deBreved
My Orchestration and Arranging Setup

Since moving to Sibelius, I have tweaked my setup a little.

You will notice that on my desk I have a pretty unique layout of input devices, but everything is there for a reason. I spend many hours sitting here working and have developed and refined this setup over the years. I am also always trying out new toys, anything to make work easier, faster, and more ergonomic, all of which allow me to be more creative. As I have recently made the switch to Sibelius, I have updated my set up a little. Note that this setup is totally geared towards orchestrating and arranging. While I do use it to compose, if that was all I was doing, it would be a little different.

The first thing you will notice is that the MIDI keyboard is not in a drawer underneath the desk or on it in front, but it is on the right. As I spend more time with the QWERTY keyboard and the trackball, having a keyboard in front of me just gets in the way most of the time and makes it less comfortable. For years I have used the small QWERTY as it allowed my right hand to get to the normal keys faster, not needing to jump over the numbers. I used to have the number pad to the right of the trackball, but now you will see it is to the left of the QWERTY, that is due to how Sibelius uses the number pad and the new way I have controlling DP playback. The jog shuttle has also been moved up and replaced with a new type!

Here is a list of the devices and software I use everyday to orchestrate and arrange, and why. This is current as of August 2026.

Computers

2022 Mac Studio, M1 Ultra, 128 GB.
2022 Macbook Pro, M1 Max, 64 GB.

Both machines are on Tahoe, latest update and are pretty much identical. I run Time Machine for backups. As well as all work being done out of Dropbox, which is also backing up.

Input Devices

Apple Magic Keyboard
I use this keyboard as it has a small form factor and is very reliable. The Bluetooth just works. It also has the fingerprint sensor which I can use to authorize things. You’ll notice that I do not use one with a number pad as I want to have that on the right of the trackball, and having the number pad on the keyboard puts my hands too far apart.

Kensington SlimBlade
I know a lot of people hate trackballs and even more hate the SlimBlade, but once you get used to this you won’t want to use anything else. The ball also doubles as a scroll wheel. It is also low profile so my wrist is not at a bad angle and it has extra buttons that I can use for shortcuts. I used to use a mouse but it gave me terrible wrist pain as I was always moving side to side in an awkward motion. When you have three screens, you need to be able to get around easily and with the trackball I can just spin it and get from one side to the other. I have several of these lying around. The one in the main studio is USB, but I now have one for travel that is bluetooth and works really well.

Contour Shuttle Xpress
While I don’t really use this in this way anymore, I will leave it here are my current ways were developed from this technique and others might benefit from seeing it.

This is my secret weapon. I use it to control Digital Performer in the background as I’m always referring to the original Composer file as I orchestrate or the original song if I’m arranging. Check out this video to see how I use it. I have recently improved this set up and while I still have this working as shown here, I now have a macro where I can select any bar in Sibelius and it will play from that bar of DP just from a shortcut, no extra device or hand movement necessary. It is awesome for working on planes and at studios as I don’t need to see DP anymore.

Icon MIDI i-controls
Just like with the number pads, I have tried every small profile MIDI fader controller out there and this one is the best I have found. It is large enough that it doesn’t move around as you use it, but small enough that it doesn’t get in the way. I don’t just use the faders for entering controller data when I program in Cubase but also to balance the volume in REAPER and DP as I am working. The buttons are also set to trigger various macros and shortcuts from muting and unmuting in Zoom, to starting, pausing and stopping screen recording.

Komplete Kontrol 61
I do not like this keyboard. It is awful to play and it started sending random modulation data after six months. The company refused to take it back and wanted me to send it in for them to look at and go without anything while they took their time. I chose to just ditch it as the support was crap and I don’t need to work with companies that treat professionals like weekend warriors. I’m only using it now because my other keyboard also started sending random data (pitch bend this time). I am jinxed with MIDI keyboards. If someone can show me a better one that is the same size and has nice-feeling keys, perhaps semi-weighted, I would be grateful. I do not need any other control inputs on the keyboard. I just do not use them. All of these fancy Komplete Kontrol knobs are a complete waste of time for me, and probably most people.

