# Sneak peek of upcoming "secrets of Orchestration" lesson.



## ed buller (Oct 15, 2021)

Hi

 Upcoming lesson in the Fabulous "Secrets of orchestration" course. This is the meat and potatoes of orchestral writing. ​
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best

ed


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## Drumdude2112 (Oct 15, 2021)

VERY Nice 👌🏻
Material seems very well presented.


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## Maximvs (Oct 16, 2021)

Thanks a lot Ed for sharing... I really like Roshvan teaching style and this course looks really nice indeed.

Cheers,

MaxT


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## Gene Pool (Oct 19, 2021)

In the spirit of helping anyone still getting a lay of the land orchestration-wise, I thought it might be okay to mention a few very gentle critiques based on the video play-through and notated score at about 6:02. It’s not a critique of anyone or any video channel or course. Just a short list of observations relevant to the subject, and I won’t touch on everything. I hope it might benefit anyone who is interested. Some parts of the audio are not reflected in the notation, and I won’t comment on those; this will be a bit long as is. If I’m not clear about something, just ask.

Item 1 – Bar 1:

Notation: This is very nitpick-y, but an open tie is sufficient for percussion (and harp, etc.), and “let ring” or “l.v” is not necessary. In some notation scenarios you mightn’t be able to use an open tie, in which case you would use “l.v.” instead.

Superfluous notation adds visual clutter—which you want to avoid when possible—and it can add to the vertical crowding problem, which is about the most common problem to contend with in a lot of orchestra scores.

Item 2 – Bar 1:

Notation: In the timpani, only the note-on is indicated here, but not the note-off. Technically, that quarter-rest is supposed to mean a cessation of all head vibration (so the timpanist would dampen there if this was correctly notated), but that is clearly not intended here, so it needs an open tie like the other percussion. This was probably a simple oversight, which happens a million times to everyone since there is so much detail and fussiness to the hieroglyphics of notation (it’s like a typo, really). Thank goodness for copyists (only the handful of good ones!) and other people proofreading your scores.

And this specific notation error has been the most common type composers have been making with respect to timpani writing ever since Benevoli at least. As a result, timpanist’s routinely have to compare each new timpani part to the full score to precisely mark where to dampen and where to let the drum fully decay. And it’s critical since the fullness of timpani decay completely alters the whole orchestral effect with its very present “reverby-ness", and that ring-out can last anywhere from about two to seven seconds (cuz lots of variables).

Item 3 – Overall:

Notation: The basses have their pizz notated in 8ths here, but when the pizz is not immediately followed by another note it should be in quarters (or in some meters or rhythms, dotted-quarters). If the pizz are on the upbeat you can use 8ths. On some notes, plucked basses can have several seconds of decay (longer than a full bar in this excerpt), and bassists have control over it. If a bassist wants the decay to last, (s)he’ll continue to firmly stop the string as long as playability allows (and will do so per the context or if you indicate “l.v.”). Or for a decidedly short pizz, the bassist will unstop the string, which will kill it (and can indicated with “secco”).

Item 4 – Overall:

Orchestration: The violas and clarinets are intermingling too much in the melody space, which is detrimental to the presentation of the melody in a straightforward context like this. Some intermingling is possible in some settings, but only if there is a very clear contrast of tone color, function, and character. But violas blend well with horns, and clarinets do so especially.

Where this does the most damage in this case is in Bar 2, Beat 2. The horns melody drops from G4 to E4. But the profile is partially obscured by the Clarinet 2 G4 tenuto, and they are reinforced by Violas lower divisi. And the cellos doubling the horns will bind the violas and clarinets intermingling with the melody even more. That should definitely be clear space, especially in this dynamic. You can hear it if you listen.

There needs to be a specific purpose you can define for every decision you make in a score, and neither the clarinets nor violas are serving a needed function here. Functionless scoring elements are, at best, wasted acoustic energy.

Item 5 – Overall:

Orchestration: In a soft setting like this, it would work better to lose the oboes and have the clarinets overlap one note with the flutes figure (i.e., CL. 1 doubles FL. 2, and CL. 2 plays the same figure on the next chord tone down). You have to be careful with oboes, because (A) they don’t have much dynamic control, and (B) they are penetrating and non-blending, no matter the range-region or dynamic.

Think about why Mendelssohn left the oboes out of the woodwind triplets at the beginning of the "Italian" symphony; it’s a good lesson. The oboes could have played that figure as well as the woods and horns, so ask why he made that decision. There’s a big party going on there and the oboes weren’t invited. Then look at why he brought them in on the “call” figure a couple pages later.

