MOCKUP - Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: I. Morning Mood

Good evening fellow composers! I am very excited to present my latest project, a mockup of Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite No. 1: I. Morning Mood"! I've been trying to improve my production skills by making mockups of some major works. The goal is to create as realistic-sounding of a representation of a real orchestra as possible.

Please feel free to leave any feedback you may have regarding the quality of the performance. Feel free to put your "conductor hat" on and imagine this is a live orchestra: what would you tell them to improve the performance?

Sound libraries

• Synchron Strings Pro
• Synchron Woodwinds
• Synchron Brass
• Spitfire Percussion

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy! If you liked something I did and want me to explain how I did it, feel free to ask.

-gmm

Hi @gmm,

For me the rendition is more or less perfect. Just two minor points:

-The ornaments in the rendition is more artificial, particularly the trills for the clarinet in 3:18. but I think that's the problem of the software. But the underlying strings there can be stronger to me.

-In 2:16 I may increase the volume of the pizzicati.

And sadly the trombone is used less frequently here, and there're no trumpets or tubas. I think the brass are always the hardest instruments to be nuanced! But the woodwinds and strings here are great.

But other than that I think it already does a great job! Thx for sharing!

Henry

Yes, it's very nice. But I think you've chosen something fairly easy aided by the wonderful synchron series that does a bit of the work for you. Possibly something like the first movement of Debussy's La Mer next time where balance and dynamics are more critical.

.

Hi @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, thanks for listening and giving feedback!

11 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

-The ornaments in the rendition is more artificial, particularly the trills for the clarinet in 3:18. but I think that's the problem of the software. But the underlying strings there can be stronger to me.

Yes those are indeed tricky. I spent some time trying to make them realistic, but definitely something to keep working on.

11 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

And sadly the trombone is used less frequently here, and there're no trumpets or tubas. I think the brass are always the hardest instruments to be nuanced! But the woodwinds and strings here are great.

I'm not sure what you mean here? There are no trombones or tuba in the original score, so I didn't include them...

11 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

But other than that I think it already does a great job! Thx for sharing!

Thanks man, glad you liked it.

10 hours ago, Quinn said:

Yes, it's very nice. But I think you've chosen something fairly easy aided by the wonderful synchron series that does a bit of the work for you. Possibly something like the first movement of Debussy's La Mer next time where balance and dynamics are more critical.

@Quinn thank you for listening! Yes this is indeed on the simpler side, but I didn't want to jump into something like La Mer and get overwhelmed lol! I definitely intend to keep doing these and work myself up to larger projects like that.

6 hours ago, gmm said:

I'm not sure what you mean here? There are no trombones or tuba in the original score, so I didn't include them...

I think I have just the same opinion with @Quinn that mocking up a piece with more instruments can help test your skill more!

Very nice work!

Just wondering how you obtained the midi data for this piece?

Did you find a midi file online; or enter it laboriously by hand from a printed score; or perhaps do an automated pdf score to midi conversion?

19 hours ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I think I have just the same opinion with @Quinn that mocking up a piece with more instruments can help test your skill more!

@Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, fair point, however I prefer to remain as true to the original intentions of the composer. Might be a good idea to try as a side project in the future though...

10 hours ago, Alex Weidmann said:

Very nice work!

Just wondering how you obtained the midi data for this piece?

Did you find a midi file online; or enter it laboriously by hand from a printed score; or perhaps do an automated pdf score to midi conversion?

@Alex Weidmann Thank you for listening! I found the midi data online. That was another driver for doing this piece. I wanted to focus on the "orchestration" and quality, rather than spending a bunch of time entering midi data.

Is there software that converts scores to midi data?

28 minutes ago, gmm said:

Is there software that converts scores to midi data?

Yes there are a few different options available for pdf to midi (or musicXML) conversion.

Here's one of them:

https://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/pdftomusicpro.htm

Another option for converting scanned scores to musicXML is Audiveris:

https://github.com/Audiveris/audiveris