!
En verdad muchas gracias por todo este rrabajo que has realizado muy divertidos y muy didacticos para aprender y enriquecer la composición espero sigas haciendo mas un fuerte abrazo desde Guadalajara jal. México
Very good guide, Alex! It's so informative and useful for understanding how to compose and orchestrate this type of music. And it is also very funny, so I laughed very much. Waiting for the next episode.
Greets from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Glad you enjoyed!
So glad I stumbled upon this series. Didn't even know what this type of music was called. Very informative! Thanks for your effort.
Recently, I saw your episodes about the . They're very helpful, educational, and funny. Thank you for your massive effort. :)
re-liked! Thanks for uploading and providing us these wonderful guides.
Thank you!
ExcellentAlex. Most helpful!
I can finally watch a detailed tutorial about my favorite musical instruments :) Thank you so much
Tasmanian Tooty Pipe?
sure :}
Loving the series.
Thank you sir.
Just amazing video production and lesson, your narration is just perfect and music example. So amazing, thank you! Hope you will do more.
shame there isn't more of these. It's like good orchestration in general. Only few good tutorials since most don't people don't have deep understadning on orchestration and this is of it's own kind of thing making the series on of a kind in the whole world actually :(
This series was great, a shame it won't continue but it is totally understandable. I honestly did not realize how good the writing in this era of popular music was, definitely will be digging further into it.
Marvellous video old chap. An absolute delight.
I love this!!! You are such a wonderful person making these videos!
Only now have I discovered this series and I can't wait for the part on brass !
Simply marvelous.
Just wanted to let you know that you definitely woke up my interest for orchestrating! I really liked the series just wished there more content like that out there..
That bassoon at the beginning just screamed Carry On to me
Reminds me of something I'd hear out of a Ren and Stimpy episode, not that that's a bad thing.
I can't get enough of these!
Again!
Ha. Groundhog Day!
Thank you so much Alex! You should run Skillshare class from this. Can’t wait for the brass episode!
Excellent! thanks
Hey Alex! Thanks for continuing this excellent series. I haven't watched this episode yet, but I'm sure it's superb like the other episodes.
To reduce the likelihood of getting your videos blocked in the future, you may want to try to upload your videos set to private at first and let them sit for a while, maybe a day or so, and see if the video gets blocked. If everything works okay, then you can either re-upload the video or just change the setting to public.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what I did. I hadn't finished the notation but had the rest of the video so uploaded it privately a week ago to test it. It sat there for a week with no copyright flags at all.
Dropped in the scores and uploaded publicly and it was only there for a couple of hours before being blocked. Identical audio.
My Terminator and Predator videos got a notice that they'd claim any monetisation, which is fair enough, but this is the first time I got an actual block.
How very annoying! Then there doesn't seem to be a way to be absolutely sure that ones videos won't get blocked.
Yes, I wonder if the fact that it was private was actually the reason why it didn't get flagged. Possibly a difference between private and public? Either way, makes it a bit of a gamble on this sort of video.
In earlier videos I remade the music and that avoids copy blocks from labels, but it obviously takes a huge amount of effort to do that on top of all the analysis that takes weeks and weeks for me to do! Bit frustrating.
No, I don't think it got flagged because you went from private to public, because I once uploaded an episode of 'Two and a Half Men' that my mom wanted to watch, and I had it set to private even as I uploaded it, and it still got blocked worldwide.
Yes it is strange in that case. Makes it a gamble. Perhaps somebody manually flagged it.
Absolutely spiffing!
Wonderful, thank you
Waiting for part 5 so I could start writing this type of music! Scores of this genre are so hard to find.
I so love this! Thanks!!
Excellent as always!
Waiting for the brass episode with great anticipation...
Sorry to say that I don't know when I'm going to do it. They take so much work and have been getting smaller and smaller responses with each video. This one has a whopping 3.5k views after 7 months.
My latest video was 100k in two weeks.
Makes it a bit difficult to summon the motivation to trawl rare scores and spend weeks analysing them.
Maybe I'll do it this year, but can't promise. Unless someone is willing to help.
@@AlexBallMusic Ha! To be honest, I thought you were going to end with a dismissive joke about the brass at the end of the woodwind video. It's not like the brass section plays a huge role in that style of music. Thanks for the videos... They are highly entertaining!
Ah right, cool. Well, the brass do in fact play quite specific roles that would make a hole if they were missing.
Maybe I'll make a video on it one day. ;)
Wonderful as always!
This is h*cking amazing
These are fascinating. Do you know of where I can watch more similar videos for other genres of composed music?
Hey guys! Anyone perhaps have some book or study recommendations on this type of music, or jazz/complex harmony to sorta continue this on my own?
