TOP 5 ORCHESTRATION MISTAKES!
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- Опубликовано: 14 авг 2024
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In this video I come clean about some of the horrendous orchestration mistakes I made on my 20+ year journey to understand how to write for orchestral instruments. It's never going to be pain-free but hopefully you can learn something from my mistakes.
Mistakes:
0:37 Harmonies that sound good on the piano don’t always sound good on other instruments.
3:23 High notes sound high even on low instruments.
4:34 Unintended comedy
5:52 Unison string doublings, especially for medium paced tunes.
7:01 Funky rhythms and how to write them for classical players.
Adam Neely's video "How and why classical musicians feel rhythm differently " which I mention in mistake number 5.
• How and why classical ... 
Видеоклипы
This is so great, I've definitely made some of these mistakes including the unison doublings and some suspect things with register! The "funky rhythm" thing at the end of course speaks to me - one thing that might help with syncopation is heavy dynamic accents on downbeats, which ends up with "lighter" feeling syncopations. Also somehow getting them to feel a longer subdivision (in that last example, half notes) ends up with a more natural result than trying to feel the rebound off of every downbeat.
Thanks a lot Adam, yes, although my solutions have helped make the rhythms at least playable I have to admit the actual micro-quality of the groove is an aspect which is almost impossible to discuss meaningfully in most classical ensembles both because it's not something they're familiar with thinking about, and also because it's virtually impossible to negotiate amongst more than say 4 musicians. One day I plan to have my own ensemble who work at it for months on end before they finally get the micro-groove I'm after (-:
A wild Adam Neely appears!
I think the habitat suits him around here (-:
look at that, my two favorite music boiz in one comment section, how grand
fangasm!!!!
one of my main gripes is the sheer neglect of the percussion section! most composers see it merely as "decoration" what they don't realise is there are some beautifully melodic instruments in there, also the sheer vastness of tonal variation, for example....have you ever heard a tam-tam played with supper-ball mallets, a vibraphone played with bows or tubular bells being lowered into water. No other section of the orchestra has such a massive dynamic and tonal range. One funny one, a humble triangle as pathetic as most look at it it is capable of cutting over the top of the most powerful orchestral tutti and with correct muting can create a really funky and lively latin rhythm. So please all you composers.....give the percussion some love
Triangles can be things of beauty, or things or terror. I was a percussion tutor for a prominent high school concert band, and found the triangle they were using was just a $5 'toy' from a music shop, yet they had 4 hammered copper timpani, a selection of quality maple, birch, ans steel snare drums, quality mallet percussion... you get the idea. But their auxillary was completely overlooked. Luckily, the director was open to buying a nice Alan Abel triangle and set of different sized beaters, and a Grover brand tambourine with a head.
It just took a single one hour tutorial with the percussion section on proper striking position and technique for both, and it had an amazing effect. The the quiet section with the triangle starting the bar, and the flutes to entering softly underneath it with a melody and the clarinets and horns swelling in long notes went from sounding abysmal to beautiful. The tambourine added a real punch without the force of a drum for some quieter rhythmic passages... The director thought I was a miracle worker when really it was just few people treat aux percussion seriously, and thus by horrible quality instruments and don't bother to learn even the basic playing technique.
I remember one of the other bands were using a low quality triangle, and hitting with a drumstick (and we are talking bands made up of primarily 17 and 18 year olds)... in the adjudicator's notes he mentioned how the band whom I'd worked and another whom really respected the aux parts had done such a fantastic job with the aforementioned sections, and absolutely slammed the band that had the drumstick on triangle.
TL;DR I agree the percussion section has so much to offer, but unfortunately it often gets a bad rep because the percussionists are unfamiliar with correct playing techniques, and have 'toy' quality instruments. If writing for a specific band, it's often worth seeing the quality of their gear and choosing accordingly... their is know point using the beautiful effect of a bowed cymbal if it's going to be played on a $10 cymbal, or by a player whom doesn't know how to bow a cymbal :-D
Very easy to over-use, though. I have to filter out a lot of glock and bells because their effect would be so lessened if I included them as much as I truly wanted to. It's true there's many effects available to percussion, but tbh almost none of them have any sustained application. Bowing any tuned metal, like crotales, is an exception.
Triangle tremolo doubled with high woodwind trills, and perhaps glock trill as well, is a wonderful texture.
Personally, I'm a terrible percussionist. So, I write very little percussion.
In my orchestral pieces, there is never less than four precussion players. I confess: I love percussion.
The ending of "Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is a great example of the thundering timpani and the "cutting" triangle.
