Shaul Hadar

I personally think the hardest instrument is the piano. The fact that it uses both clefs, so each hand has its own music range, and the dynamic contrasts you can achieve by playing it makes it on top of my list! :)

Hi man, a good thing is to check great orchestral peices, like Beethoven's 9th symphone, and maybe Dvojak's "Symphony of the new world"... You will notice immense string power in those ones. The trick there most of the time is octave doubling for a thicker sound, and also a lot of players play the same line, but with different instruments. Another important thing is mixing the orchestral sound pallete, like putting high woodwinds with low strings, you will see what i mean when you try to combine them in your music software. Have great success!

Hi, I would recommend the east west libraries, and maybe the viena also. You can also check out Spitfire Audio, they have great stuff with amazing quality, and not too much composers know about them, so its kind of a secret weapon for epic orchestral music, and also all orchestral flavours.