# Are Rimsky Korsakov's balance ratios still right nowadays ?



## Cormast (Mar 17, 2020)

Hello everyone ! 

Rimsky Korsakov wrote a while ago, at ff :

1 Brass (trumpet/trombone/tuba) = 2 French Horns = 2 strings group = 4 woodwinds

And yet, I found in two articles that a single French Horn could overpower a trumpet or a trombone in dB. Is it wrong or did I miss somethings ?


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## MauroPantin (Mar 17, 2020)

Hello!

Both things are true. The RK ratio is correct-ish, but if you go to specific ranges in both instruments, the latter can be true as well. Instruments are not equally powered across their range.

Those are guidelines and not rules. Take them with a grain of salt.


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## ProfoundSilence (Mar 17, 2020)

Cormast said:


> Hello everyone !
> 
> Rimsky Korsakov wrote a while ago, at ff :
> 
> ...


French horn is definitely not as powerful- though the 2-6kish tends to cut a little.


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## jonathanparham (Mar 17, 2020)

thanks for posting this. This topic comes up every now and then on the forum. Is there are a chart that states these instruments or balances in a table form online somewhere? Not trying to be lazy, but when I google I usually run into opinions rather than the facts so to speak.


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## JJP (Mar 17, 2020)

These kinds of balances can't be taken as absolutes. As @MauroPantin indicated, RK is a nice rule of thumb or a starting point. The range or tessitura of each instrument also weighs heavily on orchestral balance. How an instrument balances isn't simply about volume, it's also about timbre and dynamics. Instruments behave differently based on how they are played and the tone they are asked to create.

Going beyond that and trying to assign absolute dB ratios to instruments is completely pointless. It doesn't work and won't translate from your DAW to the real world.


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## José Herring (Mar 17, 2020)

Cormast said:


> Hello everyone !
> 
> Rimsky Korsakov wrote a while ago, at ff :
> 
> ...


This balance ration was never a precise science more to use as a guiding rule. 

And, in sample and recorded music you have to work hard to make this balance true, unless you're recording an orchestra and only use the hall mics as even the decca trees will pick up the things that are closest to it out of proportion to things that are far away. Mics don't "hear" the same way humans do and it has taken me the better part of a decade to realize that.

Before I read this book I orchestrated a piece and I did it just by ear. To this day that little 2 or three minute piece is one of the better things I've orchestrated. 

So you have to trust your ears and use your common sense a lot more than a book that was written long ago by a composer who was use to writing for concert halls and for instruments that have evolved into more powerful versions of themselves. Even if you hear a piece by Rimsky you'll notice that things aren't balanced the way that he intended. 

But, for orchestral color and creative use of instruments and the combining of instruments his book is invaluable.


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## MauroPantin (Mar 17, 2020)

@jonathanparham I don't have the actual book with me and I'm not sure it can be shared online. But in any case, here's this snippet from the notes I took while I was reading it.


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## JJP (Mar 17, 2020)

The big problem in this whole discussion is that it tries to reduce orchestral balance to a simple mathematical ratio. Then people try to use that ratio to "paint by numbers". 

The way it works in practice isn't as simple as a ratio.



josejherring said:


> So you have to trust your ears and use your common sense a lot more than a book that was written long ago by a composer who was use to writing for concert halls and for instruments that have evolved into more powerful versions of themselves...
> 
> But, for orchestral color and creative use of instruments and the combining of instruments his book is invaluable.



This pretty much nails it. Your primary tools are your ears and "common sense" of how the instruments behave. The trick is that it takes some study and experience to develop that "common sense". You often don't get that from film scores which are frequently recorded in unnatural ways and often have a lot of mixing and recording tricks to get around the fact that they may not balance particularly well in the hall.


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## jonathanparham (Mar 17, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> @jonathanparham I don't have the actual book with me and I'm not sure it can be shared online. But in any case, here's this snippet from the notes I took while I was reading it.


Thanks. What's your source? I remember the late Peter Alexander listing something in his books. I'll need to review them


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## MauroPantin (Mar 17, 2020)

jonathanparham said:


> Thanks. What's your source? I remember the late Peter Alexander listing something in his books. I'll need to review them



The source is Principles of Orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. The book was never finished but it was completed by some other guy later, can't recall the name. It is in chapter 1, near the end. 

