This was now my second try to do the work of an orchestrator.
To be honest, the first try (~1 year ago) was a big fail. At that time my brother gave me a composition as MIDI files, and I tried to “improve” it – it turned out that I could not improve even a single bar and everything sounded much worse than the original.
This time, things worked better in some way. Again it was my brother who sent me the composition as MIDI, but it was already broken down into the essence: melody, harmony, rythm, and not more than one additional layer. It was very easy to lay this out into various orchestral sections and give the whole composition some extra spice with some instruments from the mid-east.
According to FL Studio, which is the DAW of my choice, the orchestration work took me around 24h. I have to admit that I did not do most of the percussions myself, this was also done by him.
By the way: My brother used not my orchestral version but got a slightly different version, which he would weave into a more electronic bed. But I always prefer the orchestral-only version.