# What classical scores you recommend learning instrument combinations?



## JPQ (May 23, 2017)

What classical scores you recommend learning instrument combinations?


----------



## lokotus (May 23, 2017)




----------



## lokotus (May 23, 2017)




----------



## lokotus (May 23, 2017)




----------



## lokotus (May 23, 2017)

Have fun


----------



## Maxime Luft (May 23, 2017)

http://petruccilibrary.us/Scores/scores/Stravinsky_Igor_1971/Stravinsky%20-%20Firebird%20Suite%201919%20(orch.%20score).pdf



If you're just starting out, this might be a bit complex though!


----------



## Dave Connor (May 23, 2017)

A great score for the passing off from one color to another is Debussy's, Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun. (A score considered a must for the study of orchestration for too many reasons to count.)


----------



## Parsifal666 (May 23, 2017)

Richard Strauss *Eine Alpensinfonie*. That's if you really want to learn advanced orchestration, counterpoint...shoot, there are so many things you can learn from that score, you could practically cover the whole spectrum.

Listen and just take a _*look*_ at that score, you can't help but learn from it. One of the most outstanding compositions since Rite of Spring imo.


----------



## CT (May 23, 2017)

I'm constantly picking things up from leafing through John Adams scores. He's a fantastic colorist who knows how to not clutter things up in the process. You have these incredibly intricate, detailed textures where the individual moving parts merge together, and you end up with really only two or three of these big blocks of activity at any given time. Just a totally ingenious composer.


----------



## Jaap (May 23, 2017)

Gustav Holst - The Planets is basically a 101 in filmscoring 



Vaughan Williams - Symphony no.3 - for some warm orchestral orchestrations as addition to the earlier mentioned Daphnis et Cloe from Ravel (just study everything from Ravel btw!)



Not the most known symphony from Shostakovich, but some beautiful (and scary) rich colours and orchestrations in this one



And Miket mentioned John Adams already and Harmonielehre (and also his other works) is great to study



If you want to check out some more modern, but fascinating sounding stuff, check out Claude Vivier. Some interesting sounds in his music and here one example of his piece Zipangu, but please check also his other works if you like this


----------



## T.j. (May 23, 2017)

Get the score for the one(s) you like and start there!
Seriously.. it's so much easier when it's something you already enjoy listening to


----------



## Rctec (May 23, 2017)

Parsifal666 said:


> Richard Strauss *Eine Alpensinfonie*. That's if you really want to learn advanced orchestration, counterpoint...shoot, there are so many things you can learn from that score, you could practically cover the whole spectrum.
> 
> Listen and just take a _*look*_ at that score, you can't help but learn from it. One of the most outstanding compositions since Rite of Spring imo.


I agree, and Strauss is sort of woefully neglected. I think part of what scores to study is cultural... I grew up with Mozart and Beethoven, but in my rebellious teens I started to take Berlioz apart... and, of course, Mahler and - much later - Wagner. I think "Siegfried's Funeral March" is a perfect superhero score (and yes, I've stolen whole chunks of it for "Gladiator"  ). But today I'm in Leipzig and spent the day just thinking Bach.
And than there are the Russians....


----------



## Nils Neumann (May 23, 2017)

Dvoraks New World Symphonie was pure gold for me when I started transcribing!


----------



## Dave Connor (May 23, 2017)

Speaking of _Orchestration_ and _The Russians, _I was once hanging out at a Jerry Goldsmith session for Super Girl where his two favorite orchestrators Arthur Morton and Alexander Courage were there. Coincidentally Bruce Broughton had brought his film students from USC to observe the session. So there was an inquisitive, learning atmosphere in the control room. Upon asked about orchestration Courage said, _For musical development study the Germans… For filmic development study the Russians. _He then explained that whereas in pure music, the theme or idea is itself changed (developed as in Beethoven, Mozart) in film music, the idea is restated in different colors as with the Russians such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev. So in the latter, the idea is _developed _by the re-orchestration of it.

