The finished piece is here on Soundcloud tinyurl.com/mpufeftk

Composing music: 10 minutes. Playing music: 1 minute. Producing the sounds: several days.

Guy Michelmore is the most underrated film composer of all time.

This man is singlehandedly keeping my interest in music alive. Thank you for existing. 🙏

Always a refreshing presence!, Thanks Guy!,

GUY, it is so inspiring to see you go through a proper orchestrated piece like this, I know how much work that goes in to making all the midi information sound how you want, thanks for this Guy

I'm really grateful for the video Guy. I'm new to everything here and was wondering how to go about template creation weighing different options and looking for advice and then you put out a video on the very topic I was looking for. Fantastic timing! Thank you. I'm going to try this approach and see how things go.

I totally agree...I've always worked that way! Thank you so much for sharing such a great passion and music knowledge !!!

Great outtro, BTW. Nice to hear your work on your channel!!

Thanks so much, Guy. You've been an inspiration to me from the moment I first stumbled across you here. Took the music theory and how to write courses and made more progress with my music in 6 months than the previous 20 years of faffing about. Regarding templates, as with any creative endeavor, it's 90 percent preparation, 10 percent inspiration.

Thank you for making a video about this Guy! I requested this topic a few months ago and I'm so glad you get to make it ;)

This video came at the exactly perfect time for me. I just bought some new VSL stuff which I have to integrate and now I have an idea. Thanks!

Guy missed you so much! You are the best on KZfaq! God bless you with health and longevity! Of all you are the best!!!

Great video Guy; thanks for sharing this! Through lots of trial and error, I've customized all of my expression maps and set them all to Attribute, rather than Directional. It's been working fine for about 4 months now.

Perfect. I just started creating a 3 track per instrument template last week, but paused. Good to know that Guy has had thoughts about this approach too. 👍

Guy you are the very best and I really mean it!!! cheers!!!

All your content is GREAT, GREAT and GREAT. Thanks

Wonderful piece Guy. Thank you for sharing.

This is way beyond both my brain capacity and the storage capacity of my PC. Congratulations to Mr. Michelmore and all the other great musicians out there that produce this kind of excellent music.

That sounds incredible... watching you inspires me but at the same time discourages me. I am new to the whole recording vibe and only play guitar and bass... Just purchased my first midi keyboard (M-Audio oxygen Pro 49), and I have always been attracted to soundtracks and wow... each time I hear your compositions I am blown away! Thank you for such good, friendly, and very enjoyable content!

Glad to see the love for key switches. I built a template using all articulations in east west Hollywood orchestra set to key switches. 1 track per instrument. Very nice to use. Searches and endless scrolling are not needed.

Very timely video ... I am trying to figure out my work flow and of course it all starts with a template! Thank you for the insight Guy.

Brilliant Christmas tune... i watched the making of... awesome insights.. Shoutouts from Australia!

Excellent work !!!! ... some of the finest I have heard in quite some time ... very inspiring !!

Thank you Guy!

I just love that Xmas piece, so inspiring.

I sent YEARS experimenting with different approaches for the "articulation problem". I settled for the 1 instrument per track and 1 articulation per Midi channel approch, this way you have very few tracks. It works like this: You load multiple instances of the vst on different midi channels with only one articulation each on the same track. IMO 16 articulations per instrument are more than enough but if you need more, you can split it up to multiple tracks like Guy did. I set up all orchestral tonal instruments the same way: Ch1 is always Legato, Ch2 Sustain, Ch3 Spiccato, Ch4 Staccato and so on. If you set up all instruments this way, you can easily copy midiparts to other instruments and it will always work - regardless the VST manufacturer! And the best thing is that you don't have to look up or remember all the different keyswitches or fiddle around with expression maps. The way I work is that I record a part with the most easy to play all-purpose articulation of that instrument (i.e. marcato) and then assign the notes to the different midi channels afterwards. I use Reaper (which is very easy to customize) and added 16 buttons for each channel to the top of the midi editor for easy channel assigning. Edit: If your DAW allows it (Reaper does), you can change the view options of the pianoroll to display the notes in different colors depending on the midi channel. This way you can see the different articulations in the Piano Roll by color. The CC problem: If you record or draw CCs, it's only sending on one channel. I don't know about other DAWs but in Reaper, if you change the midi channel of a note, it also changes the channel of the corresponding CCs automatically. Or you use ReaControlMidi in Reaper or - the easyest approach - some plugin that simply sends CCs to ALL channels instead of only one. For Reaper some nice user made such a plugin - which is free.