I'm gonna be hearing that high B in my sleep
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-(bubbles)-buzz, giggle, buzz
If you want to use bassoon or oboe in a chord, remember that any dissonance will be much stronger than with other instruments
The thing that I love in your vlog is your charecter, not like most of the other music vlogs you don't show yourself as a "Super-Musician who knows everything" but in way you even admit the fact that you are not always knows whats right, and this humble
.personality (which sits well in many composers personality) is more humane and fun to listen to
And that is how learning curve is achieved. And guarantee of advancement. I just subbed for that. These people are the teachers I want to learn from.
1:48 My new ringtone.
Sounds like your phone farted!
As an early teen writing Arrangements, I used to take my Horn parts over to a friend's house. He was an accomplished Saxophonist and I would have him play through my music so I could hear what it sounded like. I was rarely disappointed but one time the results of what I had written made me fall on the floor in uncontrollable laughter.
Very interesting for a non composer too. Please write a piece featuring all these mistakes. Could be hilarious!
"A composer's guide" or something like that.
Try "Ein Musikal Spass" by Mozart. (I think that's how it's spelled)
rodgrego Musical Joke by Mozart, as MrInitialMan suggests (but in English)
"So you want to write a fugue", which Glenn Gould said he intended as a sort of recruitment ad for counterpoint in composing, has a lot of witty things going on in opposition to what his singers are singing at the moment. For instance, "Never be clever for the sake of being clever, for the sake of showing off", and the instruments and vocal parts are competing with each other at that moment to derail each other with complexity, resulting in what the composer called the annihilation of a fugue at the end.
Check musescore.org for the world's largest collection of such pieces.
Grieg once did the opposite of the "unintentional comedy" in that he wanted to create a satirical lampoon of what he considered an almost epidemic of over-the-top national-romantic pieces being composed at the time. But to Grieg's great annoyance people ate it up and loved it without any sense of the "parody" or "irony" he was going for, and like many others before and after, he had become the very thing he set out to destroy :p (the piece being In The Hall Of The Mountain King... a piece, according to Grieg in a letter to his friend Franz Beyer, so reeking of cow dung and ultra-"Norwegianism" that he himself couldnt bear to listen to it).
Sa-satire. Incredible
Good stuff. On another note, a few tips I've learned to pass along when orchestrating with midi keyboards. #1: Never play a string chord as a chord -- always voice it one part at a time. In this way they each have their own vibrato rate and it sounds more "real." Played together it will sound embarrsassingly like 80's synth stuff. #2: Understand the range and abiilty of the instrument. Just because that oboe CAN play 32nd notes in eight octaves doesn't mean it should. #3: Keyboards are tuned perfectly to A 440. Consequently when playing in the upper register, they will sound a little flat. And the bass will sound a little sharp. People don't realize that even temperament is a sort of "cheating" and what most good players do is compensate somewhat (even subconsciously) when playing in the upper register by going a little sharp. But an electronic instrument doesn't know that, and the pitch becomes difference becomes apparent if one's ears are fine tuned. When playing a note two or three octave above middle C I find I have to "bend" it a bit to sound in tune. As for bass, I set up my bass guitar so that the E string and B string are a tad flat, and that in turn sounds more "in tune." And #4: When playing counterpoint I find that instruments that have a similar timbre will clash. This is a case of simply finding what sounds best, but an English horn and a bassoon playing counterpoint can wind up sounding like one messy rhythm. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule!
Why would different octaves not sound equally "in tune" in equal temperament? Every note is related to itself in other octaves by either division or multiplication by 2. As far as I'm aware, the reason certain instruments sound sharp or flat in different registers is because of how they were made. For instance, I know that the altissimo range in saxophones has multiple occurences of the same note tuned differently, so players may choose one or the other and then proceed to lip it in tune. Another example is that most woodwinds sound sharp in the higher register and flat in the lower one because playing higher notes requires more air and mouth pressure, which in turns sharpens the note.
@@karlpoppins That's a part of it, but there's also a matter of even temperament. It isn't exact. It's somewhat "squished" so that we can extend the range. (Many renaissance period instruments were only a couple of octaves). We can't really hear it in the middle register but it starts to become apparent in the extended range. That's why many piano tuners use "stretch" tuning. (Making the upper octave a tad sharp and the lower octave a tad flat).
@@NelsonMontana1234 I don't understand. If I multiply A 440 Hz by a natural number I will keep getting octaves of A. Now, if I multiply A 440 Hz by 12√2 n amount of times, I will get the note which is exactly n half-steps above that A. Equal temperament was designed to be exact and symmetric, while sacrificing intervalic quality. It shouldn't sound flat or sharp in any octave.
Are you talking about the process of tuning? Because, for instance, tuning all notes in a piano in relation to A 440 Hz, any error will accumulate the further away we are from the centre - and that's why pianos are tuned by octave, from the centre and outwards.