M Audio Keystation 61
I was in love with this keyboard when I first played it. The action is semi-weighted and just feels really good for my non-pianistic chops. But it is cheap and things tend to break, or they just stop working. I have three of them lying around, one just would not fire up one day, and then the next one started sending random pitch bend, which is actually worse than random modulation. It took me quite a while to work out why all of my MIDI was getting out of tune. So this is why I am back to using the Komplete Kontrol at the moment. Someone save me and suggest something better.

Update: I finally got around to opening up the Keystation and unplugging the pitch and mod wheels. Now it works fine, albeit without pitch bend or mod, which is fine for me.

Screens

Dell UltraSharp U2720Q 27 inch 4K Monitor
I need a lot of screen space for what I do and these Dell 27-inch 4K monitors are the best balance of real estate, resolution and price that I have found. I have three of them and I run them at the highest resolution. I do have to wear glasses though! One thing to note is that they do not swivel. I see a lot of people face-bragging and Insta-flexing about their swiveling monitors and how they can see a whole 11×17 score page in portrait mode. I have tried that and after an hour I give up as my neck gets so sore from looking up and down. It is just not ergonomic but it does make you look professional on your socials. The other thing is I work in scroll view most of the time, I only go to score/page view at the very last minute to lay out the score, so I want a setup geared towards working horizontally, not vertically.

Ipad Pro
I love my iPad! I use it for so many things. Here are some of the more important ones-

• Marking up and learning scores for concerts. I then get them color-printed. You can load audio directly into ForScore and even program page turns. While not ‘in’ ForeScore, you can also open a video and it will sit ‘on top’ of the score while you learn it.
• Marking up scores that people have sent me for feedback.
• Conducting sessions from. I don’t remember what year I started doing this, but I do have scores from Frozen 2 marked up on my iPad and I have used it on every session since at least then.
• Using as a second display if I do not take my suitcase monitor and if I do take that, I often use it as a third display.

Sound

Apogee Duet
This is pretty new to my set up. I was looking for something small that had a big knob to easily control volume and not have to look to find it. This has been working perfectly and sounds pretty good to my ears. I used to use a Universal Audio Apollo interface, but I was having a lot of driver issues. They are pretty cool and the ability to run plug-ins on them used to be a big selling point. However, computers are so much more powerful now that you don’t really need to do that to work properly, you are often just paying extra money for something that is not needed. The preamp modeling is cool, but I don’t really record anything so it’s not anything for me. And the final nail is that you can now run all of their plugins natively. The Duet does have the ability to host some of Apogee’s plugins on it. It comes with a channel strip that is useful for adding some EQ and compression to my mic before it hits zoom.

Focal Solo6 BE Studio Monitors and Sub
One day, I had a few hours between sessions at different studios, and I couldn’t work at either of them. So I called a friend and borrowed their studio. They had a pair of these speakers, and I really enjoyed the sound. When I got home I ordered a pair for myself,
and soon after I ordered the matching sub.

ARC Studio
This is new to the studio, and so far I’m really digging it. My studio isn’t in a treated room; it’s actually the master bedroom of my house. Since I work more than I sleep, I decided to treat myself to the best room for more of my time! While the room doesn’t sound terrible, running the audio through the ARC before it hits the speakers does make a difference. I used to use Sonarworks and then the Sound ID Reference, but they always gave me grief in various ways, so I stopped using them. The advantage of using the ARC Studio is that it’s a hardware box that sits between your audio interface and monitors. That means it doesn’t run on the computer. So when you listen with headphones directly from your computer, that sound isn’t affected.

Sennheiser HD650 Headphones
There are so many different pairs of headphones out there, and real audiophiles have very serious opinions about them. But these seem to be the ones that most can agree are pretty good for general-purpose work like mine. I used to use closed-back headphones, and when I discovered open-backs, I kicked myself for not doing it earlier. Open-back headphones just feel much more comfortable, and they’re not fatiguing, so you can wear them comfortably for much longer. You can also still be in a room with people and talk to them while only you hear the playback.