This was helpful. I’ve always used only key switches, but now I see the advantage of at least being able to layer different articulations on the same instrument. Now I’ll just have to figure out which layerings work best. Thanks for your informative and entertaining videos!

You are very good composer The Christmas comp was very nice. Keep it up.

This music sounds great! Thank you for sharing!

Great little video Guy. That's the same solution I landed on regarding templates. I found that there is also another opportunity with this approach: with solos, the first legato track can sound as the leader and the long track can work as the other two players in a polyphonic passage. Very quick and quite effective.

oh oh oh, merry Christmas!!

Love your Xmas score.

Many thanks Guy as always a very good video

Omg what a piece....beautiful

Lovely music. Very sweeping.

Damn, listening to you talking is soulfood. Thank you very much.

2:10. Now then, not a lot of people know that. I learn summing new every episode. Happy New Year, Guy :).

Your Winter beard is lookin' Good! Thanks for your time Guy!

Hey Guy. Just to tell you great job w this channel! Great inspiration for this guy from Brazil that is trying to go to the deep end of film scoring and producing. Cheers.

After finishing the video now I can also comment that this is exactly what I've been thinking to try. I don't have a lot of libraries, so I'm thinking to build separate articulation tracks for most of the main tracks I'll use, but for the extra libraries or remaining articulations I'll group them as leg, long, short for example. So it's fun to find a professional who thinks it's worth trying this method.

I am only beginning to work on compositions, and I have already discovered that I need different templates for different things. I have created a super simple template with a small number of tracks and articulations which will allow me to focus on writing - sort of a basic or sketch template, I guess - which has been adapted from my larger templates, so I can fold the content into the larger template easily and consistently later. Having a sketch template really helps me write - and the work on the bigger template is where the polishing comes in. Again, as a relative beginner, I'm still finding my way, but for me, I think at this point it's more important to create music and work on articulations and perfection later than to try and take it all on at the very start. Inspiration first, then turd polishing. :) I really appreciate your "simplify" approach as it validates what I've started trying to do. Wonderful stuff, sir - thank you very much (and happy new year!).

Love those windows in your studio!

Thank you for the video Guy. You taught me about Templates from your first video on this topic. I agree, using VEP Pro does make things so much easier. Thank you for you all you do.

Love your video! I have also grappled with exp maps, resorted to CC controllers for VSL dimensions, gone completely template free, used Cubase disabled tracks, VST preset media pane (my current favourite way)… none of which finally answer the template problem. I must say creatively I LOVE a blank screen. No template. But also love key switches for performance flexibility whilst actually composing. Ah, the days pencil paper and a piano.

Happy New Year Guy . Interesting stuff. I’m still an advocate for starting from scratch (rather the smallest template possible) just feels like something new - I find I always end up doing similar things and don’t push myself out of the same favoured sound sets/combinations and articulations. Having said that - I often end up with 5 or six tracks just to sort out a violin 1 part etc always ends up with 50-100 tracks in total - maybe it’s because we are all relentless fiddlers !

Honestly. Someone gotta come up with a better solution. I am not a professional in composing and either way, having gazillions of tracks or all these expression maps and I’m not even aware off 100 % what an expression map does. There is absolutely no one that can keep track of that many things at once while writing music. Maybe when we get that neural link connector directly from the brain to the computer. Just watching those 200 tracks templates makes my head spin. And I’ve been working with IT for years, and this is on a scale of very advanced coding for IT specialists, and musicians and composers arent math professors or computer coders, or at least very few are. And these gigantic libraries with all those articulations is more and more an advanced coding language than a composing tool. But great video Guy. I’m impressed of those of you that make a living writing music actually get something done with this. It seems a lot easier just to learn the old school way of writing musical sheets on a piece of paper and have an actual orchestra play it 😎

Great Idea. Key switching with multi timbral libraries makes sense. Can save memory.

Yes, I am totally here for the geeky stuff🤓

I’m not a classical composer however, I find your videos very informative and somewhat entertaining. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.

Guy!, love your new John Willams style!

So funny and helpful. Yes, we just want to make music as effortlessly as possible. Very helpful to see shortcuts together with rationale.

Guy, your are the coolest music teacher...

This is interesting! I tend to write via notation rather than piano roll, and I've been using grace notes to do the key switching (with timing tweaks to eliminate any delay on the main note) which has worked quite well for me. It was useful to see this approach. Thank you!

Worthy of a major disney film...I shall recommend you. Don't forget my cut. Wonderful. Thank you.