@@karlpoppins Theoretically, you are correct A440 should double to A880 and so forth as you go up by octaves. However, pianos are tuned sharper as you go up and flatter as you go down to account for something called inharmonicity (based on length, tension, and properties of the wire), which is characteristic of the piano. If one tunes pure octaves, the 5ths will end up too flat (Comma of Pythagoras). The bigger the piano and the better the quality of instrument the lower the inharmonicity will be. Some orchestras and other musicians are having their pianos tuned to A442. I'm a piano technician. Hope this helps!
@@karlpoppins Brent explained it perfectly. That applies to all instruments and it's especially apparent on midi instruments. It may SOUND like an English horn but it's still an electronic A 440. And the "inharmonicity" becomes apparent when going to the register above C7 (That's two octave above middle, not C dom)
Thanks for this video. It's very helpful. Something my wife, who's an accompanist, pointed out to me on one of my pieces is that I didn't give the wind players many places to breathe. She told me they'd be keeling over during the piece. That's one of the unexpected challenges I discovered with notation programs; computers don't have to breathe.
Two contradictory lessons I've learned are to make parts as easy as possible to perform, but then also don't underestimate a performer's ability and give them material that sacrifices too much complexity for its easiness. It's all about finding a balance, especially with instruments you don't play yourself, and it's taken me ages to finally crack the ratio for just writing for pianists.
It helps a lot if you can actually play the instrument in question, so you can try out what you've written. You don't have to be _good_ at it, because you can fumble and crawl as much as you want, but you should be able to figure out whether or not where will be physical difficulties in the part. Writing stuff that _sounds_ really difficult, but actually is easy on the instrument in question, makes both the musician and the audience happy. For example, properly constructed four-note arpeggios flying up and down over two octaves are easy on violins and violas, where they are exceptionally difficult if played on, say, a clarinet.
Basically, if you have a grasp of the instrument sufficient to know what its characteristic idioms and tropes are, and you know _why_ its players gravitate toward those techniques, you'll be able to wield that instrument a lot more effectively than if you're just using a book or tutorial as a guide. Done right, you can end up with really complex compositions consisting entirely of parts that the individual musicians find relatively simple, or maybe that there are a handful of trouble spots that will require dedicated individual practice.
It's interesting to see what it is musician's have more or less difficulty with, especially when it's opposite what you expected. Sometimes, (probably more with less experienced musicians,) it's not even about the instrument per se, it's about what the musicians are familiar with, like his examples about funky rhythms.
Music that shows off technical ability does not require complexity. The most difficult music tends to be what's musically difficult rather than technically difficult. The things that sound difficult tend to actually be easy while the things that sound easy are likely more difficult.
E.B. White some players are incredibly skilled and will blow you mind. I’m always surprised by what many professional musicians can do.
I would never write a piece of music in terms of easy or complex. That's just doing something for the sake of it. To me, writing music is like expressing a story through sound and melody.
"A mere stroke of the pen" was how an old mate of mine would describe an arranger who didn't do his homework. We never stop learning & your videos are very helpful. Thanks.
2:40 These are not french horns, these are dinosaur horns, by John Williams :) Knew the soundtrack by heart since childhood!
Thanks for pointing out the 2 violins in unison, I hear many composers do that one incorrectly, and like stated, all your mind pays attention to is the slight difference in pitch. Can drive someone crazy I feel
really great , honest and entertaining as well.
1:46 feels like a ship tanker captain sipping coffee when entering the port. G Sharp Flatte Latte.
Your comment about writing a very difficult passage for the horn player reminded me of a composers' workshop I was in, back in the last 1970's, with the composers also being the performers. The composer/performer whose primary instrument was the piano wrote a challengingly soft, high horn part for the brass player (me). After auditioning it in the first rehearsal, and discussing that she really did want those notes, we agreed that the better (i.e., safer) approach was for me to play it on flugelhorn.
He was right, that horn solo at 5:18 was quite hilarious 😂
Thanks for this video. Often, performers get blamed for a poor result when, in fact, the writing is a product of lack of experience. (And yes, sometimes an piece simply isn’t learned well enough.)
I like your humility.
Even though I’m a pianist, I almost never use the piano to compose with. As you observe so well, it can give a false sense of what the end result will sound like.
How kind of you to own up to your earlier mistakes so that the rest of us might avoid them in our own writing. Thank you.
i actually love the sound of that chord
Good points. That syncopated clarinet example at the end is cool.
I have found that studying the overtone distribution of different instruments is very enlightening and can be really enabling to make artistic orchestrations not just standard or safe choices. Also I love you channel! You really seem to have a genuine wealth of knowledge that make your videos very valuable (refreshing compared to most musician youtubers). I would love more content to hear your opinions of contemporary music and the future.
The way I learned bits of orchestration was taking an old score from the 1800s and up and putting the whole thing into notation software so that I got to study each individual part and the little nuances between each instrument. The hardest part for me was learning the tons of string techniques such as harmonics, pizzicato, the different types of sounds, etc.