RØDE PodMic
Five years ago, no one needed a microphone on a stand on their desk all the time. But then something happened, and we were all stuck at our desks needing to talk to each other online all day long. It just made sense to have a decent microphone with a nice stand that you could move in and out. The irony is I ordered this microphone two months before the pandemic. I was going to make some screencasts for this blog, but I never got around to making them until now. The mic has come in very handy with all the things we now do online, from Zoom calls to producing sessions across the world. Of course, the gold standard for this sort of thing is the Shure SM7B , and in recent years, there have been many new options on the market from Shure and every other microphone company on the planet! For me, this is a big step up from using any built-in mic or one on the camera. If you’re podcasting a lot, you could probably go a few notches up.

Blue Compass Microphone Boom Arm
I started with a cheap boom arm and upgraded to this one a few months back. I’ve not regretted it at all. It’s super solid, which means I can move it around really easily, swing it in and out, and not worry about it breaking or falling off the desk.

Travel Rig

When I travel, I always pack the SlimBlade, Shuttle, and number pad in my backpack, along with a USB-C hub to connect them all. I’m not great with the MacBook trackpad, so even on planes, I prefer using the SlimBlade if I can find room. In my suitcase, I also pack the QWERTY keyboard, a MIDI keyboard, and a 24-inch monitor. I use a well worn MVST Trek aluminum. I replaced the original straps with some much stronger ones to hold things in place.

LG 24UD58-B Monitor 24″ 4K Ultrafine
There are not a lot of options for 24″ 4K screens.

UColor T3 – 23.8 Inch 4K PC Monitor
I smashed up yet another LG in the suitcase (July 25)! I am trying out this new one at the moment and it is awesome so far! It is very thin and has a simple, built in, stand. It can be bus powered, so a single USB C cable from the laptop carries the power and signal. The one catch to this is that at the high resolution and brightness I like, it needs more power than a single port can deliver. The solution is to run a second USB C cable for power, like you would use to charge your phone or ipad. It still works without this, but not as bright as I would like. Even with this it is still way easier to travel with as it does not need its own dedicated power plug and cable that I will lose or forget!

CME XKeyair 37
I really dislike using a two-octave keyboard for anything. This one is three octaves, which makes a big difference for me. I can voice larger chords or play a chord with a melody, which isn’t easy on a two-octave keyboard. The Bluetooth functionality is practically useless; it’s always difficult to connect, and when it does it frequently drops out, so I use it with a USB cable instead.

Apogee Groove
I use this for my mobile rig sometimes. It makes a significant difference in sound compared to the built-in MacBook audio. It also provides more power, which is much better for driving the HD650 headphones.

Software

Sibelius
It has been two years since MakeMusic announced the discontinuation of Finale. I was not actually that surprised; they have not been actively developing the program for 10 years. It was limping along, held together by an amazing community of people writing LUA scripts to make up for all of the shortfalls and lack of development. As many of you will know, I was never a fan of the look of ‘the other program’. In choosing a new tool, I had to weigh up lots of different things, and, even though the final look is very important to me, getting to the point is what I spend most of my day doing, so how the program works and the philosophy behind it is very important and this is where my choice become obvious. I tried Dorico, and while the look of the finished score can be amazing, the process of getting to that point did not work my workflow. For example, I work mainly in scroll view (Panorama or Galley). In Finale, I had a lot of control over how it looks, similarly in Sibelius, however in Dorico, you have no control over the spacing and measure numbers are either on all staves, creating a messy, cluttered look, or not visible at all. Also, due to the way it handles instrument doubling, you can end up with lots of extra staves getting in the way. The program is quite slow with large files and, finally, I need to be able to click and edit a note or dynamic in any mode. If I am proofreading a score and want to change a note in 3rd horn, I want to do it then and there, not switch to a different mode to make that change. If you are a recovering Finale user, you will see that, in all of these examples, Sibelius does things similarly to Finale, where Dorico has its own way.

