I am a classical composer with work catalogue of over 50 works. Most of my works are composed for symphony orchestra with or without a soloist. I did my masters studies at Sibelius Academy, but studied also mathematics and computer science at Helsinki University. Even in my early orchestral works I tried to find algorithms to combine instrument sounds as a full-sounding spectrum. In 2018 I started my doctoral studies at Sibelius Academy in order to research possibilities of algorithmic help in orchestration practice.
The motivation to start my research came from situations I encountered several times at the orchestra rehearsals: An inaudible solo instrument, i.e. the desired solo instrument, which I call target, is masked by the surrounding orchestration. The most popular orchestration study books, such as Piston and Adler, concentrate mainly on teaching how to combine instruments and how to orchestrate for certain effect, but very little about the audibility of the target. For example Samuel Adler has couple of mentions about the audibility, but does not provide a formula or a table about which combinations are safe and which not. There is definately time to have a comprehensive study on the orchestration audibility issue.