Orchestration 1: Compose Orchestral Music for Strings (Udemy.com)

Its an awesome course, i like the explain of each section, very organized and completed, the midi expression bonus is basic but neccesary if you don't have any experience involved. The articulation section is also great, and the musical examples and textures cases real studies, 100% satisfied with this course, i already bought the orchestration series 2 Woodwinds I hope it's as good like this, if you are a complete beginner this is your course!

Just got through the course and must say it is brilliant. You have to put in a lot of work, but by the end, you will have come out with a thorough understanding of the classical orchestral string family. Unlike the previous course on game orchestration , however, you will need to have some basic understanding of music theory and notation. As I have stated before, this teacher is wonderful and caring—and she always puts foot forward in all of her lessons. I am gladly on my way to her next course in the series,and can’t wait to be enlightened and delighted once again.

nice course, a lot of instrumentation. Didn't like the analysis section though because it's very subjective to call something homophony, polyphony etc. so I had almost always different results than you, and it didn't make me a better orchestrator to categorize every bar strictly into one thing. But maybe for some it's helpful, I don't know. But all in all completely worth it, learned a lot!

Good course overall. I must say that I learned a lot more from the second half than the first. I think this class is better for beginner composers, as opposed to 'All skill levels' like the course summary stipulates. Nonetheless, it is a great class and the analysis of real orchestral scores is a very good way to learn. Karleen's teaching is enjoyable and her pace is good. The only downside (very personal) is that we don't see her. It is much easier for me to stay attentive to online classes when I feel like the teacher is in front of me. Would recommend this class to anyone who is just beginning to learn the orchestra, even if you don't know much theory.

I've got to admit, when I first started this course, I was beyond skeptical. After dozens of hours spent searching the web for any material on orchestration, I was woefully disappointed. Then, I came across this one. This course had absolutely everything I was looking for and more. I'm happy to say that I never thought I could learn this much from anything short of a university and thousands of dollars out of pocket had to offer, but this course proved that theory completely wrong. I'll be continuing on to Orchestration 2!

Pretty darn solid! Teaching online without a student or immediate feedback must be difficult, but Karleen did a solid job. There is a LOT covered in string articulations, which at first I thought was overkill, but turns out when the course is called "orchestration for strings," that is a huge part of it that I never really considered and am so glad I learned. Also, the pieces Karleen chose were both beautiful and diverse. I would have never thought of atonal Bartok or Penderecki ("There Will Be Blood" anyone?). I'm about to take part 2 for woodwinds, but I'm wondering: where is part 3 for brass? When can we expect that? I want to complete the trilogy during this quarantine season!!! :)

Covers in such detail - filling little holes in my understanding. But, for instance with trill, tremolo, and fingered tremolo, I'd like to hear a comparison of them, so that as a composer, I understand how each affects the sound. This is what I want to learn the most. Knowing the meaning is really good/needed. But if I'm not clear on how each sounds, or my "ear memory" is a bit foggy, knowing the meaning is...pointless. Yet, the course does provide other comparisons at times, which is greatly appreciated. It would be EXCELLENT if we got one large "set" of labeled sounds in the various categories to compare, so when we are writing, we can actually use those sounds to inform/solidify our decisions. :) But I'm not done. So maybe it's coming up? :) Yet, perhaps that is outside the scope of these lessons. Just wish I knew where to find such a thing. I can use my DAW to listen, perhaps - but if my string libraries don't happen to have all the articulations and techniques, I'm at a loss. Your work is wonderful, though, and helped a great deal.

So far this is probably the best course i've taken online! The teacher knows pedagogy and uses it to successfully convey the subject to the learner. Also uses the functionalities Udemy provides to achieve this e.g. with questions that challenge you in order to deepen the learning process. Very professional as a teacher in addition to knowledgeability in the subject. I feel like i'm in good hands (which is quite rare in online teaching to my experience) and I'm very grateful for this possibility since i currently couldn't afford to study in an institution, so thanks so so much!

I found this class to be exceptional. As a life long self taught musician I've have minimal formal training. I force myself to read but I'm slow and honestly never had much call for it. I've always wanted to learn since my passion for music is so strong but in truth I'm an old rock & roll guy who's played in rock bands since the sixties. I play guitar and self taught myself keyboards because the band had the need. Now I'm at an age where I finally have the time to learn and practice properly. This class was not easy for me but it's opened my eyes and answered so many questions I've had over the years. Karleen is an excellent teacher and very detailed which is key since it's a single direction online class. I'm going to go back and take time to review to make sure I feel confident with the content and then get ready for Orchestration 2!

I decided to take this course recently because I am getting back into composing after some 15 years focused on other kinds of music work (performing, songwriting, teaching), and I wanted a quick refresher on the fundamentals. By "quick refresher" I do mean the entire 20-30 hours this course took me to complete, which included composing a short piece and orchestrating it for strings a few times until I got it right. I was very attracted by the fact that the course explicitly includes a project component instead of just presenting the information and immediately leaving you to your own devices. In short, Karleen has done an excellent job with this course. The bulk of it is devoted to learning articulations, techniques, and showing how these are used in scores by Bartok, Mendelssohn, and Schubert. The latter part of the course demonstrates how she personally approaches composition with the idea of eventually orchestrating it for strings, which was very helpful to me. It reminded me to avoid the mistake of writing a *piano* piece and then attempting to turn it into string music. Which can work, but you get better results thinking in terms of strings from the start of the process. After showing her compositional process on two staves, she walked through the process of orchestrating her composition bar-by-bar, thinking out loud all the way through, which was incredibly helpful. After that there is a section on producing your score in a DAW. I'm highly skilled with Logic, Ableton, and Native Instruments products, but even this section taught me a few tricks about using string libraries that I was completely unaware of. In truth I was a little impatient with the mass of technical detail at the front of the course, mostly because I am a violinist and knew much of it already, but also because I wanted to get my hands dirty, as it were. So I skipped around according to whim and started in on the composition section when I had only completed about 50% of the other material. My first attempts at orchestrating my piece were complete flops. They sounded fine to my non-musical friends but I knew they were a notch below mediocre. Ultimately I took the time to backfill all the course material I hadn't bothered with, and then went back to the same composition. This time it turned out really well! I should also mention that in the meantime, while I was working through the material, I spent some time taking some of Bach's harmonized chorales and arranging them for string orchestra, which made for a very instructive exercise. I think I did four of them before I felt like more would be redundant. In sum I thought this was a great course. I'm looking forward to the woodwinds course when that comes along, and in the meantime (after I write a few more string pieces!) I'll be taking her video game composition course, which I bought last year but never got around to starting!