1st movement, 12th symphony

[Jerry Gerber]

Hey everyone,

I've been taking a break from posting music on forums for a few months to focus on new composition.

I recently finished the 1st movement of my 12th symphony.  I know, according to legend, I'm supposed to be dead after writing my 9th, but since I'm not dead yet I'm still at work!

This movement has a wide dynamic range and starts softly so keep that in mind when adjusting your listening volume. 

Made with love in Cakewalk!

PLAY

Jerry

Edited June 25, 2022 by Jerry Gerber

[KSband]

Wow that is very impressive good work there.  All the orchestra sounds are very authentic and a cool arrangement too.

[Wookiee]

As ever @Jerry Gerber a pleasure to listen to your composition's, thank you for sharing.

[Byron Dickens]

I hope I can be half that good some day.

Edited June 26, 2022 by bdickens

[DeeringAmps]

Always a fan here.
Am I amazed? Yep!
Am I surprised? No, not really.
As always, top shelf work; hoping for a 13th, 14th and 15th...

t

 

[Larry T.]

outstanding in every way as usual 🎶🎶🎶🎶

[Jesse Screed]

hey J G

would you ever consider doing a collaboration with me?

PM me if you would like to collaborate

I have been listening to you for many years

[Jerry Gerber]

Thanks everyone for listening to this new movement.  I'm busy composing the 2nd movement, will post when I am ready.

Best,

Jerry

[AndyB01]

Jerry this is just superb, the light and shade, the articulations of the instruments - not to mention the quality of the composition. Stunningly good

I have learned over many years to both appreciate and love classical music - I really enjoyed this.

Ten minutes flew by - kept me engaged all the way through 

Andy

[Bajan Blue]

Jerry - this is great, so well composed and put together - just excellent

Enjoyed this a lot

Nigel

 

[Jerry Gerber]

Thanks for listening and commenting Andy and Bajan..

I recently was interviewed by Colin Clarke of Fanfare Magazine.  Here it is for those interested:

 

[InstrEd]

As always JG great work

[jwnicholson78]

I really enjoyed the composition.  Top notch.

[bjornpdx]

Hi Jerry
I've been duly impressed seeing the images from the James Webb Telescope lately and now listening to your music (and also being duly impressed) I thought wouldn't that be cool to combine the two into a symphonic video?  Don't know if you're into "planetarium" music but might be something to think about.
Always a fan
-Bjorn

[Jerry Gerber]

On 7/16/2022 at 7:44 PM, bjornpdx said:

Hi Jerry
I've been duly impressed seeing the images from the James Webb Telescope lately and now listening to your music (and also being duly impressed) I thought wouldn't that be cool to combine the two into a symphonic video?  Don't know if you're into "planetarium" music but might be something to think about.
Always a fan
-Bjorn

Well Bjorn, you've inspired me to contact NASA, so I did.  They generally use more pop-style music in their video productions, but, who knows, maybe they'll be open to the kind of music I write.    The images from Webb are stunning, particularly the 1st one of the multitudes of galaxies some 13 billion light-years away.   What a mind-blowing universe we live in.   It truly boggles the mind..

I'm not going into many studios these days because I was recently diagnosed with kleptomania.   I am taking something for it.  😁 

Best,

Jerry

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Jerry Gerber

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

Great work , impressive use of orchestration - it's not easy to get these orchestral sample libraries to sound realistic, you must have bee working overtime with the expression controllers and articulations ?  If I have one slight nitpick those cymbals at the start sound too loud to me , they kinda jump out of the mix like the guy playing them is stood right next to the conductor.   Out of interest which orchestral libraries do you use ?  There's so many of them to choose from these days.

Could totally hear it used against planetarium type footage but last I heard NASA had a deal with Killer Trax ( part of Universal ) for their production music. I remember reading about it somewhere a few years ago but they are notoriously difficult to get accepted into as a writer.  A lot of these big corporate entities like NASA won't be inclined  to do direct licensing deals with individuals  because they need everything locked down and pre-cleared to indemnify themselves as far as the license goes and possibly mixed / mastered in some sort of immersive format for replay in a venue like a planetarium .  Also If you write for one of the bigger publishers like Universal or Warner Chappel they will usually take your mock up and re-record some or all of it with an actual orchestra and do their own mix & master so it sounds as good as it possibly can.

Really impressive though, I hope you can get as many sets of ears on it as possible - I'm sure some of the production music houses would be open to listening to your work.

  

[Jerry Gerber]

7 hours ago, Mark MoreThan-Shaw said:

Great work , impressive use of orchestration - it's not easy to get these orchestral sample libraries to sound realistic, you must have bee working overtime with the expression controllers and articulations ?  If I have one slight nitpick those cymbals at the start sound too loud to me , they kinda jump out of the mix like the guy playing them is stood right next to the conductor.   Out of interest which orchestral libraries do you use ?  There's so many of them to choose from these days.

Could totally hear it used against planetarium type footage but last I heard NASA had a deal with Killer Trax ( part of Universal ) for their production music. I remember reading about it somewhere a few years ago but they are notoriously difficult to get accepted into as a writer.  A lot of these big corporate entities like NASA won't be inclined  to do direct licensing deals with individuals  because they need everything locked down and pre-cleared to indemnify themselves as far as the license goes and possibly mixed / mastered in some sort of immersive format for replay in a venue like a planetarium .  Also If you write for one of the bigger publishers like Universal or Warner Chappel they will usually take your mock up and re-record some or all of it with an actual orchestra and do their own mix & master so it sounds as good as it possibly can.