Great!! Thanks a lot 👍🏻

C'est vraiment magnifique une très belle composition 😍😍😍

Absolutely fascinating! I had no idea people built 1300 track pieces! I come at this from a completely different direction: score-based composition using Dorico ( incidentally v4 released yesterday and looks fantastic). Here it is one instrument per stave and the key switches are entirely built in via the use of musical expressions ( make a note staccato and the magic causes that sample to be played). In this way it looks like a comprehensible piece of music with a score on one page. This relies on expression maps plus the requirement that there is a memorable musical symbol for all the different techniques needed. Ultimately this isn't going to give the total control possible from Cubase, although Dorico 4 looks like it is heading that way. And in any case, the full set of audio tracks can always be imported into Cubase for the final mixing precision etc. GUY - thanks so much for this priceless material - really very generous to share your current thinking like this!

Liking the John Williams Look :) ,also loving your videos

You are legend!!!

Thank you for the great tutorial

YOU ARE AMAZING!!!

yay, Guys back!

Good job with template presentation it all make sense!! I’m interested of building my articulations template along with the expression map as well.

Super amazing information

Thanks Guy, I learn from you everytime you publish a new video. I have a suggestion for a new video: can you explain what expression maps are and how to use them? I have heard you talking about expression maps in a couple of videos and I would like to learn what you can do with them. Cheers from the Netherlands, Marc

Dear Guy, what a great piece!! really emotional and wonderful to see how it can be after some more time spent on it (even if your 20 minutes session are also soo inspiring and eye opening!) . Again thank you for your wonderful contribution to inspire and educate us in this wonderful world of music, composition and technology!!! Every of your videos are soooo useful and wonderful: and you see to have like a telepathy: the thematics that you discuss in your videos are exactly what I need in the particular moment when the video comes out! :-))) You are such a great teacher and composer, and a really funny "Guy" too :-) Now I am also enjoin seeing and listening at Robozuna on Netflix: great score!!! Also your "The Elephant an the Termite" music is gorgeous!! Have a nice week and (a little late) Happy New Year!! Christian R.

Guy you are the best!!

One alternative (still experimenting with) is to create an instrument track, have up to 16 articulations loaded into the sampler, assign a MIDI channel to each. Next create an expression map that switches between the 16 MIDI channels instead of relying on programming in the keyswitches. It’s much, much quicker to set up. Then from the info line in the piano roll, select a note and assign it to the midi channel you want it to switch articulation to. The cool thing is, you can just use 1 instrument track to write lines and if you want to work like a split template, just create 15 MIDI tracks that connect them to said instrument track & sampler.

FWIW, I started watching with the bias that custom templates with grouped keyswitches is the way to go! Much of the video was affirming! Thank you! One thing not mentioned (or I missed it) is the issue with keyswitch delays that can sometimes require splitting articulations into separate tracks to get the timing right. In my case, I also like starting with a template system which may be DAW-specific. Specifically, as I use Reaper, I like starting with OTR (Orchestral Template for Reaper) by Storyteller.

7:23 totally reminded me of one of my favourites that you have written Guy - Forgotten World

That's a good Christmas song :)

Tom does a very nice tutorial on this. I've been using Reaper with OTR2 (Orchestral Template for Reaper), which now includes integrated support for Reaticulate. Reaticulate is essentially a simplified (at least IMHO) implementation of Expression Maps, for Reaper. One of the things I like best about it, in addition to its very nice and super-simple U/I, is that the articulation changes can be shown in a single lane right alongside the other CC lanes, rather than trying to view them in multiple, stacked lanes, independently from CC1, 7, 11, etc.

I've taken a similar approach. For each section I have an overall patch that has all the articulation switches. I use this when I'm doing a first pass. And with Reaticulate in Reaper, I'm able to combine articulations if I want to. I've also added tracks with shorts and long articulations in case I want to do more layering, or play another line. I keep it to the basic articulations and have saved those that I use less frequently to TRACK templates (you can do this in Reaper, I don't know about other DAWs), which can be called up with the click of a button. So, for example, if I need a harmonics line, I just click "Harm" on the toolbar and the track comes up, perfectly balanced, with all the settings I saved.

Hey Guy. I have always preferred the method you used in this video, and mainly for one reason - it affords me the ability to listen back to what i've written at the same time as i'm inserting KS's. Adding switches is NOT a big deal to me, and i will do it in one of 2 ways - either inserting notes directly to the midi data, or by recording over the track as i listen to it and punching in the switch notes. Considering that i will usually create/add parts in small sections, adding the KS data while listening back seems easy and logical to me and doesn't take extra time at all. Great video Guy TYVM.