Item 6 – Overall:

There’s almost no independence to the bass line except for the first bar. From Bar 2 onward, it’s only a heterophonic doubling of the melody. Once a melody has been written, a bass line should be worked out that is not a mere shadowing of the melody. In this case it muddles the texture and deprives it of that necessary dimension. This is also a reminder that the basis of the composition itself needs to be solid before the specifics of the orchestration come into play.

Item 7 – Overall:

Before scoring a single bar of music, the orchestrator should have a clear idea in the mind’s ear of the specific effect being sought. Scoring perfunctorily, even in a pedagogic setting, ought to be avoided since every decision made in an orchestration should be based on that goal already defined in mind’s ear. You should be able to describe beforehand in concrete terms all the relevant elements that comprise the emotion and mood (and anything else relevant) of a given figure, phrase, or passage during the composition process, all of which you carry over into the specifics of the orchestration. The phrase “well-defined and obvious intent” should be your guide throughout.


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## YaniDee (Oct 19, 2021)

Looks very interesting..but the pops and whooshes in the video get irritating after a while..


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## Gene Pool (Oct 19, 2021)

Decided to do an example. Don't know if this will be of use to anyone, but examples are better than words when you have the time.

So, if you were hired to take the basic outline given early in the video—melody and chords—and you were told you to expand it for standard symphony orchestra (12/11/1/4/1/62), big sound, broad, soaring, celebratory, pick from your usual array of adjectives, and you didn't have to stick slavishly to the chords but stay in the ballpark, what would you do to it?

One thing to do after adding a bass line plus two elements of accompaniment—one active (above the melody) and one inactive (below it)—would be to add a countermelody. Countermelodies add not just a musical layer, but a more dimensional effect to the original material. This is sometimes referred to as _thematic counterpoint_, which was a big thing with the Late Romantic composers.

And after two iterations of the 4-bar melody, you'd also extend the melody to a higher plane for a climax, so on and so forth.

Here's a very brief idea of one of many results you might come up with using the above plan. I'll just post the first page of three of the score (note colors are per orchestration element), and the raw NotePerformer output (26 seconds) is included below as a guide track.

View attachment Scoring Example.mp3


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## Obi-Wan Spaghetti (Oct 29, 2021)

YaniDee said:


> Looks very interesting..but the pops and whooshes in the video get irritating after a while..


What do you mean?


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## synergy543 (Oct 29, 2021)

Interesting difference between the school ex. and the real world ex. Thanks!

What is CFT? Contra Bassoon?


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## YaniDee (Oct 29, 2021)

Obi-Wan Spaghetti said:


> What do you mean?


I mean those "Powerpoint" style sound fx that accompany the graphic elements in the video. I guess it doesn't bother everyone...I'm not knocking the content, and I'm actually taking his course on Udemy.


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## Gene Pool (Oct 29, 2021)

synergy543 said:


> What is CFT? Contra Bassoon?


CFT = Contraforte


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## Obi-Wan Spaghetti (Oct 29, 2021)

YaniDee said:


> I mean those "Powerpoint" style sound fx that accompany the graphic elements in the video. I guess it doesn't bother everyone...I'm not knocking the content, and I'm actually taking his course on Udemy.


Thanks. I found and i see the price has gone done? Pretty cheap anyway.


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## Gingerbread (Oct 29, 2021)

Obi-Wan Spaghetti said:


> Thanks. I found and i see the price has gone done? Pretty cheap anyway.


Just to be clear---even though his course on Udemy, and his course linked in this thread by the OP are both titled "The Secrets of Orchestration," they are two completely different courses, with different content, and have two very different prices.


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## ed buller (Oct 29, 2021)

Gingerbread said:


> Just to be clear---even though his course on Udemy, and his course linked in this thread by the OP are both titled "The Secrets of Orchestration," they are two completely different courses, with different content, and have two very different prices.


Yes. I think "The Secrets Of Orchestration" is his Brand name. He's made two products. This is much larger than the first ( which was on Udemy) . It's a work in progress , updated fairly regularly with an end point sometime in the spring. There are 30 Lectures planed. Each varying in length from 6 mins to 50. Currently there are 13 online.

best

ed


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## Obi-Wan Spaghetti (Oct 29, 2021)

Gingerbread said:


> Just to be clear---even though his course on Udemy, and his course linked in this thread by the OP are both titled "The Secrets of Orchestration," they are two completely different courses, with different content, and have two very different prices.