Thank you for this lesson! I have problems both larger and smaller than yours: I arrange for a Scottish bagpipe band! A dozen players all playing identical instruments, each with the same 9-note range. The good: due to the limited range the harmonies are always tight, and due to the Just Intonation tuning certain chords blend better than on piano. The bad: due to the limited range there are loads of chords you'd love to do but can't, and due to the Just Intonation tuning there's one brutal interval, the very narrow 5th between C and G (the Major 2nd and the Major 6th). Also all players sound continuously (no articulation or rests) the timbre is strident and every note of the scale sounds at its unique (and unchangeable) volume level. Low Ab honks out super loud while high Ab is quiet and sweet. (The notes generally get softer as you go higher, the opposite of many instruments.) Nevertheless the top Pipe Bands such as Field Marshal Montgomery, with 25 pipers, get a lovey blend with rather complex arrangements.
As a violinist I cannot agree more on the two strings together. The hardest passage in Boheme has always been for me Mimi's death as a coprincipal, trying to blend all the notes with the first violin is much more difficult that many virtuoso passages in the opera. And those are different notes! Unison is a hell of a beast in two
Fantastic! As a bassoonist who works in jazz and funk and utilizing an electric pickup-I’ve screwed up so much being addicted to the grid of Logic and even Finale to some degree. The advice you give is so valuable to those of us who like to play and attempt to write music of many idioms. Thank you!
Thanks for the great tips! The best advice I ever got is to tailor the complexity/difficulty of the piece to the musicians who are going to perform it. This is especially applicable for amateur/developing composers writing for school/uni ensembles. The music I would write for my high school orchestra was way too difficult and routinely performances sounded awful. I remember going to a workshop with a composer who told me he was writing a piece for a children's guitar ensemble. He knew there was no chance they were going to play in tune or with good tone so he made the piece focus on rhythm and percussive qualities more. He managed to get the best music possible out of that group.
I feel like your advice about avoiding doubling unison strings could depend on the the skill of the ensemble. I'm pretty sure in Debussy's string quartet in the 3rd movement there are some passages where the viola doubles the violin melody. I agree that would be best to avoid unless lucky enough to be commissioned by a top string quartet!
The two string problem is a classic. I was taught "three violins play better in tune then two" and it's true every damn time. One of my first arranging opportunities as a teen was for a small pit band with strings 2 violins, a viola and a cello. (Ya, bass too.) I was lucky the violist was really good, because I added the viola to the violins when we needed a rich unison, and that's way closer to your nose on viola than on the violin.
thank you so much for this honest video. I've never seen a composer actually admitting and owning up to their mistakes like this - so much respect! I feel so much more motivated to carry on now
Great information, David... thanks! Your string comments are so right. Two violins in unison or octaves is terrible. One other thing I've discovered about the string section, never write anything that's supposed to "swing." Don't double the brass or sax parts that swing. Just write some nice whole notes and chords. You don't even need to have any anticipations at all; put it all on the downbeat. The brass interpretation of swing will never match what the strings think they should do, so let everyone play in their strength. Strings are not strong at swinging. And brass cannot hold chords forever. Well anyway that's my 2 cents and how I avoid disasters.
Another good one to remember, especially with regard to woodwinds, is that their lower registers, all in all, are more timbrally distinct than their higher registers. Lower-register notes have much richer harmonic content than higher-register pitches, so there’s more to distinguish them to our ears!
I only just started my foray into orchestral composing and arranging last year. after a friend introduced me to Musescore. It was great to actually finally hear my music fully realized at last coming through my speakers. While I've composed a number of pieces and find I have a natural affinity for it, I am playing catch-up as far as becoming familiar with each of the instruments and their function in the orchestra and what the score should look like. I have a sometimes eccentric perspective when it comes to instruments, so this video helped by teaching me that just because something might seem cool or funky in theory, it doesn't follow it will in application....and not to get to ambitious. Thanks.
This is fantastic!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge man. 👍
4:36 one of my favourites - there's a moment in lutoslawski 3rd symphony where the harp and the xylophone sound like they're doing iphone notification sounds 😂
Can it be difficult to communicate with performers through the score? In other words I imagine score clarity is something novice composers take a while to get their heads around and it probably takes a lot of experience to refine? Back in college a composer friend asked me and a singer to perform his song for soprano and piano. The vocal line was written under the piano part! But even more fun was that the song was clearly in C minor but rather than using a key signature he opted for accidentals. (His refusal to make my suggested revisions was partly because he was shocked to discover he composed a piece that had functional harmony. Oh, what outrage!)
+AndrewJC
You actually can read a vocal part that's below the piano line, it's just awkward when you're not used to it. Still, its absurd to write a vocal line below a piano line because nobody's used to it and it doesn't make sense intuitively.
