Over the weeks/months/years people have taken an interest in what programs I use to do what I do. And I often end up telling them the same thing *with changes over time as the set up changes obviously). So in order to save myself time, and to give one really good answer for everybody who cares, here it is.

Keep in mind,
"to orchestra is to create, and this cannot be taught. The art of orchestration can."
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov -

What this means is I can tell you what I used, and I can tell you why I did what I did, but I cannot tell you HOW I did what I did. Like the painter cannot show the student what to draw, only how they can go about drawing it.

My set up is as follows.

Host/Sequencer
Fruity Studios 7.0

VST Libraries (i'll explain VST's in a bit)
East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold PRO XP - 32 gigs
East West Symphonic Choirs - 35 gigs
East West Ministry of Rock - 20 gigs (electric guitars)
East West RA - 14 gigs
East West Voices of the Apocalypse - 2.5 gigs

West Gate (or WestSound, too lazy to research) Flute - 4 gigs
West Gate Oboe - 4 gigs

True Strike 1 (percussion) - 14 gigs

So what are VST's? VSTi's (the poltically correct term for them) stands for Virtual Studio Technology instrument. They exist for both electronic and orchestral sounds, and in fact started off primarily for the electronic genre. Orchestral libraries are generally very big because they are pretty much recordings of every note an instrument can carry out, in high quality to let composers tell their Host/Sequencer program what note they want at free will.

The more advanced libraries will have styles of play and more velocity layers for instruments. Styles of play include things like French Horn Rips, or Violin Slurs. Velocity layers means different textures of the same note depending on how high the volume you set. For example if you pressed down really hard on a violins A string, you get a grittier, more rough texture where if you just slightly slid over it, you get a smooth, somewhat weak timbre. So not only do the libraries have recordings of each note, but MULTIPLE recordings so to provide more realism depending on how high/low the volume you set them to.

Then there are things like Key Switches but those are not something i'm going to get into now.

Let me know if you have any other questions, I will add them here or answer them to the best of my ability, I hope this helps!

In other news, the collab is coming along, hoping to get that done before the end of this month!