I have been very critical of the look of Sibelius and have put many people through the wringer trying to make their Sibelius scores look like Finale. I am pleased to say that I have been working with the team from Avid on addressing these concerns and we have been making some good progress. A few things were just settings that could be changed, while others needed some new functionality. For example, I work with no default whole rests showing in my scores, but sometimes I need to show a rest. This was impossible without cheating, but it has now been implemented. What I am even more excited about is we have been working on ties and the ability to control their arc. I hope everyone will see some improvements in the near future!

I am going to leave these next sections here for old times sake. Have a laugh and see how far we have come!

Finale
I have never used another notation program. I opened the demo of S!@#$%s once when they first came out with magnetic layout. I lasted about 3 minutes because the look of the notation was still terrible, and magnetic layout has messed up more ‘scores’ than a studio executive who played in a band while at school. That’s a pretty inside joke that you’ll only get if you’ve worked on a studio film!

Dorico is looking promising, but it still has a few things that don’t fit well with my workflow—I’ll save that for another post. Well, OK, seeing as you really wanted to know, here they are the first two: The playback is too slow; even with just a piano loaded, there’s a little delay [Yay, this fixed this!]. When you have instrument doublings, it insists on putting extra staves in galley view for each instrument. Imagine I’m working on a film score with a woodwind section and 4 of the 8 players double on multiple instruments. Suddenly, you have an unworkable mess of blank staves that you can’t automatically hide. I do all of my work in scroll/gallery view, only switching at the end to layout the score, so this doesn’t work for me! At the other end of all of those staves in scroll view is the condensed view in engrave/page view. It is very powerful but you can’t edit the notes in that view! So every time I am proofing a score and want to change a note for whatever reason, I need to go back to the shit show that is write mode. Dorico does have a very powerful staff filtering function, better than Finale’s staff sets, however I don’t want to have to set these up for every score I work on and keep switching, this is something the program should be able to do, pretty please!

Once upon a time, you could open the Finale brochure and find a picture of me. I doubt they would put me in there now, even though I’m one of their biggest users. I’m very skeptical about the direction of the program, or lack thereof! The same bugs have been in it for over 10 years and never get fixed and any new features seem only tailored to the education market. I can only keep using it thanks to many plugins, Lua scripts, and hundreds of Keyboard Maestro shortcuts! Lua in particular has been a game changer.

Digital Performer
We have tried using all the DAWs to clean up MIDI and review composers’ material when we work, and DP is simply the best. A few reasons why: it has a very clean interface (you really have to go out of your way to get lost in it), smart quantize, and chunks. You can see examples in my Extreme Australian Orchestrating Video. It is old, but we still use it the same way.

Reaper
I was looking for a host for my playback sounds when checking scores for wrong notes. Hosting in Finale is problematic—it is not fun when you are checking a file for a wrong note on a session and it decides to load instruments, it also makes the program more unstable than it already is, and that is not good! I used to use Plogue Bidule, but it was giving me some issues and was a bit quirky, so I tried out REAPER and it’s been great. REAPER not only hosts the playback sounds, always loaded in the background and ready whenever I hit play in Finale, but it also has my ‘doodle’ piano loaded. I also route DP through it and it hosts the AudioMovers Listento plugin when I produce remote sessions, allowing me to use my Icon controller to adjust the volume. I plan to make a video illustrating what I’m talking about; it’s on my to-do list.

Cubase
This is my DAW of choice when I compose and program. It is not as good as Digital Performer for looking at the Composer’s files and cleaning up MIDI. I find Digital Performer terrible for programming MIDI! That is why I use both. Here are two of the many reasons:
Firstly, DP only offers one lane for controllers in the MIDI edit window. This means you either see all controllers piled on top of each other or have to navigate through small boxes and drop-downs to view them one at a time. There’s no easy way to automate these views, which is quite inconvenient.