One other interesting occurrence (regarding something fairly well known now) was when I was looking at JG's 6 stave orchestration and said aloud rather puzzled, "Everything is here." Referring to the fact that the orchestration was complete; totally finished with all the orchestration clearly in the reduced score. Jerry said aloud, "Now he's learning." So those great orchestrators were putting things into full score for practical and copying reasons but not orchestrating in the traditional sense.


----------



## sherief83 (May 23, 2017)

This thread can not go further without my Man Bruckner and his most quoted symphony #9...just take this build up alone (11:23 to 13:12) and if you don't want to take anything I say seriously, then let Leonard Bernstein in the video sell you the symphony


----------



## JohnG (May 23, 2017)

most of the 20th century is in the Rite, or if not there, add Petrouchka and Firebird.

For more recent scores, I also like John Adams. He went through all the experimental and avant garde stuff in the 1970s and, despite it all, survived to write interesting, enjoyable music.


----------



## AllanH (May 23, 2017)

One of my first ones to study was Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite composers and his scores are freely available. I remain impressed with effective and elegant his orchestration is.


----------



## tomasgarciad (May 23, 2017)

An orchestration masterpiece: Respighi's _Pines of Rome_. Especially that 4th movement with all the different lines near the end that come together in the brass.


----------



## Fab (May 24, 2017)

Rctec said:


> I agree, and Strauss is sort of woefully neglected. I think part of what scores to study is cultural... I grew up with Mozart and Beethoven, but in my rebellious teens I started to take Berlioz apart... and, of course, Mahler and - much later - Wagner. I think "Siegfried's Funeral March" is a perfect superhero score (and yes, I've stolen whole chunks of it for "Gladiator"  ). But today I'm in Leipzig and spent the day just thinking Bach.
> And than there are the Russians....





I like the bit from 4:30ish onward.


----------



## Farkle (May 24, 2017)

I'm a sucker for the Russians and the French, for coloristic, individualistic orchestration, that really treats the orchestra as its' own instrument. Yes, Wagner did some great stuff, yes, Mahler has some amazing stuff (Conan the Barbarian tips its' hat to Mahler's 1st and 2nd in many ways)... but... for my money.

Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake and Nutcracker.
Stravinsky, Firebird (suite and Ballet), Rite of Spring
Prokofiev, Scythian Suite, Romeo and Juliet (Ballet and Suites 1, 2)

And, closer to the US:

Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe (ballet), Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
Debussy, La Mer, Nocturnes

Bear in mind, one scores ballet to drive and support *movement*, which is why I believe that ballet scoring devices translate well to film scores, particularly for scenes that involve movement.
Mike


----------



## re-peat (May 24, 2017)

Classical scores (and orchestration books) are wonderfully useless for what you want to learn. Different sonic world altogether.

It’s not a given that combinations which work well in a real orchestra, will prove equally satisfying when attempted with whatever sample libraries or modeled instruments you have. In fact, the very opposite is far more likely to be part of your daily struggle with virtual instruments.

And the rules changes completely depending on which libraries you choose to work with. One developer’s woodwinds will blend entirely differently with other sampled instruments than another developers’s woodwinds. To the traditional orchestrator, and on paper, these may all be ‘woodwinds’ (and expected to behave as such), but to the virtual orchestrator they are, or at least should be, completely different instruments.
A harp from library X will combine completely differently with other instruments than a harp from library Y. Cellos from one library will blend effortlessly with your virtual brass where other cellos will stubbornly refuse to even consider blending. The list is endless and, again, depends on the palette of samples you’ve chosen to work with.

And what you need to know to deal with all of this, isn’t to be found in any classical score or traditional orchestration book. There’s no chapter in Rimsky that talks about EQ’s, CC11-automation or artificial reverb, and there’s not a single bar in the entire Alpensymphony that can inform you whether your particular combination of virtual instruments, production tools and skills might ever yield ear-pleasing results.

The only way to find that out is by studying your sample libraries, thoroughly. Discover which patches combine well and which don’t, learn about ways to facilitate blends and about all the things you have to do to make virtual instruments a bit more sociable than their nature has doomed them to be.

