That's simply beautiful. My Dad listened to a lot of classical music (and The Beach Boys) so I grew up hearing a lot of music that sounded like this. Where would I start if I wanted to enter the world of classical music and start exploring or is it too wide ranging to suggest? I gravitate towards film soundtracks...
Thanks!
Your question's definitely not too wide ranging; and film soundtracks are a great place to start because they're mostly melodic, familiar to the ear and accessible. There's often plenty of workout with brass, percussion, and you can go big or small with it.
So...where to start. I guess if you have a good ear, the first place to start is listen to orchestral pieces you like and pick out the parts just the way you would listening to a rock record, listening to one instrument at a time and what it's doing, what instruments are doubling it, or harmonizing with it, etc.
It's not a bad idea to get a little formal background info, because it really makes the job easier. I read Rimsky-Korsakov's
Principles of Orchestration, which gave me a foundation, though it wasn't a particularly easy read. But that was my starting point. I'm told there are much more digestible books on orchestration by more recent authors, so I probably could have slogged through something else.
The Samuel Adler book,
The Study of Orchestration is another widely read book, but it's very expensive, and if you're just dipping your toe in, it may not be necessary. I haven't read it yet.
You want to compose, not necessarily become an orchestrator, so you want to know the basics about instrument ranges, sounds and useful combinations (for example, doubling a French horn part with cello). It's helpful to know what other composers have done in the past to combine instruments and to learn their ranges. None of this needs to be memorized, it's a reference, and you refer to it as needed.
I often write first on piano, and then translate the notes I'm playing to individual orchestral lines that I think might have the right timbre for what I have in mind. So a the lowest notes I play on the piano might be chosen as low brass, or basses, or celli, or low woodwinds. Then I move up and use a separate instrument for the higher bass notes, then the midrange notes on the right hand, etc, etc.
I find that if you simply try to play chords with the tutti orchestra samples that come in many sample libraries, it doesn't sound real, it sounds like a big electronic organ. So I do one line at a time, one instrument or section at a time; like, Basses, Celli, Violas, Violins I, Violins II, etc., using single lines for each instrument or section.
And I change things as I go - sometimes piano doesn't really translate.
Before diving into the expensive sample libraries - yes, they're often worth the money once you get going - there are a number of very good, very reasonably priced choices, many of which work in the Kontakt platform, which comes with its own pretty usable sound library anyway.
Does this help?