Secondly, adjusting the MIDI playback offset for each track isn’t straightforward in DP. Unlike Cubase, which provides a slider in the Inspector for easy adjustments, DP requires adding a MIDI plugin to each track, which is a total pain. The last time I tried it, this process was more buggy than Finale. Perhaps it has improved since then, but as someone sensitive to timing issues, I need a straightforward method to make adjustments.
When writing my own scores, I also have a dedicated PC that hosts all of the samples connected via VE Pro. My assistant also has a duplicate set up so either of us can open the files and they will play back the same.

Keyboard Maestro
I first got into macro players back in 1996 when my friend Graham Lloyd introduced me to the Windows Recorder while I was still using a PC. Later, I transitioned to Quickeys and became quite enthusiastic about it. Initially, Quickeys and Finale worked better on PC, so I stuck with that platform. However, when Quickeys received a major update for Mac I made the switch. This was also necessary to be more compatible with everyone else in Los Angeles who used Mac for music. Unfortunately, development on Quickeys ceased, and we held out as long as we could but needed to find an alternative. Keyboard Maestro required a slightly different approach which was frustrating at first, but now, I can’t imagine using anything else.

I currently utilize hundreds of shortcuts. In Finale, I don’t keep any palettes open and I’ve even forgotten where many functions are located in the menus because I rely solely on keyboard shortcuts for all tasks. Actually I can’t even remember some of the triggers I use as it is all muscle memory now! I plan to create a video demonstrating this workflow, from basic tool selection (level one), to executing Lua script plugins for adding hairpins (level two), setting edit filters for copying various elements with a key press (level three), all the way up to more advanced functions such as this one that opens files for me.

ForScore
ForScore is an iPad app designed for viewing and annotating PDFs, specifically tailored for music performance. I use it for marking up scores for live concerts, which I then get color printed. I’ve been using ForScore to conduct sessions for many years, dating back as far as Frozen 2. During online remote sessions, I load the score onto my iPad to make notes using ForScore.

A lesser-known fact is that there’s also a Mac app available, and you can sync scores between devices. I load scores onto my Mac, where I add annotations such as ruling lines, navigation buttons, metronome changes, and create set lists as these things are way easier on the Mac. These edits sync seamlessly with my iPad where I can then pencil in further notes and highlights.

Pianoteq 8 Stage
This is my go-to “doodle piano,” as I like to call it. I always keep a piano loaded so I can play and check things when transcribing, composing, or just having fun while waiting for things to load or download. It’s not sample-based, so it loads quickly and has low CPU usage, but it sounds great to my ears. I know not everyone will agree with me on that though!

NotePerformer 4
NotePerformer was a game changer for notation program playback when it first came out, and now it has really stepped up by allowing you to use other sample libraries with their engine. I don’t use it while I’m actively working due to significant playback latency, but when we need to send a demo for a project, we make a copy of the score to add some more information to help the playback, and then run it through NotePerformer. Check out the bottom of this post about my Killer Mike Overture for an example of how we it sounds.

Garritan (GPO) Finale Strings
The problem with most string sample libraries is that they require a lot of controller information and key or patch switching to work properly and make anything sound half decent. They also take a long time to load. The Garritan Aria strings are designed for use with notation playback and work well with just simple note on and off midi triggering while the Aria player is solid and stable. They sound almost decent (OK, they don’t, but at least I can hear each note) and give me a good idea of what the notes sound like. I can use my imagination to know what the real strings will sound like, I have a little experience at that. I just want to know if I wrote a wrong note by accident. When I playback from Finale, I have it set to just send note on and off, no Human Playback or any controllers. I don’t put enough information in my scores to have all of that work properly. When we do make a demo and use NotePerformer, we make a copy of the score and add in more information so it plays back better.

WIVI
WIVI has been discontinued now, but as long as I can keep it working, I will use it for my score playback. It’s actually what NotePerformer grew out of. You can load any woodwind or brass instrument and even create sections that automatically distribute voices. It sounds way betters than the woodwind and brass that come with Finale.

Note that the above sample libraries are only for playback when I am working. When I write my own scores I use different ones as these are not up to the standard required in that world.

