Running a 66 piece orchestral session with StaffPad…

I recently had a 66 piece orchestral session and decided to produce all scores and parts with StaffPad alone. This is stretching the purpose of the software which is intended really for inputting via handwriting recognition, but because I need to produce scores and parts quickly, I thought I’d try a quicker workflow to see how things went. I’d already slipped a couple of scores and sets of parts from StaffPad alongside the usual Sibelius finished ones into an earlier and smaller session and I had no complaints from the conductor or musicians, so I had great confidence that it’d work OK!!! The music project was one of my own for Compendium Recordings, so there were no deadline problems to encounter, but I could use any experience for future work where deadlines will be important.

The workflow was this…

Write score in StaffPad.

‘Print’ score and parts to .pdf.

Proof parts on Mac, make changes to Staffpad score on Surface.

Print A4 score for me.

‘Print’ A3 and A4 score and parts to .pdf.

Zip up and send to orchestra.

I printed the first score on paper for the proofing session, but I thought I’d save a tree and proof on two screens for future scores.

I’ve sent a couple of suggestions of things that would make things easier to StaffPad and look forward to those appearing soon, but generally speaking, the experience was incredibly easy and efficient.

Mixing is now well underway and there'll not be great amount of editing as the orchestra were fantastic. I've had a dry run at mastering some music and the results are great (though I say so myself!!!), even at this early stage...Here is a link...

https://soundcloud.com/garry-judd/multiple-field-sketches-excerpts

Green Men, Kingfishers and arranging with StaffPad

The Green Man orchestral suite is now available on iTunes by clicking on this link...

The album also includes a piano arrangement of Elegies (and Energies) from Book 2 of Multiple Field Sketches for small orchestra. When I decided to make this piano reduction, it occurred to me that I could do this in situ alongside the original orchestral arrangement in StaffPad. This would mean that I could refer to the score as I proceeded into the piece and even copy and paste parts into the piano arrangement. So, I copied the StaffPad orchestral version, opened it and subtitled it 'piano arrangement' so I had two new identical versions. There may be an easier way of doing this...Maybe the StaffPad people could enlighten me, but I wanted to preserve the orchestral version as it was and this was the best way I could figure out to do that.

I then added a piano part to the new version and found that it was a delight to work on this while referring to the original version alongside it. Copying and pasting worked a treat...In 'Elegies' there are some pretty complex cross rhythmic hemiolas which would have been a bit of a task to replicate and I found the new lasso to select function very useful. Pasting selections into different voices is, necessarily, a bit fiddly as you have to keep selecting the right voices to copy and then paste into, but StaffPad intelligently sorted the beam directions (even in interweaving parts) and made the job easy.

Before very long, I had a complete piano arrangement and I then deleted all the other instruments...Fantastic!!! If you do this from a fully notated (with directions and dynamics), these can be copied and pasted in with the actual music.

I'm currently working on some arrangements for large orchestra and am working in a similar way, except I added the new instruments to the orchestral score resulting in a sort of semi-filled template.

Of course, like all music where there is a possibility of copying and pasting, you have to guard against being lazy and think about whether the voicing and timbres will work when one part is transferred to another instrument, but that's what being a composer is all about, isn't it???

We had a huge thrill recently when we spotted a kingfisher diving for beetles in the pond. It's a couple of years since we removed the Koi carp that we inherited (they were not doing well as the water was not properly filtered for them, so we found them a lovely new home) and removed the leaky liner to make it into a natural wildlife pond. It took a couple of weeks, during which we smelled permanently of silt, but we've ben really pleased to see all sorts of wildlife make their home in there...Great diving beetles, water boatmen, greater crested newts, dragonfly larva are all in there and there are often ducks and moorhen on it. The kingfisher was a real surprise...We're not sure where it comes from, but there are larger areas of running water nearby where it must make its home.