I think it was verbatim or almost so in Peter's book. I have both. I also have the Adler and Koechlin's manuals for orchestration. Those have some notes in a similar vein but not so absolute (ie, not mathematical) which I think is maybe more frustrating for beginner orchestrators but more reflective of the nuances of reality.


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## José Herring (Mar 17, 2020)

There is a use for that formula though. When balancing chords between sections in a full tutti Forte and above. I usually keep that formula in mind. So there is some use for it. But, I find far more useful his other method for balancing an orchestra which is by register and by dynamics. Because anybody with any experience at all knows that the damn piccolo playing by herself/himself will drown out an entire orchestra playing FFF  note 2:30


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## jonathanparham (Mar 17, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> I think it was verbatim or almost so in Peter's book. I have both. I also have the Adler and Koechlin's manuals for orchestration. Those have some notes in a similar vein but not so absolute (ie, not mathematical) which I think is maybe more frustrating for beginner orchestrators but more reflective of the nuances of reality.


I have Alexander's book somewhere on a drive along with the Spectraphone chart (which I refer to). I'll have to dig it out


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## Cormast (Mar 17, 2020)

JJP said:


> The big problem in this whole discussion is that it tries to reduce orchestral balance to a simple mathematical ratio. Then people try to use that ratio to "paint by numbers".
> 
> The way it works in practice isn't as simple as a ratio.
> 
> ...



Thank you all for your answers ! 

I don't think i'm reducing orchestral balance to a mathematical ratio with this question. I just want to find an average dB of expression at fff for all instruments. And it's possbile to measure it. I know that we must develop earing but it's not my point.

I'm not talking about creation here but about sound power analyse. We are in a physical world, and even if there's many factors that won't make a violin, or any other instrument, sound (in dB) like another (because of different player/instrument/recording/sound location), it's possible to make an average of this dB power from recordings from the same repository (players/instruments/recordings/location).

So technically, we could determine whether a French horn actually overpower a trumpet in dB or not, on average, consedering the proper scale of each instrument.

For someone like me who doesn't cross the path of a horn or trumpet player every morning, it's not
intuitive. Therefore, i try to find someone who did that analyse.

EDIT : Average dB at fff for each instrument, and each articulations (At least for the main ones)


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## bryla (Mar 17, 2020)

There is no such thing as average dB per instrument. It all depends on:
- the instrument (I’m talking about the unique make and model - there’s a big difference between two violins)
- the musician
- the space
- the placement

in the sampling world it then goes on with:
- the microphone and placement of it
- the preamp and gain
- the equalization

probably also other things but I’m running out of list. My point is that you are trying to learn it the other way around.


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## MauroPantin (Mar 17, 2020)

More power to you. I don't mean to discourage you, it's just that it is a very difficult thing.

If you really want to do this, though, I would strongly advise using LUFS instead of DB for measuring. I would also consider measuring at f or mf. As an example, measuring at fff for a Trumpet and a Horn is going to provide a huge difference between them in terms of loudness, whilst both instruments are not really that apart in a more sensible dynamic range, which is where players spend 95% of their time.


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## JJP (Mar 17, 2020)

Cormast said:


> I don't think i'm reducing orchestral balance to a mathematical ratio with this question. I just want to find an average dB of expression at fff for all instruments. And it's possbile to measure it. I know that we must develop earing but it's not my point.



And there lies the problem. That's thinking about orchestration and recording the wrong way; as if they are static sounds. Engineers don't even think that way. If they did, they wouldn't ask an orchestra to do a level check before starting to record.

You can go down that road, but the results are going to be far less than what you are expecting.


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## shawnsingh (Mar 17, 2020)

On my first template many years ago, I spent probably a week of effort trying to listen carefully to test legato/staccato, piano and forte, from each instrument, to adjust volumes, in the car and on headphones and monitors.

And within half a year I realized that I was limiting myself unnecessarily - I ended up regularly automating CC11 volume control anyway, in order to get a more natural sounding balance between instruments at different points within a song.

Timbre is a good example why I think this is unavoidable. Sometimes you might want the mf-f timbre to sound loud, like as a really pure rounded tone, instead of a biting or bright ff tone.


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## Kent (Mar 17, 2020)

I found that this book offers a much more nuanced approach than the classic RK ratios


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