Valhalla Room
I was looking for a reverb that would sound great, be easy on the CPU, and not require an iLok or crazy authorization scheme, as I use several machines. Valhalla Room ticks all of those boxes.

Omnibus 3
I need to be able to route audio in the background. The main use for this is combining audio from a DAW with my microphone for zoom calls and making videos. I was using Loopback fro this, but was getting a few glitches so needed to try something else. While the routing is not quite as intuitive as Loopback, I find my system much happier with Omnibus and once you wrap your head around it, it is quite powerful.
Another useful application of Omnibus is creating a stable output on my MacBook that does not change when I move from a dock with an interface, to roaming with just the laptop. If you don’t have this you may have some very unhappy programs each to you move, and forget about easily using Airpods with a DAW. This solves those issues.

Fission
Fission, a cool little app from Rogue Amoeba, is my go-to app instead of Finder for quickly listening to audio files. It allows for simple edits, fades, normalization, and exporting to MP3’s.

Piezo
Ever need to quickly record audio directly from your system? Maybe you want to prove to someone that their mic is echoing, or capture a snippet from YouTube. This tool lets you record the output of any program—or even your entire system audio—with ease.

Dropbox
We work out of Dropbox for every project. This means that anyone on the team can see and open any file at any time. Another advantage of using Dropbox is that everything is constantly backed up to the cloud and saved on various computers. If a file gets corrupted, it’s easy to revert to a previous version that is intact. I also store all my Finale settings and plug-ins in Dropbox, ensuring that Finale on my studio computer mirrors the version on my MacBook exactly. My assistant also runs Finale from the same folders, allowing him to update scripts and plug-ins that will automatically load the next time I open Finale.

Slack
I can’t stand group emails almost as much as family ski trips! Slack has been a game changer for how we communicate on projects. I have channels for each project with the relevant team members, and also channels with each of the copy houses we work with, which means everything is in one place and there are far fewer emails. I also join the channels of the composers’ teams that I am orchestrating for. This keeps our work chats organized and separate from our social interactions.

Moises
I think I’ve used “game changer” to describe a few things in this article, but this one really is! AI stem splitting is a fairly new development and it has made life so much easier for us when we do transcriptions. Once upon a time, we would have to listen to the full mix and try to pick out the vocals, bass, guitar, or piano—and sometimes, it was nearly impossible to hear what was going on. Now, we can separate out all of these elements and hear them individually, which makes it much easier to transcribe. At first, it seemed unreal, like being one of the first people hearing about the internet. But once you try it for yourself, you’ll realize it’s very real, albeit a bit scary.

The app also gives us a click track that we can use to tempo map the song if it’s not in a consistent tempo. We can then have our DAW follow that tempo or flatten it out into a grid. Typically, we need to do this to lay Finale playback over it for a demo, as Finale and lots of fluctuating tempo changes shouldn’t even be in the same paragraph. Sometimes, we might just use one element from the song for a demo

Recently, I did an arrangement of Satin Doll for Alita Moses and the National Symphony. She want it in the style of The Eraser by Thom Yorke. As I was using the exact same drum groove from The Eraser for my arrangement, I split it out and used that for the demo of my version of Satin Doll. Anyone who has worked with rhythm section playback from a notation program knows what a disaster it can be!

Zight
I make screen capture videos all day—everything from giving feedback on scores to my team, to creating score videos to send to clients. I used to rely on Dropbox Capture for this and loved its power and simplicity. As soon as I finished recording, it would upload to Dropbox automatically and give me a shareable link instantly. Best of all, it was included free with my regular Dropbox subscription.

Unfortunately, Dropbox discontinued it. I think I tried every alternative available—both paid and free—and the only one that came close was Zight. It offers the exact same features, including providing a link right away, and even comes with its own storage. The only downside is that it’s a paid service.

Shotr
Shotr is a great app for quickly marking up or editing a screenshot. If you need to add an arrow or text, it’s a great tool for that purpose.

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