_


----------



## MichaelM (May 25, 2017)

I agree with @Parsifal666 on Strauss's Alpine Symphony. In fact any Strauss tone poems would be of imense value in orchestration study and learning instrument combos. His Don Juan was a huge breakout back in the late 1880s along with Till Eulenspiegel. They are both on the relative shorter side of his Tone Poems, but both pushed the envelope of late Romantic orchestration. You will find major orchestras use a lot of Richard Strauss passages for instrument auditions. He was also a master string writer. His divisi writing in Also Sprach Zarathustra after the main opening fanfare, is an eye opener. 
But yeah, the key is also to look at these scores and not just listen as recordings don't always pick up the subtle nuances in the orchestration. I'm always requesting scores from my library system just to see how passages from a score were orchestrated.


----------



## Parsifal666 (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> Classical scores (and orchestration books) are wonderfully useless for what you want to learn. Different sonic world altogether.
> 
> 
> 
> _



This was a very good post, but I can't be convinced from the (well written) arguments proceeding from this statement. Learning how to read scores and diving into those notated pieces can do nothing but make you a way better composer, arranger, and orchestrator. To scoff at such is such a bad idea...I was both speechless and entertained when I first read that (meant respectfully). I just hope young composers don't read that and neglect that area of their studies, it's hard work that pays off magnificently.

We could go wide and say that _anything_ involving learning how to read orchestral scores with goal in mind to learn how to do the above is a _*terrific *_idea. Don't think about it, do it. You'll thank me (and most other paid composers, who'll tell you the same thing) in the future.

No offense or disrespect meant, and again I must emphasize you did make some valid points, just not enough to take the giggle out of the opening statement. Different sonic world altogether...amusing is an understatement.


----------



## Parsifal666 (May 25, 2017)

How about beauty, inventiveness, heroism, novelty...whose work one critic referred to as like a novel unfolding: Mahler's symphonies!

You can even abstract from all the actual music of those symphonies and be inspired just by the wanton imagination and creativity put into those works; Mahler was all about pushing individualism past the Beethoven bar, and thus made a set of masterpieces that remain so relevant to this very day.


----------



## MichaelM (May 25, 2017)

Parsifal666 said:


> How about beauty, inventiveness, heroism, novelty...whose work one critic referred to as like a novel unfolding: Mahler's symphonies!
> 
> You can even abstract from all the actual music of those symphonies and be inspired just by the wanton imagination and creativity put into those works; Mahler was all about pushing the individualism past the Beethoven bar, and made a set of masterpieces that remain so relevant today.



Also a nice contemporary of Strauss! I think they both sort of pushed each other in orchestration. There was a story where Mahler was rehearsing I think his 5th, and he was concerned/nervous because Strauss was in the house during those rehearsals. (I might not have the right Symphony, but pretty sure it was one of the middle ones.)


----------



## re-peat (May 25, 2017)

Parsifal666 said:


> To scoff at such is such a bad idea


I don't scoff at studying scores and orchestration books. I simply say, and I'll say it again, that you can't learn from them how to blend virtual instruments, or which libraries blend best with which others. 

Completely different sonic worlds altogether, yes, the real and the virtual. The fact that all your studying doesn't seem to have taught you even that most basic and obvious of truths, proves my point that such study is a fundamentally flawed and partly misguided approach on the road to a better understanding of the peculiarities of the virtual idiom.

I happen to be quite familiar with all the works mentioned in this thread. But that familiarity hasn't helped me one bit when it comes to blending, say, the Sample Modeling Trumpet with the Spitfire horns.

Oh, and you'll have to excuse me, but I never thanked anyone before for being a patronizing pontificator, and I see no reason to start doing so now.

_


----------



## Parsifal666 (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> I don't scoff at studying scores and orchestration books. I simply say, and I'll say it again, that you can't learn from them how to blend virtual instruments, or which libraries blend best with which others.
> 
> Completely different sonic worlds altogether, yes, the real and the virtual. The fact that all your studying doesn't seem to have taught you even that most basic and obvious of truths, proves my point that such study is a fundamentally flawed and partly misguided approach on the road to a better understanding of the peculiarities of the virtual idiom.
> 
> ...