Great video and great topic! One option I have tried and it often works well: For example: Violins 1 - > 2 instrument tracks, one for legato (because of the track delay) and all others (short, longs ...). 1 additional miditrack on the same midichannel as the non-legato tracks, where only the keyswitches are managed. How to play this is a matter of preference. So record both at the same time and then delete either notes or KS. Or record once with a good marcato articulation (with short release) and record the KS in the second pass in the miditrack. This has among other things the advantage that in the instrument track a problem-free transposing is possible without moving the keyswitches (just select both tracks in the key editor if you need to see notes and KS). Copying to other tracks is also somewhat easier. This works at least as long as you don't have to work with big delay differences in the other articulations. For some libraries like Pacific strings you need 1 - 2 extra tracks because for example marcatos need 80 ms, spiccato 100 ms and legato 180 ms trackdelay. David Kudell's track delays list on VI-C is very helpful. I experimented with expressionmaps, but it doesn't really fit with my way of working.

Guy, what you said about slave computers is very interesting. Can you make a video on how to best setup a computer for composing in a DAW?

Very nice!

A really interesting insight into your workflow, thanks Guy! I’ve found that key switches work well on separate midi tracks to the performance. Seems to provide an efficient workflow in logic for small numbers of instruments 😁

Really Intersting guy. I’m still trying nail the best way of doing this!

Hey! The way i approach this is that in logic you can save channel strips. Doing that gives you very fast workflow. Everything would be saved in categories. For example if you wanna load a choir patch starting from a completely empty project. Simply select channels strips and you go to the choirs folder and select whatever choir patch you would like to use loading in only 1 specific choir library. That way your template don’t t have 10 choir libraries loaded without you even using choir. I do use key switches for the most part but sometimes I layer articulations so i would need a new duplicated track just with another articulation.

Great video! One solution I found for expression maps with lots of articulation is to split them up into two: 1 with the most basic and useful articulations 2 additional techniques (Bartok pizz, col legno, etc.). Then I just duplicate the MIDI track if I need one of those additional articulations and I assign the 2nd expression map. That way you avoid having too many lanes at the bottom of the screen but at the same time you have all the articulations available if you need them. The only problem is that you have to manually create the expression maps...

I do a version of this also, then add when needed, about 20 tracks to start with. It's quite flexible.

Awesome stuff Guy!! Would love to watch a video on how you have you external (slave) computer set up 😃

Great video, thank you Guy! After years of meddling with various ways and templates, I also came to the conclusion that what you propose here is a good compromise and least-problematic way of working. One could also use only keyswitched longs (incl. legato), shorts, FX & phrases tracks. Tip: If you can live without a video track: Studio One 5.5 realy is a great alternative these days, in conjunction with Vepro. Its expression maps (sound variations) are IMO more intuitive to setup and use, while general handling of large templates (visibility functions, load & save times) are even better compared to Cubase.

Amanzing ❤

Well, I actually don't watch your videos because you "finish" a song in twenty minutes, but because you are entertaining and fun to watch … I do learn a thing or two while watching your videos, even though I'm more into writing electronic music and would be bored to death if I had to use the same pair of violins over and over. But for me, the "education" part just slips in through the back door while I really enjoy watching your videos.

I recently built a 3 instance per instrument template like you show here but with expression maps - great solution. My main library is BBCSO core and its articulation maps were super easy to setup... by in large it was a cut and paste across all instruments in a section, with handfull of extra articulations in some instruments. The articulation maps are triggered with an APC key25. My slave server went from 100% +++ running a track per articulation, to about 25% load with the smaller 3 instance template. This allowed me to also setup a choir, a solo strings libray and an epic percusion library on the same server server... and its now on about 35% load, ~45gb of ram used (not purged).... this is on a circa 10 year old server running 2 Xeon E5-2620 v1 CPU's.... about 10500 passmark for the system. A new entry level system running a Ryzen 5 1600 CPU (1200 passmark) and 64GB DDR4 ram goes for about AU$800, which in the scheme of things is super cheap - so yes, I agree... this template approach for has been a great solution.

In my opinion, the best way to handle all the articulations is the way I do it with a 3rd party midi out called BRSO Articulate. It lets you use only 1 midi track for the entire instrument and u can switch between the articulations with colored notes. It makes it super easy to organize and you can have very few tracks. Though i'm pretty sure it's a FL Studio specific solution

Thany very much for this! I follow a similar approach, but I hate the key switch fiddling. So my trickster move was: I use different midi channels for articulations, but they are not layed out as separate midi channels. Instead I switch the articulation in the note itself by changing the midi channel per note. This trick requires three things: Set up the instrument midi channel output to "all". Set the note color scheme in the grid editor to "channel". Then you can distinguish the selected articulations easily by color. You habe to switch the midi channel (and this is actually the drawback of this method) of your keyboard (or use midi transformer) to select the articulation you want to play.

