Yanni most likely composes by working out synth melodies and accompaniments on keyboards and recording them one at a time in layers until he is satisfied. He almost certainly uses a computer-based DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to ease editing and mixing, though I don't know which one. Most of them are very similar in their function, anyway. Lots of people compose this way, even those who can read and write music, (perhaps substituting guitar or voice for keyboard). I've done it too, though I don't always compose this way.
On Yanni's Wikipedia page I saw this quote:
"He continues to use the "musical shorthand" that he developed as a child rather than employing traditional musical notation, and hires someone to perform the tedious process of making conventional written charts for orchestra members. Even so, since music is an auditory domain, Yanni must train the musicians in what cannot be conveyed in that writing."
That tells me that he uses an orchestrator (or more than one), and because I have done this kind of work myself, it is certain that the orchestrator is coming up with a lot of it himself. Very few composers who claim to be "self-taught" understand the different instruments in an orchestra and the level of detail that has to go into a written orchestra part. The fact that it still isn't played right and so he has to "train" the musicians tells me that the level of detail that he was actually able to communicate to his orchestrator was inadequate, or that he wasn't using a professional orchestrator who was up to the task.
It angers me somewhat to see words like "tedious" and "conventional" applied to the writing of orchestra parts, as if it is mere journeyman's work. In the case of composers like Hans Zimmerman and Danny Elfman, who don't read music and whose orchestrators are full partners and contribute mightily to the sound of their work, they would never speak so dismissively of the process of orchestration. They also rarely have to "train" the studio orchestras that record their music, because even though EVERYTHING cannot be communicated in the written parts, a whole lot can if it is done properly. Otherwise, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and their ilk would not sound so consistently good from performance to performance around the world with widely differing musicians playing.
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