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th the lyrics written and the tune composed it was time to start getting the orchestral backing in shape. Needless to say that I didn't have the budget to afford the London Philharmonic so I used the same technique as I would when scoring a film or television project that didn't have the budget for live Orchestra.
Sample libraries, with recordings that are able to simulate every instrument of the orchestra and played back from computer composing software can provide a fairly realistic alternative for projects like this and I used pretty much every library I had...
Woodwinds, Strings and Brass came from the superb Vienna Symphonic Library, using some of Vienna's best Orchestral musicians. These combined with String players from both the VSL, the Boston Pops Orchestra in the Sonic Implants String Library and the new superbly expressive LA Scoring Strings. 
Other libraries rounded out the orchestra providing the vital touches of Harp flourishes, booming timpani rolls and other orchestral percussion.
The whole project was scored in Sibelius, then transfered into Cubase where every individual instrument line was played in to create as much of a human feeling as possible. Finally the track was mixed using SSL software and my favourite external reverb unit the TC6000 provided the sound of the Orchestra's Hall to complete the effect.
With the orchestration done I now had a decent backing track which could be used to send to a singer so they could practice before coming in the studio. Then after recording the singer all that would remain would be the mix all the final tracks together and we'd be in busines. A few weeks to go and so far so good. Onto Part 4 and the search for the singer.