It is positively CRIMINAL that this series was never finished! What am I supposed to do with my bras??? Or... brass.. Whatever!
absolute gold mate
Pity I only have one account. I'd love to be able to "like" more than once.
Thanks!
T h a n k g o d i thought I lost this video!
BTW, how many more parts have you planned for this excellent series? 100 more I hope! =)
Part 5: Brass
Part 6: A full composition
And that's it. The full composition will be a full length version of what I've been developing episode to episode. Might try my luck and see if a real orchestra might perform it.
Excellent! I can't wait!
@@AlexBallMusic Ahhh...it would have been amazing to see a full length breakdown!
Yes, but how does one incorporate the Maestrovox Valve Synthesizer ?
I just found this series and love it! I'm sad to hear you don't get the attention you deserve. Are all those pseudonyms for real?
Hey! Can you start this series up again?!?!?!?!
Impenetrable and hilarious,:-D
Another excellent video in an already excellent series!
By the way, do you, or anyone else here in the comments, know how that brass sound in A Canadian in Mayfair, at 5:26 in this video, is achieved? Block chord of trumpets, and maybe trombones, with cup mutes?
Glad you enjoyed the video.
That brass chord is three trumpets and three trombones (including bass trombone) with cup mutes, yes.
It's an Eb6/9 chord voiced (from top to bottom) Bb, F, C, Bb, G, Eb. So it's not a block chord.
They play staccato and add wah with the mute at the same time and Bob's your Uncle. Will be covering brass in the next episode.
@@AlexBallMusic Perfect! Thank you :) Can't wait for the next one!
Still brilliant:)
Thanks Trevor :)
what do you think about NI Symphony Series Collection? which I own, should I buy Spitfire samples?
Delicious
I'm enjoying the series very much. Is there any book you'd recommend to study this kind of orchestration ?
Glad to hear. I haven't actually come across a book or even any material on orchestrating this specific style. I had some jobs doing 50s stuff a couple of years back and went looking for books or tutorials and found nothing. So I've wound up tracking down scores, studying them and making the material myself! I'm learning it as I make the videos basically.
@@AlexBallMusic howly mowly dedication...ly....
It isn't focussed on quite the same style of music but the book by Henry Mancini called "Sounds and Scores" is really good. It uses excerpts from his soundtrack work from things like the TV series Peter Gunn. It's a bit more jazz/beat oriented than the British light music Alex is looking at here, but there is still a fair bit of overlap in the harmonies used and the orchestration techniques. Alex, thank you so much for making these videos, they're an absolute gold mine of information. Do you mind me asking how you managed to track down the original scores for these pieces?
@@AlexBallMusic , I learned a lot of big band orchestration from making reductions of scores. I'm comfortable finding big band music, but when I look for the scores to these all I find are band or solo piano or other weird arrangements. Any tips for where you tracked the original conductor scores/reductions?
Alex, can I ask if you've found modern pieces in this style useable as library music? Or do music supervisors just go to the archive libraries and use the original pieces?
If you go to the KPM or DeWolfe libraries they have the original stuff available on MCPS rates. A lot of it was recorded as production music.
Such lovely stuff! When can we expect brass? Soon I hope...my piece is awaiting the finishing touch. Will you be bringing up percussions too?
I've made a start on it, they're just so huge to research what with finding scores of relevant pieces, working out the common techniques and scripting them into a bite sized video. They take me months. Hopefully by the Spring time I'll have it, although I've got a massive project I'm halfway through first.
Percussion - I wasn't thinking of doing a percussion specific episode, but the final episode will be a whole composition with accompanying score and I might make some general pointers in that episode.
@@AlexBallMusic Makes sense, and they're really worth waiting for. I think you mentioned you were hoping to see what others could do with these instructions. I'd be happy to send you the short attempt I made with these videos as a guide.
Bras... Brass... Bras... Where's the G string gone?
Hi Alex, I understand you can’t continue with this series but could you recommend a reading list from what you were reading? Thanks 😊
Hi. The Light Music Society would be my best suggestion. I hired lots of scores from them for study. Hope that helps, sorry I couldn't finish this.
Alex Ball fantastic. Thanks for reply!
Is there a part 5?
‘No such thing as a Cor Anglais’
I've never seen one. They're just a myth.
Braaaaaaaaaaaaaas! Hahaha
Any video on brass?
I've made a start, it's just these are the hardest videos to make and they take me absolutely ages. Got two more planned and they're on my list for this year.
This doesn't have nearly enough views
Great series, beautifully presented with a perfect tone. Where can I obtain light music orchestral scores?
The Light Music Society in the UK.