Fair enough. I honestly wish you great success and your happiest days to come, my friend.


----------



## JohnG (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> Completely different sonic worlds altogether, yes, the real and the virtual.



I agree with this, but not 100% -- maybe 90%? There are some principles that translate, at least generally, from the real to the virtual, such as being careful not to muddy the lower registers up too much (unless you want mud, of course). And, with enough tenacity and patience, some of the good libraries can be wrestled into behaving, to an extent, more like real instruments in combination than was the case in the past.

But for the most part, applying "real" orchestration to the virtual world, as re-peat wrote remains, at best, hit-or-miss


----------



## Farkle (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> I don't scoff at studying scores and orchestration books. I simply say, and I'll say it again, that you can't learn from them how to blend virtual instruments, or which libraries blend best with which others.
> 
> Completely different sonic worlds altogether, yes, the real and the virtual. The fact that all your studying doesn't seem to have taught you even that most basic and obvious of truths, proves my point that such study is a fundamentally flawed and partly misguided approach on the road to a better understanding of the peculiarities of the virtual idiom.
> 
> _



I agree so much with this. Mocking up is an entirely different skill than traditional orchestration. That's not to say that you can't learn much about composing your pieces by studying instrumental combinations, etc, but then the next step is to learn how to musically realize them in a digital orchestral context. Which involves layering libraries, eq'ing them, matching performances... things that would not make sense on a traditional orchestral staff, but which work beautifully in the mockup world.

I don't mean this to be discouraging, quite the opposite. I think it's important to "put on your orchestrator" hat, and learn all about orchestration, when sketching out your ideas. and THEN, when dropping it into your DAW, put that hat away, and take out your "mockup artist" hat, and put it on. Compartmentalize the disciplines, in my opinion.

Mike


----------



## bbunker (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> I don't scoff at studying scores and orchestration books. I simply say, and I'll say it again, that you can't learn from them how to blend virtual instruments, or which libraries blend best with which others.
> 
> Completely different sonic worlds altogether, yes, the real and the virtual. The fact that all your studying doesn't seem to have taught you even that most basic and obvious of truths, proves my point that such study is a fundamentally flawed and partly misguided approach on the road to a better understanding of the peculiarities of the virtual idiom.
> 
> ...



I disagree - in the sense that you are using hyperbole to make sharp cuts of more nebulous lines between the end products of two modes of production. The sentence 'that familiarity hasn't helped me one bit when it comes to blending, say, the Sample Modeling Trumpet with the Spitfire horns' stands out to me.

This is clearly untrue - in such simple ways that they are easily dismissed, but are important to the conversation. The fact that you are thinking about 'blending' trumpets and horns betrays prior knowledge about the orchestra, its formation, and its conventions. It reveals that there is knowledge of what trumpets and horns are, that there is some blend which could exist between them, and that the end result of blending is derived from a posteriori knowledge - you must have experienced some blending before, to have some idea of what the essence of trumpet-horn blend should 'feel' like.

Saying prior experience hasn't helped 'one bit' must raise some warning flags, right? It has already helped profoundly by the time you're making the attempt to blend those two. That statement feels like someone who goes from a regular automatic transmission to one where the gear lever is on the steering column (they still exist, right?) instead of the floor and shouting 'my god - the shifter isn't on the floor...none of the driving that I've done for the past twenty years has helped me ONE BIT in preparing to move this car into drive!'

The point that samples and orchestras are two unique things is indeed important - but they are not two discrete entities. Samples are copies of copies made into a new thing which purports to be the original by distorting the copying process. They are simulacra - but not full simulacra in the sense Baudrillard would require, because they are still models (however distorted) of the original. And the fact that the end result attempts to model the end result of the original experience is important.

Which ends up at the line about the real and virtual being 'completely different sonic worlds altogether.' To which I apply my automotive analogy again: consider driving a car in real life and one in a video game. The experiences are not the same, but the ways in which the game models the real experience in its own experience makes it not 'completely different.' I can't imagine that you'd be 'prepared' to go race on Laguna Seca after having driven a simulator, but I also can't imagine that it wouldn't help in some way. Just imagine approaching the famous corkscrew there with absolutely zero experience and with simulator training. Which would have a better chance of success?