@@AndrewCout In some older scores, vocals (at least choirs) would go between the cello and viola parts, spliting the strings in half; I'm not sure why, though. In modern scores I think that all vocals are written directly above the strings.
James Brown told his bass players to play the one - after that, they could syncopate all they wanted. Without the one, there is no funk - just bouncing around.
Which later oooozed over to George Clinton Pfunk. Bernie Worrell always incorporated classical music in the song.
This is very useful. Having composed some 48 symphonies and about 150 other works, I still keep a home-made "cheet-sheet" available as an author would a dictionary when writing a novel. It is easy, even when experienced to write a note too low or too high for a particular instrument (especially if one does not play it ). A reminder of the "break" for the clarinet is handy too. When scoring a work for many instruments, it is hand to keep a printed page of the score to refer to during composition. I write straight on to the full score which has advantages though some disadvantages too (a little tedious perhaps - so one may be prone to making mistakes.
There are two schools of thought regarding transposing instruments - writing the part transposed can simplify things later when (if!) the parts are being prepared for performance or to write the part "in C" - i.e., as written. Many published scores show the parts as sounding as written. For what it is worth, I treat the English Horn as an alto Oboe and write it in the C clef as for a Viola.
I think it is advisable to be consistent when scoring a work (whether straight to the full score or orchestrating a short score) so as to reduce the number of mistakes from the start - if you have lots and lots of pages, the last thing you want is to go through the whole damn lot and find tons of mistakes. Playing the work through frequently helps too.
Ooh I can really relate to this, especially the third mistake!
I was orchestrating a piece originally written for solo violin, played it back on MIDI and couldn’t stop laughing at the percussion part!!!
Brilliant video. Thanks. I guess after 20 years, one can remember all of this minutiae. However, it sounds very daunting. If it were all written down, it would be a great starting point for we beginners.
Enjoyed that David - especially your face at 4’20” - valuable points mate
Thank you David! All this priceless knowledge so easily accessible. I am grateful. I really believe it's the best time to be alive.
I love this stuff - I really wish music theorists touched more on relationships between different instruments, sounds and voices, because at the moment it seems like some of these things can only be learned through practice (or reading a quite old book by Rimsky-Korsakov). There doesn't seem to be many definitive "rules" on orchestration or arranging, and these things are very interesting.
For example, the thing you said about oboes and bassoons having lots of overtones - I realized I had been unconsciously scoring for perhaps less than the normal amount of oboes and bassoons (usually one of each as opposed to two or more) in orchestral or concert band pieces because I didn't like the excessive overtones blending with the rest of the sound - one of each was enough for me.
It's easy enough to orchestrate based on sound, but knowing about specific instruments and their weak points either takes a lot of time learning instrument's specifics or access to several different musicians (the latter of which isn't available to those of us who write in notation software or DAW's). It would be nice if there was some better way to learn good orchestration other than years upon years of practice.
The softwares to write notation have awful sounds. Ableton or fl studio have good soundfonts and you can have an idea of how the instruments will blend.
Morgoth714
It doesn't have to take years to start to get an understanding! I used Thomas Goss's orchestration tips as well as his book. He's quite interactive with those who follow him, and I believe he still helps his Patreon patrons with their scores. He also helped create orchestration videos on macProvideo. All of this helped me to get a MUCH better understanding.
Of course, you can always gain insight from a variety of composers and their tips.
One of the most important practice tips is to SCORE READ! Even if you just can do a little at a time, it can always help you to hear others' take on the tonal color palettes of instruments.
Morgoth714
Check out Orchestration Online, both on RUclips and the website!
Bryan Whitehead the channel from Smalin is great to read the scores. He made animations with colors and shapes that is easier to read.
Augusto
Ahhh...thanks! The internet is amazing. Anyone who says it's bringing our downfall hasn't used it to learn things they'd never could before 😁
In respect to the bassoon observation. Not shouting but just pointing out that Brahms uses bassoons for middle harmonies quite nicely indeed. He gets a rich silky quality out of them.
Entry of the Gladiators is the Mistake No 3 brought in another level.
You look really zen when you speak. I really enjoyed this.
Orchestration was the one area I flubbed in school, after breezing through counterpoint, harmony and history. This is invaluable, David--understanding at least 18 different instruments in all their quirky glory is a monumental task.
I know the high clarinet didn't give the effect you wanted, but I really love the sound of that passage you played around 4:00.
日本人です。作曲を趣味でしています。素人です。一連大変勉強になります。ありがとうございます。
小生は楽器の経験もないし、ピアノのような音が出るものも持っていません。
Finaleというソフトに音符を入力しています。
先人の偉大なコンポーザーの残した音が唯一のてがかり。それを解説していただいてますので参考になります。
That register/dynamics relationship is something you learn REAL fast once you start hearing your work performed! I've also gotten in trouble for 1. a pizzicato passage that couldn't be played at the given tempo and 2. an elaborate, up-tempo soprano sax line with absolutely nowhere to breath. That second one (to my horror) actually happened in a recording session. The player and the engineer saved me by building the whole thing two bars at a time in Pro Tools. Thanks for another terrific video.