Ok Thanks guys.


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## blaggins (Oct 29, 2021)

Thanks for the tiny masterclass @Gene Pool. I had to read your post about 3x times and listen/read the score like 5x to start getting the gist of what you are saying but it's valuable insight for sure.

One big difference between yours and his that is jumping out at me is that you've just done quite a bit *more* with the orchestration than the classroom take. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the broad strokes here, but for example you've taken the pain to create a more melodically interesting and harmonically complex accompaniment in the high winds/low brass and introduced a countermelody as well, there's also more movement driven by your percussion, etc.

But one question I have... let's say you wanted to keep it simple, mainly just sticking with the block chords voiced across the various instruments with more-or-less a single melodic line for the horns that is doubled in unison and octaves by various other instruments. Is there a really effective way to do simply that? You mentioned problems with intermingling timbre and register and dominant oboes, but how would you keep things .... I'm struggling to find the right words here, but I'm maybe thinking more clear or more "crisp" than in the classroom example? Different combination of instruments to tackle the melody? Or is it much more complicated than that?


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## Gene Pool (Nov 4, 2021)

tpoots said:


> One big difference between yours and his... [snip] ...Maybe I'm misunderstanding the broad strokes here...


Good questions.

My version wasn't a reworking of the original but was based on the hypothetical scenario I described, and as part of the process I also avoided the problems of the original outlined in post #4. (I also slowed down the tempo a bit from 142 to 136).



tpoots said:


> But one question I have...


I'll clarify with a thumbnail summary of the original. When you need a thumbnail summary of a score, the four simplest breakdowns in ascending order of complexity are:

1) Simple Reduction
2) Detailed Reduction
3) Simple Condensed Score
4) Detailed Condensed Score (should be able to reproduce original full score from this)

This graphic is a *simple reduction* of the original, bars 1 – 4:

"Upper Harmony 1" = cumulative of flutes, oboes, violins I and II.

–Blue = Melody
–Red = Problems






To your question: Doing the minimal amount to improve the original:

Upper Harmony 2 should be dropped since it it obscures the melodic profile (red notes) and in any case serves no function. There are already two harmonic elements above the melody (cumulative in Upper Harm. 1) and a third is superfluous not to mention problematic in this case.

The 2 clarinets can join the flutes and oboes by overlapping them below. And the violas can be added to the melody in unison.

The bass line is weak since it is underscored balance-wise (tuba only+basses-pizz), plus which it forms a heterophonic doubling (red vertical brackets) with the melody in bars 2 – 4. An independent bass line is needed. After the rewrite—for it to feel solid and foundational against the other elements—the bass line can be rescored by dropping the tuba an octave and doubling it in unison by arco basses, and two bassoons can double that 8va (along with the rewrite of the bass line itself).

As for the horns, they need to be re-articulated to something more befitting of horn character for this type of expression. That was something I intended to do in my version until I ran out of time. The English horn should mirror the horns re-articulation. The bowing for the cellos and violas should be changed to largely mirror the re-articulated horns line.

Lastly, if you intend to write for instruments at some point, you need to learn score prep and formatting for different ensembles, styles, purposes, venues, etc., but that's a whole other subject itself. The one used in the video needs some improvement regardless, so don't use it as a score format model, and don't use the one in my version as a model either unless you know that it is specifically suitable for your project.


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## blaggins (Nov 7, 2021)

Thanks for taking the time to write that up @Gene Pool. Ok what you are saying about the melodic profile and the bass makes total sense to me. You lost me on the re-articulation for the french horns but that's ok, I'm often lost looking at these things (but slowly slowly working to correct that through reading up on orchestration).


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## Gene Pool (Nov 10, 2021)

tpoots said:


> ...You lost me on the re-articulation for the french horns...


Each type of instrument speaks best a certain way in different contexts. Brass, for example, can legato-tongue very smoothly—which has a more deliberate effect than slurring—and in an overall connected line like the one played by the horns here, it's good to understand whether to notate two consecutive notes as legato-tongued or slurred.

The original has the horns generically articulated as slurred by the phrase (which I neglected to alter in the version I posted), but the line would be more robust and characteristic if some notes were legato-tongued and some were slurred.

Imagine the opening trumpet solo of Ravel's orchestration _Pictures at an Exhibition_ as slurred entirely rather than how Ravel wrote it. It would be comparatively indistinct without Ravel's attention to detail to what suits the phrase best when played by the trumpet in that context.


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