I suppose my biggest point is this: Treating real and virtual orchestration as exactly the same is clearly flawed. But treating them as completely unrelated also ignores the unique relationship between things, their representations, and the things built from representations of those representations.

I'll cease patronizing and pontificating now.


----------



## ptram (May 25, 2017)

MichaelM said:


> There was a story where Mahler was rehearsing I think his 5th, and he was concerned/nervous because Strauss was in the house during those rehearsals.


Together disciples of Bruckner, close friends and rivals for their whole life, they certainly influenced their alter-ego. But with incredibly different results!

Paolo


----------



## MichaelM (May 25, 2017)

ptram said:


> Together disciples of Bruckner, close friends and rivals for their whole life, they certainly influenced their alter-ego. But with incredibly different results!
> 
> Paolo


I remember reading in college a collection of letters between Strauss and Mahler. 


Very interesting read.


----------



## re-peat (May 25, 2017)

True, *John*, but I’m sure you will also agree that working with, say, sampled pizzicati introduces completely different challenges for a composer/orchestrator/mixer/producer — and all of these challenges a million galaxies removed from whatever happens in a real orchestra (live or recorded) or is described in orchestration books — than real pizzicati would introduce.

And it doesn’t stop there: the challenges introduced by, say, the Spitfire bespoke pizzicati are to-tal-ly different than those introduced by the new Auddict pizzicati. And again: no amount of studying scores or textbooks will make you any the wiser on how to deal with any of the specifics of these (or any other) libraries.

The wealth of timbral nuance, diversity, detail and musical appropriateness that a composer, writing for a real orchestra, can rely on to emerge — if summoned by his/her orchestration skills, that is —, simply isn’t available to the person working with virtual instruments. It doesn’t exist. Because it’s unsampleable. We don’t even have access to a tiny fraction of it. 5% is already a delusionally optimistic estimate, in my opinion. (Although, granted, the actual percentage would depend on the type of music.)

And each combination of libraries creates its very own and very specific sonic world, with wholly unique strengths, weaknesses and characteristics, and what works in one combination could very well sound pretty bad in another, even down the simplest of timbral juxtapositions. So any advice in these matters given by a VSL user, is utterly useless to a person working with EastWest libraries. Any experience from an OrchestralTools user is of no value whatsoever to an 8dio user.
And nothing, ab-so-lu-te-ly nothing of practical use can be learned from studying Strauss, Ravel, Mahler, Respighi or whomever anyone cares to mention, when it comes to addressing the specific peculiarities of whatever combination of libraries one might have chosen to go with.

What’s the point of discovering/learning that a real alto flute fuses gorgeously with a real horn, if what you have to work with are the offensively crippled sampled equivalents that are the Cinesamples alto flute and Chris Hein’s lamentable UniqHorn?
Where is the value in learning the finer points of how a real string orchestra functions best and most expressively, if you have the extreme (though self-inflicted) misfortune to then have to turn to your Kirk Hunter libraries and try to simulate any of that?
What’s the practical use of knowing at which dynamic ranges real instruments are capable of their most characteristic identities and/or effective blends, if those dynamic ranges aren’t even present in your 3-velocity layers sample library?

Again, in my opinion: the only truly fruitful choice of study, in this particular context anyway, is a thorough study of one's libraries and production tools.

- - -

*Bunker*,

A bit of a ridiculous stretch that, no? (Unless you deliberately misunderstood me in order to allow you to write what you wrote.)

Anyway, forgive me for assuming that we’re all well past the stage of knowing that, both in real life and on paper, trumpets blend quite well with horns.

Not always a certainty with virtual instruments however, hence my ‘different worlds’.

It’s true of course — and I’ve never written an ‘of course’ that carries more tedious obviousness with it than this one —, the choices I make in the virtual world (libraries I like or dislike, specific sounds I aim for, certain expressions I need to translate into musical sound, etc. … ) are partly (perhaps even largely) defined by a lifetime of close and loving contact with the real thing, but again: I’m assuming that such grounding — shared to some degree or other by all of us, I hope — is ‘a phase of acquiring insight and knowledge’ that no longer has much relevance in this particular discussion.
I.o.w., I’m not talking about the expertise that makes one combine trumpets and horns, I’m talking about the expertise that allows one to do it well (given the tools one has access to). Completely different expertises altogether.

