Useful resource for orchestral composition

[bvanoudtshoorn]

Hiya everyone!

A while ago, I bought myself a copy of Native Instruments Kontakt. This came with a selection of orchestral sounds by the VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library), and so, wanting more, I went to their website. Now their packages might be just a little out of my price range at the moment, but they have this absolutely fantastic resource for anyone composing classically:

Instruments Online

Basically, it's a summary of each instrument of the orchestra, with just about all the information you could possibly ever need. I hope that it's useful to some of you.

[KrazyKatz]

Excellent add to the forum.  An outstanding resource for anyone taking orchestral music seriously.

Once you've got the instrumentation under your belt, and you're ready to get advanced, the next step would be to orchestrate them:

May I suggest the following resource "Principles of Orchestration" by the grandmaster Rimsky-Korsakov himself:

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=77