ALWAYS write trumpet parts from F below the treble clef staff down to Ab below that. GLORIOUS!!!!
;-)
Great video! I've not tried my hand at classical composing yet, but for the many, many times I've composed for Jazz ensembles and combos, and even rock and metal bands, I've made too many mistakes to count. Instruments not blending, lines getting too loud from the choice of which instruments double what lines, etc. It's nice to see some of the other traps that I can now try to avoid falling into when I start on the other end of the spectrum. For other people aspiring to compose, I can recommend the book, "Arranging for Large Jazz Ensemble", by Dick Lowell and Ken Pulling. Not classical, but some of the same rules apply.
Again, Henry Brant's book _Textures and Timbres: An Orchestrator's Handbook_ addresses many of these very issues -- and many more. Essential reading!
Good point about the need for something on the beat in order to delineate something off the beat. Didn't stop Holst doing it all the way through (and highly problematically) The Planets, though!
These are some great tips! I've recently been thrown into an "orchestral rut" lately, and this has helped immensely! Thank you!
One of the best music tutorials I've yet seen on RUclips.
(5:52) I am amazed by the fourth mistake because we found it in so many pieces
Toscanini used to say that studying Ravel's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition was the best lesson for anyone who wanted to master the art.
These were fun to hear! I was thinking that lines like that high clarinet would sound great on a wood piccolo at low volume and you might still be able to salvage a more "pure" blending quality.
Glad you came up in my recommended, just subscribed and looking forward to more!
I've been told as oboes play higher the sound gets softer. Although my piccolo is wood, not everyone has one. Perhaps cues written for oboe or piccolo?
@@rheamorales1329oboes certainly become very soft in the high register but unfortunately the range is cut pretty short :(
I would say that one mistake we usually fall is believing that one instrument alone doesn’t sound good, in reality a virtual instrument alone sounds horrible that is why composers tend to write tutti all the time, in real life soloing instruments creates a lot of interest to the ear, just check John Williams’s music he always featured the flute, French horn or oboe as his fav solo instruments!
I made a quite silly mistake when I wrote my first piece for orchestra: i wanted a high violin line, but to me (as a singer) a line in the top half of the beam already looked quite high. So when I finally heard the piece being played the violin sounded quite dull. Luckily the violin players didn't mind just playing everything one octave higher than I wrote down. I now know that violins are used to read music that goes way above the beam.
I've only had the opportunity to write for wind ensemble once so I included a piccolo trumpet for some very high trumpet harmonies. I wrote a bunch of high Fs in it because the notation software said it wasn't a problem note. The conductor informed me that playing that many was virtually impossible, he was a trumpet player. But the buy playing the part was a friend of mine who was excited to take the challenge and ended up nailing the part. It sounded strained and grating but that was what the entire piece was supposed to be like, most of it was based on grindcore and the music of Death Grips.
I have revised the piece since then, but it's never been performed again
Do you have a recording? I'd like to taste it
One thing I learned from experience is the difference between a trumpet in the extremely high register, and the horn in the extremely high register. Trumpets playing really high give a powerful scream like you hear in jazz bands. I made the mistake of writing a written high-C in a horn part thinking I would get that same exciting scream. It came out more as a strained whimper. The horn loses a lot of power when the player pinches like that. I found I could get the desired effect with a written high-G or even high-A. But beyond that, and the excitement diminishes.
This is the channel I've been waiting for. Thank you so much for this great content!
I am so glad you shared this. I totally understand the funk versus classical orchestration moment as well as the unintended comedy. I did those mistakes in undergrad and did not understand why and then gave up for 10 years. I wish
I had had teachers in undergrad who could have pointed this out to me or had been open enough to have learned.
Thank you Bruce , your videos are most I formative and entertaining. There are probably a lot of people who like myself have the education, but through career imperatives as media composers, have only seldom been in fully orchestral situations, and i think you are catering to us perfectly :)
Thanks for being so humble with your talent and sharing the mistakes you’ve made. I would love a sequel to this! Goes to show that even the Pros stumble from time to time
The honesty in your video is what I appreciate the most.
Thank you so much! I am writing my first piece for a small orchestra, under the supervision of a maestro, but being used to composing software I don't get to learn often about the rich tone color and character of every instrument.
Fifth example helps me out quite a bit. Having a massive orchestral sound library has helped me figure out what tends to sound good together, but doing unique rhythm work is one of my weaknesses.
Very interesting video and kudos for taking examples in your own body of work ! That’s courage to me.