Really impressive though, I hope you can get as many sets of ears on it as possible - I'm sure some of the production music houses would be open to listening to your work.

  

Hi Mark,

I've long said that MIDI makes a lot possible, but not necessarily easy.  MIDI controllers are the key to creating an expressive "performance".  I do spend a lot of time with controllers, it's all about detail, detail, detail.   Particularly important are note attacks and release, and, of course, choosing the best sample-set for the phrase in the first place.  Paying attention to velocities. tempos and strong and weak beats is necessary to create a convincing MIDI performance.   The more programming you do, the better it will sound.   If something bothers your ear, fix it.  Do not gloss over it.  Fix and improve every little detail that isn't right.   

My library-of-choice is the Vienna Symphonic Library Orchestral Cube.  It has about 764,000 24-bit samples and I doubt I will ever need or want any other library.  It's fantastic.  I use it with MIR, which is an incredible spatial convolution reverb that lets me place instruments where I want in the stereo field.   There are a lot of libraries available now.   It's more about one's skill as a composer/orchestrator/producer than it is what library you use.  There are many good libraries now on the market.  

I haven't found a need to use Cakewalk's articulations as of yet.  I've looked at them but cannot see how they'd save me any time based on how fast I work and how well-established my sequencing habits are.   But who knows, perhaps in the future I may find a way to make use of them. 

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this movement.  I know I am asking a lot of a person's time, but always hope that the listener finds that their time was well-spent.

Jerry

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Jerry Gerber

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

2 hours ago, Jerry Gerber said:

I haven't found a need to use Cakewalk's articulations as of yet.  I've looked at them but cannot see how they'd save me any time based on how fast I work and how well-established my sequencing habits are.   But who knows, perhaps in the future I may find a way to make use of them. 

Interesting Jerry thanks, it's rare to find someone expert in all this that uses Cakewalk too. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on  the best way to switch articulations ?  I see some folks using key switches, yet others insert a new instrument per articulation and manually place the notes on the relevant midi track.  I guess now there are folks who use the articulation lane now too but I've yet to try that.

I sometimes need to add strings parts to a piece so I bought a dedicated controller with 2 x programmable CC faders. I set one to modulation and the other to expression. I try to use them with my left hand playing the part with my right ( as per a Youtube tutorial by Marc Jovani )  and whilst it generates a lot of CC events they don't seem particularly easy to manipulate/edit on the PRV in Cakewalk compared to using the draw tool on an automation lane  within the track view instead.      

[Jerry Gerber]

21 hours ago, Mark MoreThan-Shaw said:

Interesting Jerry thanks, it's rare to find someone expert in all this that uses Cakewalk too. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on  the best way to switch articulations ?  I see some folks using key switches, yet others insert a new instrument per articulation and manually place the notes on the relevant midi track.  I guess now there are folks who use the articulation lane now too but I've yet to try that.

I sometimes need to add strings parts to a piece so I bought a dedicated controller with 2 x programmable CC faders. I set one to modulation and the other to expression. I try to use them with my left hand playing the part with my right ( as per a Youtube tutorial by Marc Jovani )  and whilst it generates a lot of CC events they don't seem particularly easy to manipulate/edit on the PRV in Cakewalk compared to using the draw tool on an automation lane  within the track view instead.      

Well, I don't know if it would be the best way for you, as everyone works differently with DAWs.   I do almost all of my programming in the event list.  When I need to insert a program change or a CC change I do it very quickly in the event list.   The VSL library uses a horizontal and vertical grid that has up to 12 cells in each grid, each cell controls a set of samples.   I also use the controllers view frequently when deleting cc7s or cc11s if I have to re-think those.   And finally, all of my actual composing, in contrast to cc editing is done in the notation editor.

So, if I have a note that begins with a legato patch, I'll program 1 tick before the note (always put the note 1 tick AFTER all of your patch and cc programming to make sure that the note is affected by those controls!) 

patch change = 3 (in my case I use actual names that I program in Cakewalk's instrument section)

cc11 =  96 (track volume at that point in time (I use cc7 for overall track volume)

cc18 =  attack time

cc19 = release time

cc22 = which articulation VSL will call up, for example within the pizz patch there's normal pizz, snap pizz, etc.

cc33 = same as cc22 except this control the next row of cells if there is one

cc44 = this changes dynamic patches from soft to loud to loud to soft

There's a few more I use but not often.   And then there's every note's velocity, location relative to the beat and the note's length--very important to get proper "phrase-shaping" so that the notes you want accented really are and also to create strong and weak beats. Finally, the connection between notes is as important as the notes themselves when it comes to phrasing.   Selecting the best sample set for the passage is the first issue, once you do that you can fine tune the phrase with the techniques I mentioned.  Remember that with MIDI if one note overlaps (is longer than it's default time) into another note of the same pitch, the 2nd note won't sound.  In that case, instead of increasing the note length of the first note, extend the release time or choose another sample. 

I attached a screenshot of the event list so you can see an example of what I am referring to.

I hope this helps.  
 

 

Event List Example.docx

Edited July 19, 2022 by Jerry Gerber

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

14 hours ago, Jerry Gerber said:

I hope this helps. 
281.73 kB · 3 downloads

Yes, many thanks for this Jerry.  A completely different approach to any I have seen previously, I can understand now how you get so much expression.

Next time I need to write some strings I'll try this approach for sure.