I have started building a template with very complex routings that I have just decided to strip apart and do it like this: Violins Longs Violins Shorts ...and so on - each instance has keyswitches from multiple libraries. I mostly use SA libraries so you can balance all of their articulations per track, same goes for shorts as well. Then I output them to their corresponding groups for most flexibility: Strings Hi Longs, Strings Hi Shorts, Strings Lo Longs, Strings Lo Shorts etc... Yes, it does take a bit of time to organise this but it lets you truly separate those types of tracks when you’re done with sketching and it’s time to orchestrate it

Very interesting, thank you. I definitely need to be using more articulations 🤣 I feel there is so much potential for controllers to help with this 'articulation problem'. But I see your vid on controllers so I'll jump over there!

Thanks for this useful video Guy! I am considering combining your approach into a new template: an instrument for shorts, an instrument for longs and an instrument for legato. However, I would incorporate expression maps programmed to key switches with that. I think that could be manageable, very detailed and will benefit from both approaches.

It's all good. I'm not sure where you landed. I am just starting in on the idea of a template as my collection of libraries and instruments grow. I would like to know what I'm doing before I'm in over my head. Thank you. Every video like this is helpful!

bravo

I use Studio One as my main DAW, and, with the help of Babylon Waves' Art Conductor, S1's 'Sound Variations' (keyswitching) is super-super-SUPER easy. But yes, it still seemed wrong to do just one track per instrument, because of reasons some of which you mentioned (different mic positions? different amounts of reverb? different EQ? different track delay?). I really like this 'hybrid' approach which splits the difference between 1 track per articulation and 1 track per instrument. ~3 tracks per instrument seems about right! Thanks for helping us all think outside the box, Guy! I don't really do film/TV/media scoring... my music more song-oriented, in the neoclassical/electronic genres. But templates are a good idea in this world, also!

Keyswitches are definitely the way to go but unless I want to buy another controller I need to have them mapped to reasonable keys, which I hoped Art Conductor 8 would help me do. They are weak on documentation but seem to have every library under the (known) sun covered. That being said, you pointed out a key point. If you can't edit the value, then it becomes a moot point. you are back at starting from scratch. I loved it when Spitfire Audio for the BBC Symphony Orchestra included a template, which had they taken it one step further and included an expression map (which I really need to check - maybe I missed it) would have greatly helped me with that library (I have BBCSO Core). I love your composition/production - thanks for sharing. And, thanks for walking us through a difficult subject. As we are synthesizing orchestras or other collections of playing instruments, working with templates can really save you some time but also can put one in a box. I have one template devoted to some 25 piano tracks. I play around with them and delete all those that didn't inspire me that day. Better than hunting through all my libraries to figure out a decent piano. So, that works for me - one instrument per track. The Symphony/Articulation/Delay/Volume goes quickly geometric with so many different things to work from. I'm almost back to single track per instrument and then duplicate, as you did, where you need to insert other articulations (and have to slide the track forward or back based on the associated delay). I love what we can do these days as electronic musicians. I remember seeing the hype in the mid-to-late 80s where we would just magically produce in a box (MIDI hype was like science fiction at the time - greatly imagined science fiction, which has now arrived). Now, we just need to get comfortable with it. You're a shining light on what we might achieve with work and good application of our developing skills. Thanks for continuing to educate. Cheers!

Nice and neat😉

Hello Guy, by the way, due to your recommendation, I use sometimes the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Spitfire Audio) instruments to accompany and enrich my guitar and piano playing (almost strings and some brass). Thank you for your very helpful advices, take care, with all my best wishes to you and your family! :-)

I think a good way to “start from scratch” (which is more like a hybrid scratch-template way of working) is to (1) have all the desired effect sends set up in the template; AND (2) I have all the busses set up in the template; AND (3) I have “individual sound” templates. So, for example, if I want BBC Symphony Orchestra strings section, I have a template that I can pull up in any given session that will have all the strings how I like them with all the relevant effects. I have this with all my instruments from ample sound guitars to orchestral libraries to arturia’s synths. The only thing with this is that I have to do it in two steps. One for the instrument and another for the channel effects but I find it quick enough. This system gives me the flexibility of starting from scratch with the speed and effort of thought similar to a pre-populated template