I've been in the music world since my freshman year of high school (2014), and thus have not had many chances to take private lessons, instrumental or theoretical. Nevertheless, I started writing my own music in 2016, where I mainly stuck to arranging tunes for pep band, and even tried to write a whole marching show based off of a Green Day song. Very ambitious. But now, I am writing a piece for orchestra based off of a poem we read in my English class for a presentation I have to give in around 2 weeks, so this video is a godsend. Thank you, David! You and Adam Neely make the best videos in the field of music education.
Check out Thomas Goss' Orchestration Online as well. They're very informative.
Rufus Stanier I am subscribed to his page as well. He does an excellent job too
I think the Smalin channel's score visualizations really help. They have helped my sightreading, playing, and of course, how a score fits together with the various parts, They help you get inside the score. I watch them over and over following or singing a different part each time. I also watched my kid learn to sing difficult scores in a short time. I especially recommend the Bach, and the Sousa selections will be of interest since you write for your band. You might also like the pieces by Holst.
Who's playing it? Just curious.
The North Wind Was a Woman sounds really cool. I hope to hear the rest of it soon.
Thanks, CD coming out next year!
! Although every composer could use the advantage of amusement, that inappropriate sound combinations form, I totally agree with you, David, regarding to the possible meticulousness !
woah ...had no idea that making harmony from multiple instrument combinations was a thing ...... mind = blown
Intuition has played a good part on me about those things, probably comited those mistakes as well while younger, but studying music theory helps to clarify a lot of things. It's an advantage to be able to learn from the internet as well, youtube included, and this kind of channels help us to gather more knowledge as well, to put it in practice; not just believing everything, but trying and testing how stuffs work.
This is so enlightening. I learned so much. This will improve my skills as a music listener. And, I love David’s willingness to criticize himself and not take himself too seriously.
The technique I use in composition is not ever making a piece or using a piano at all. I have a keyboard but I use it to jam on things and learning scales. Instead I use the tambers and characters of different instruments. Which ones go together well and what harmonization to use. What instrument is the melody, counter melody, harmony, or bass line. For instance, in my early concert band work, I used two lines. Melody (or repeating motif in other scenarios) and rhythm (bassline). In one of my latest published works: Waterskating Dances Overture, the Bass Trombone, Euphonium, Tuba, and Acoustic Guitar will play a dance like bassline with a cello doing 16th notes in tenuto. Up the top it's all the woodwind instruments minus flute and bass clarinet (maybe) playing the main motif in D major. Other times, like after the initial oboe solo on same piece and melodic part of my first piece: Wandered Naive, there would be the top line playing repetitive runs with the low brass playing a powerful melody (according to the specific sound of it). It's the character that mattered to me. Character still matters but I also use a new technique in how the group plays out with each other. Use October by Eric Whitacre as an example. Section F, G major. Whitacre makes every instrument playing treat their own line as if they're playing their own melody. That's something I am using in my current project of my first piece for Trombone Choir called "to God I Sing". That section will build up to an E#3 chord, turning to a sort of F# minor type chord before reaching to the peak in G major. That section of those 3 measures of the E, F#, then G is where most the players harmonize chords as if it reaches a unity. After that, the 1st Tenor Trombone will solo a passage like in Ryan George's "The Wild Goose" where the English Horn soloist plays in a void of silence in a couple measures. Unlike that though, the soloist will be completely exposed. One outlier is when both Alto and 2&3rd Tenor Trombones with do a B->C/D->E line, crescendoing at the first note, the peaking and immediately diminuendoing down to niente in the middle of the first Tenor solo. The solo will end at the beginning of the buildup done by Basses and ContraBass Trombone to the main ending moment.
I only write 10-40 measurements preludes for church chorals, and rearrange orchestra pieces to organ or piano solo, but I really laughed at mistake one. That was the first mistake I discovered, and I wondered a lot about what was going on. One bass bottom note on piano fell flat on organ, or the opposite - so for example C/G could work on one of them, but not the other.
Also chords must have a correct distance between notes, which differ between piano and organ (and more so when using several manuals/pedal with different voices). Sometime some harmonies can have notes very close together on piano but not on organ, sometimes the opposite.
I am still in the stage that I have to try it out a lot (lucky to have piano, organ and harpsichord at home).
Also, I wanted to learn a new instrument, so I chose double bass (just pizzicato simple basslines or playing choral bass notes). I got the "brilliant" idea to try the descant, the highest voice on that. O how the tune lost all substans. :D Really fun. Bass recorder though, usually does sound really great for those high voices.
These short lessons are worth gold even for home studio "composers".
Fascinating. I am not a composer myself, but it was enormously interesting to learn a little about all the issues involved. Sometimes when listening to contemporary music, it seems like there are no rules, but when it comes to making such music that is sonically coherent and has artistic integrity, it is clear that there will always be many rules!
Wonderfully informative. Thank you, David, for another great video!!
This is why we develop timbre. XD
Very nice video, comes to show why knowing instruments are the best way to compose.