_


----------



## Ashermusic (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> What’s the point of discovering/learning that a real alto flute fuses gorgeously with a real horn, if what you have to work with are the offensively crippled sampled equivalents that are the Cinesamples alto flute and Chris Hein’s lamentable UniqHorn?
> Where is the value in learning the finer points of how a real string orchestra functions best and most expressively, if you have the extreme (though self-inflicted) misfortune to then have to turn to your Kirk Hunter libraries and try to simulate any of that?
> What’s the practical use of knowing at which dynamic ranges real instruments are capable of their most characteristic identities and/or effective blends, if those dynamic ranges aren’t even present in your 3-velocity layers sample library?
> 
> Again, in my opinion: the only truly fruitful choice of study, in this particular context anyway, is a thorough study of one's libraries and production tools.



Half way there myself. I think it is helpful to know what the real guys do and how they sound, and know when to nonetheless make a different choice. Otherwise you end up with nice sounding crappy music.


----------



## re-peat (May 25, 2017)

Ashermusic said:


> Otherwise you end up with nice sounding crappy music.


First of all, I consider myself a ‘real guy’ (in my own adaptation of the real world anyway), and secondly, I never had any of my music described quite like that, so maybe the outcome of my choices isn’t necessarily always the one which you suggest it inevitably is, Jay.

_


----------



## Ashermusic (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> First of all, I consider myself a ‘real guy’ (in my own adaptation of the real world anyway), and secondly, I never had any of my music described quite like that, so maybe the outcome of my choices isn’t necessarily always the one which you suggest it inevitably is, Jay.
> 
> _



Of course, you do great work Piet, for every general rule there are exceptions.


----------



## bbunker (May 25, 2017)

re-peat said:


> What’s the point of discovering/learning that a real alto flute fuses gorgeously with a real horn, if what you have to work with are the offensively crippled sampled equivalents that are the Cinesamples alto flute and Chris Hein’s lamentable UniqHorn?
> Where is the value in learning the finer points of how a real string orchestra functions best and most expressively, if you have the extreme (though self-inflicted) misfortune to then have to turn to your Kirk Hunter libraries and try to simulate any of that?
> What’s the practical use of knowing at which dynamic ranges real instruments are capable of their most characteristic identities and/or effective blends, if those dynamic ranges aren’t even present in your 3-velocity layers sample library?
> 
> ...



This is of course a Straw Man argument. "Why should I study the real thing when X model exists which is horribly flawed?"

One terrible library does not invalidate an entire discipline.

*


re-peat said:



Bunker

Click to expand...

*


re-peat said:


> ,
> 
> A bit of a ridiculous stretch that, no? (Unless you deliberately misunderstood me in order to allow you to write what you wrote.)
> 
> ...



It isn't the 'knowledge' that trumpets blend with horns that concerns me; it is the 'knowledge' of what that blending sounds like. Without a personal, mental aural image of what that blend should be, then what good would be any thousand of hours of study of the tools to achieve it?


----------



## re-peat (May 25, 2017)

If you’re going to start to condense my points into cunningly twisted and incorrect reductions, Bbunker, we’re not going to make much pleasant progress here.

It’s not the fact that model X ‘exists’ which makes me question the study of the real thing, it’s the fact that X is so profoundly different (in every single one of its musical aspects) from the real thing and, moreover, that X, and not the real thing, is what we have to work with, that makes me question the validity of a narrow study of the real thing.
The knowledge of priming a canvas, mixing behaviour of oils, dominance of certain colorants over others, specific purposes of specific brushes, etc., … is of no practical or creative use whatsoever if you’re working in CorelPainter. (Trust me on this, I have experience with both.)

