# The Zed Cleff



## gsilbers (Jul 18, 2009)

anyone attended the scott smalley orchestration course and remember about the Zed cleff and wouldnt mind explaining it. 
i think i remember its a way to cut down on transposition time and check harmony.. but its been a while and dont remember the details.


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## rJames (Jul 18, 2009)

As I recall, it is a way to bring all instruments of a section together to check the harmony's distance so that all the instruments are playing in the same apassatura (?).

I'm not sure that is the right word. So that if the bass viol is playing really high and strident, all strings are in that range. Or, conversely, if the the violins are playing in a low range, the cellos or basses are not screaming away in their highest registers.


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## Dave Connor (Jul 18, 2009)

Tessitura (predominant average range an instrument is playing in.) So any instrument might have a low, medium or high tessitura depending on the piece.


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## gsilbers (Jul 18, 2009)

ah cool, its for Tessitura then and not for harmony purposes.


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## Dave Connor (Jul 18, 2009)

I would be interested to hear a more clarified answer on the Zed cleff. I'm sure there's some folks here who can give a more detailed explanation as to it's purpose.


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## Hal (Jul 18, 2009)

Huh !? guys what are you talking about :shock:


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## Jack Weaver (Jul 18, 2009)

It's an effort to create orchestrations of harmonies that 'sing' in the same tessitura.

Let’s see if I can remember this without referring to my notes. Scott contended that instruments ‘sing’ different in their different tessituras and that savy orchestrators tended to voice chords (in different instruments) in the same tessituras. 

He figured out a way of doing this for himself after he noticed that when taking how the instruments were _actually notated_ in an orchestral score (Horns in F, Trumpets in Bb, Violas in alto clef, etc.). If the actual written notes were within the range of a Sixth then voila, they _sounded _in the proper tessitura – and the harmony instruments playing the chord were ‘singing’ properly.

So the Z Clef was a mental construct to show on the lines of normal staff paper these instruments that were normally written in all these different clefs and keys. The Z Clef itself was never used for any notation purpose other than to figure out the proper tessituras of any given harmonic idea. It's like a scratch pad to figure this stuff out. 

It’s a little difficult to explain without some score paper in front of you. But this is the crux of the matter.

.


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## Jack Weaver (Jul 18, 2009)

Better yet (_or maybe not_) - Scott wrote this on 1/17/2008:



> The zed clef is the most basic fundamental element by which our entire subject of orchestration is empirically built from. I will try to put it into a concise and simplistic form but I would invite all to give us their impression of what the zed clef is.
> It is an acid test to put all of the instruments on one level playing field so to be able to guage the intensity level of the timbre of their instrument according to the placement within their individual ranges.
> 
> We manipulate the placement of the notes to be within a sixth of each other when plotted on the zed clef when the desired effect is to achieve an ensemble balance.
> ...



OK, you're on your own now.

.


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## Hal (Jul 19, 2009)

very interesting Thx jack


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## rJames (Jul 19, 2009)

Thanks Dave. Yes, tessatura. Another vague memory is that he came up with the idea from classical (vocal) choir voicings, which were to be kept within a sixth. 

You'll notice that Jack's notes talk about, "when the desired effect is to achieve an ensemble balance."

At a seminar given by Bruce Broughten, I remember him encouraging us to place the viola above the violin or the cello above the viola from time to time. In those cases you are using the tessatura imbalance as an effect (I assume, to bring attention to a particular line).


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