0:18 Mozart: Clarinet Concerto: III. Rondo :)
I'm just starting to make orchestral arrangements and i made a lot of mistakes as well lol so ill share some things i learned on this time:
First, See how instruments you have on the orchestra so you´ll know if it's logical give them lead parts or just backgrounds parts. I made an arrangement and gave some important parts to the violas. We just have 2 violas and a ton of violins so lol it didnt sound at all. First of all bc for nature the violas are not really loud, second bc we just had two so probably not even the players were able to hear themselves during rehearsals. Ofc this depends of the nature of the instruments, it's not the same to have two violas than have two trumpets or two oboes.
Second, See the level of the players. Ask the director or the players themselves what are their difficulties, what is the range they have on their instruments and if you can hear them play that would be amazing. I had some arrangement the last month (my first one beng able to use a wind section and trombon). And well here is the thing on orchestration class they can teach you about ranges of the instruments, but it all depends of the level of the player. A little trumpetist usually suffer a lot to play a C5, but a youg trumpetist can be more confident about it. So well i made this arrangement and gave to the flutes some parts where they have to play B6!!! Bc "on theory the can play it", you think "oh it sounds cool on Sibelyus nice i'll do this :D" but no, big mistake, if they are not ready to do it, then change the melody to a more normal one. You don´t want to frustrate them too, that's not the idea. You must know what they can and what they cannot do so you will make an arrangement that you have the certain it will sound good and also the players can have fun.
Third and maybe most important, dont overcomplex the things. Sometimes you don't have to do a lot of things to make your arrangement sounds good. "less is more" and specially if you are unexperienced and you are still learning about orchestration. It's cool to try things but also remember that this is something that wil be played by humans and real instruments and a thing that can sounds good on a daw or on a notation software wont neccesarily sounds good on a real context. I usually fails on this one but i think i started to change and sometimes is difficult lol bc i know you want to show how good you are and how much you know but again "Less is more" and it will keep you safe, specially if you and the musicians don't have a lot of time to do and learn the arrangment.
Great video! I watched this the first time four years ago when you first uploaded it. I thought that all the advice given then was good. I wasn't, however, working on anything particularly relevant at the time, so I didn't really have a chance to explore or experiment with your suggestions in mind. I've recently been working on some pieces which require a variety of tone colors. Your video is definitely helping me steer away from what could have been some of the most unintentionally ghastly and painful assaults on human ears. Thanks so much!
I'm enjoying your videos, learning a lot. One mistake I made was not quite realizing that a bad harminuc progression does not improve with orchestration! Orchestration doesn't improve anything and can actually highlight the flaws.
Very informative and helpful(and I can relate to a lot of this being a composer myself!)..thank you!
Another wonderful lesson! I wish you had taught my composition and orchestration classes -- I might not have abandoned composing!
As a harpist, I would add writing for a harp as you would a piano. Some tone clusters simply do not work on harp based on limitations of the instrument. And also writing for harp where it does not add to timbre and is just buried under a brass section playing forte.
I think one of the weirdest orchestration goof I've committed was writing an alto recorder a member of a quintet I was in. Come practice day, it turned out that what he had told me was an alto recorder was actually a tenor. Luckily, this was easily fixed.
It's all a matter of what effect you want to create in the context of the piece you want to write. Sometimes the things critisized in this might be exactly what you want to do. Of course, the audience will have its own ideas about what you do. Different ideas, no piece will be taken the same way by different people, in any one performance and over time.
The thing is to understand what you're doing, the extent to which you can understand it.
This is what I think makes Stravinsky such a brilliant composer. Even if it's a Stravinsky orchestral work one has never heard before, you can actually hear the amazing inter-instrument harmonies and tonal mixing to the extent it almost screams "Stravinsky"! One good example is how dissimilar instruments like woodwinds and strings transition so smoothly in a work like the Rite of Spring.
I hope to someday make these kind of “mistakes” with a big orchestra. Sounds avant-garde and cool to me
thats interesting, when i´m writing on the piano, i´m aware that it will sound different on other instruments, but i like the idea that the piece will change in this process and for that reason.
But after all, i´m an instrumentalist writing something hopefully nice to play, so i tend to think practically, and i don´t want to overthink it.
Thank you for sharing your hard won expertise.
I am guilty of the 5th mistake back in undergrad years. I was playing more in my local Balinese Gamelan ensemble and playing Maguindanao Kulintang, and one of my professors is really into playing around with rhythm, that the pieces I would compose would also have crazy funky rhythm. Whenever I would ask colleagues to play my pieces, they would always point out "you and your rhythms man!" and I would be "sorry, I can't help it!"
Very helpful. Thanks, David!
Awesome video! I love the creative aids you use to break down concepts that my orchestration professor would have taken like 45 minutes each to explain lol