And the good of a thousand hours of study of the tools you decide to work with, is that it’ll help you to fully exploit your X’s identity (and all the musical implications of that identity) so that you're able to optimize X (and all your X-related skills) as the carrier of your music, instead of remaining glued to that ‘mental aural image’ which is unattainable anyway and is therefore doomed to keep hanging as a frustrating, distracting and possibly discouraging cloud over whatever it is you want to do.

But, just to be clear, I have nothing against these ‘aural images’ as such, they’re constantly present in my mind as well when I’m working, but … I grant them only limited authority, far less anyway than I grant my X.

We’re not writing orchestral music, we don’t write for orchestras or orchestral instruments, to be performed in halls or on sound stages, no, we’re sitting behind our computers ordering dead snippets of sound around (or letting stupid algorithms and scripts do the ordering for us, if we’re so lazy that we can’t be bothered with making the effort ourselves) and we mess about a bit with artificial space and such, until we finally decide that the result has a more or less acceptable enough semblance to our particular idea of what orchestral music is supposed to sound like. That is soooo wrong — sooo musically wrong — in so many ways, that I would instantly admit to impotence if asked to list all of its flaws.

Hence my suggestion for advice: embrace X. And if you do that with enough commitment, intelligence, creativity and perseverance, you might find that X slowly starts to embrace your music.

_


----------



## ctsai89 (May 25, 2017)

Scriabin's symphony #2 and #3, Poem of ecstasy.

he precisely doubles wind instruments to string sections with the exact right number of players. He was really great at keeping different sections in balance almost like a mix engineer.


----------



## SillyMidOn (May 26, 2017)

Apart from all the excellent recommendations that have already been made, I'd also add Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which he didn't orchestrate himself. There are some really, really interesting textures in there (partly thanks to the saxophones used in a non-jazz way). The only problem is, in all honesty, you'll very, very rarely get a chance to use those in anger, as that style is not exactly popular anymore.

But knowledge is power...

Also:
Penderecki - Dies Irae
Ligeti - Atmospheres
Ravel - Bolero, a veritable masterclass in how to recombine instruments in different ways to play the same 2 themes over and over again without it getting boring. You can buy/find really cool in-depth analysis of the score in how he purposefully combined instruments, taking in over-tones etc. Ravel actually questioned whether it was music. Here is an example: http://www.lim.di.unimi.it/teaching/materials_pdf/Bolero1.pdf ... I was given an even better analysis when I was in school, but I don't know which box to find that in now.
Cage - 4'33"

... the last suggestion may be a wind-up...


----------



## Dave Connor (May 26, 2017)

MichaelM said:


> Also a nice contemporary of Strauss! I think they both sort of pushed each other in orchestration. There was a story where Mahler was rehearsing I think his 5th, and he was concerned/nervous because Strauss was in the house during those rehearsals. (I might not have the right Symphony, but pretty sure it was one of the middle ones.)


Yes it was the 5th to which Strauss said to the composer after the performance, _It is over-instrumentated. _Which bothered Mahler plenty. In fact Mahler then completely re-scored the work with a Herculean effort that just impressed the hell out of his protégé Bruno Walter. That is the version we know today.


----------



## Dave Connor (May 26, 2017)

Concerning the either/or argument of the study of orchestration for living ensembles vrs., samples, I don't see an issue greater than doing two separate studies (of any subjects similar or dissimilar.) We've all studied different things simultaneously to no harm. Bunker's point that a prior knowledge of instrumental blends in the real world in some way informing doing the same with samples (if only in search of the _desired_ effect of real-world) can't be seen as off the mark. That's not being argued is it? My wrestling match is always to get it sounding as real as possible to which Piet is exactly right: you're not going to find that in Piston's orchestration book or Mahler's 3rd to achieve it with samples. But when you hear Mahler layering 4 or 5 flutes in that work and totally dig it you may set out to achieve that sound by hook or by crook with god knows how many libraries and tweaks.

This is one of those _it's all good _topics where you can't go wrong by loading up on pertinent information in and around an area of study in heading toward your goals.


----------



## Vin (May 27, 2017)

http://imslp.org/wiki/Pavane_pour_une_infante_défunte_(Ravel,_Maurice)


----------

