# Supporting mid register melody in a strings context



## mopsiflopsi (Dec 22, 2020)

So all the online tutorials and examples I have seen so far for strings arrangement put the melody at the top. How do you write a piece where, say, the celli are meant to play the main melody? How do you prevent upper voices from stealing the show? Softer dynamics? Sparser notes? More space (octave or more?) around the melodic line? Any other tricks?


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## Snarf (Dec 23, 2020)

Your intuition is a pretty good start
- dynamics
- more open voicing (or the opposite, i.e. clusters)
- leaving enough room between the melodic and harmonic elements

I would add:
- articulation (tremolo, trills, pizzicato, staccato etc)
- rhythm (e.g. high triplets against a lower straight rhythm)
- less motion in the upper voices (since that draws attention to itself - especially relevant when both elements are playing the same type of articulation, such as sustains)

I'm a bit distracted as I'm writing this, and I'm sure more experienced orchestrators chime in with more orchestration devices. However, just by using (or not using!), combining and otherwise experimenting with the ones above you should have a lot of options already 

Some more thoughts:
- Depending on context and desired effect, you can also have violas (and even violins) playing below the celli. Celli have a brighter, 'soaring' (or however you want to describe it) timbre when playing in their high range, compared to violas or violins on the same note, which sound much darker. 
- Maybe this is too obvious, but the violins and violas (or the rest of the string family for that matter) don't _need _to play all the time. It's perfectly okay to let the celli play a melody on their own or supported by the basses, celli divisi and/or other instruments etc

Hope that helps!


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## Living Fossil (Dec 23, 2020)

mopsiflopsi said:


> So all the online tutorials and examples I have seen so far for strings arrangement put the melody at the top. How do you write a piece where, say, the celli are meant to play the main melody? How do you prevent upper voices from stealing the show? Softer dynamics? Sparser notes? More space (octave or more?) around the melodic line? Any other tricks?



I would recommend you to study carefully some scores like e.g. string quartetts by Mozart etc.

To answer your question:
The crucial point is not exactly the register itself, but the energy of the respective instrument in that range.
A cello in its best register will sound "much higher" as if the same note was played by a viola.
It will easily be audible also if there are high notes played. Etc.
And of course you can make dynamic distinctions and similar.
A melodic line played vibrato gets more attention than a line without it.
Movement keeps the attention; static notes get pulled back in the perception after a short time.
Etc. Etc.
You can also find enough information on this topic in all usual books about instrumentation.
But a first step is to get familiar with the sound of the different registers of different instruments.


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## mopsiflopsi (Dec 23, 2020)

Thanks for the responses! I know there is a great deal of learning to be discovered by studying the masters, but sometimes it's still helpful hearing first hand from people who are actively doing this stuff, even if to check whether I'm reaching the correct conclusions from what I'm reading on my own. 

So yeah, this is super helpful.


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