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LEGATO - how would you ask STRING players to play THIS [audio]?

Phrase slurs aren't needed and will be read as (bad) bowing indications.
Thanks, I have distant memories of these "lessons" but music school was so long ago! And I always thought that many things I heard to do – or not to do – were later contradicted in some other class or semester.

? Not my experience... strings parts do have a lot of phrase markings, sometimes down to the smallest detail. Working on orchestral scores on a daily basis, I can confirm this. It's true that sometimes players will find better solutions, but meanwhile you have provided a clear idea of what the phrasing is. Bow markings are a different thing of course
Yep, okay, so I guess I am not forgetting that many things I remember were later contradicted, which is why my memory is so confuzzled, lol!
 
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The thing all y'all are calling "portamento" is just the sound of shifting hand position, in the context of slow and emotional music
This is exactly why I chose these examples, to help facilitate this conversation.

While I've not spent extensive time rehearsing my few string arrangements with large sections, I've spent some time in rehearsal rooms with solo players and ...

Now, having worked with samples for so long, and being on VI-C quite a bit the last few months, I've developed almost a bit of "cognitive dissonance" recently about how these position shifts sound – particularly on celli and sometimes on basses – because it's often simply MISSING and of course quite difficult to script; the sample player would need keep track of positions and legato based on them. I know some products that might approach this, but ... most products aren't going to have this position shift.

Slurs (=bowing), and "connecting the notes," are two different concepts. Separate bows can be connected smoothly & seamlessly
I think this is why I found Con Moto such an interesting product, because it uses the bow change connection and put it on every transition. But wait, I keep going back to samples. This thread is supposed to be about real players! :laugh:

"downbows are for downbeats" - all musicians will understand both these pieces begin up-bow without any mark!
Ah yes! You are bringing back so many memories! I actually learned most of this stuff very long ago, but the knowledge lay dormant for a couple decades!

Also "a long crescendo is better on an upbow (see bar 9 of the 2nd piece) and vice versa decrescendos on downbows" and "downbows and upbows should roughly balance out in duration."
These two are
at 95 bpm but still "espressivo", you could see something like this instead:
right, got it.
This is also why you see fewer slurs when the cellos are playing fortissimo and very broadly. We want them to use the whole bow on those huge notes at the top.
thank you so much for going further into the example to point this out. your replies went beyond what I was expecting for this thread and were extremely helpful!
at a very distant part of my memory but I really appreciate that you are bringing these concepts back to the front of my awareness!
 
This is how Berlin strings and staffpad interprets it , couldn’t get the same expression on the triplets though , tried a fermata on the D but it was too much , I guess I would say to the players on the session just lean into the a little D please.


interesting. okay, who wants to book a studio session with an orchestra to record a bunch of music with real players?
 
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As a copyist, these clefs cracked me up.

Bass clef... Ah, gotcha! :P
 
interesting. okay, who wants to book a studio session with an orchestra to record a bunch of music with real players?
If you come to London , I’m in air with 37 strings in June. + a very good orchestrator, I could send you some before and after , to see how my sampled demos are orchestrated and copied for the real players.
The violas will have their own clef poor bastards, it’s always a note out.
 
2. String players DON'T use phrase markings. For us, a slur is always a bowing instruction: play these notes in one bow. The musicians will shamelessly pencil in better slurs if the printed ones aren't good. So if you're not confident, just let the musicians mark it. Phrase slurs aren't needed and will be read as (bad) bowing indications. Also, slurs over slurs (as in piano music) have no meaning for string players.
I agree with Noam. Growing up singing and playing wind instruments, it's hard to jettison the habits of phrase markings, but for strings it is simply not done. As he writes, 'a slur is always a bowing instruction...."

To the OP, regarding the original phrase in question -- one approach is to just write, "legato, [molto] espressivo" or, "legato, cantibile" and count on the players to make it magic. Almost always they arrive at a better solution than (non string-player) composers.

And while I sort of agree with eschewing adverbs like "beautifully," I still use them sometimes. If you write "Noble" over a French Horn line, they may privately find it kind of lame, but they certainly know what to do with it.
 
And while I sort of agree with eschewing adverbs like "beautifully," I still use them sometimes. If you write "Noble" over a French Horn line, they may privately find it kind of lame, but they certainly know what to do with it.

This is why I always think Italian is very useful for slightly offsetting the embarrassment/brazenness of essentially writing down how you hope the music will sound. It puts some distance between you and the words (unless of course you're Italian...).
 
This is why I always think Italian is very useful for slightly offsetting the embarrassment/brazenness of essentially writing down how you hope the music will sound. It puts some distance between you and the words (unless of course you're Italian...).
When you're working with non-English-speaking players, I definitely agree. But if I'm saying something lame, I don't mind using something really simple, even (especially?) if it means letting the players feel superior to me. The main thing is that they know what you want.

Lots of Directions?

I have myself (and heard John Williams does this too) written quite a few words, a paragraph even, over a passage if I think it's unclear what's wanted. For example, if you have tremolo sul ponticello, you could want something scary / ugly, or simply something odd and intriguing. If you have "sul tasto senza vibrato," you could write, "Childlike transparency" or "Eerie frozen death." I think the players execute differently depending on what's written into the part.

Another example: if you write a whole note (semi-breve) with a squiggly line over it in a trombone part and write, "Drunk" over it, he will know what you want, at least if he's in Los Angeles or London.

But this is a matter of preference and probably not for everybody.
 
:)
. . .I have been guilty of marking a passage "beautifully" (as in: play beautifully) which when you think about it, may be the stupidest musical instruction you can give.
Not at all stupid, Noam, but I do know what you mean; therefore, speaking of musical instructions. . .
Back in my full-time musician days, I was with a group from Illinois (I was the only Floridian) who recorded an album out in Seattle, at Kaye-Smith Studios. This was 1978. The producer asked if I’d be interested in writing an orchestral coda for “No Lover’s Fool,” one of the songs on the album—and I jumped at the chance.
There were other string parts being orchestrated by a pro arranger, David Jackson, who was, at that time, reportedly *the guy* in the Pacific Northwest; I got some valuable input from David, including the fact that viola parts are written in the alto clef. Oops! (so I had to re-write those parts, but that was not a problem, being that middle C, as you are well aware, is on the middle line—Who knew? Live and learn)
When it came time to record the string parts—as I recall, the producer had booked 8 violins, 4 violas, and 4 celli—I distributed the parts to the musicians. Concertmaster Irwin Eisenberg pointedly (sardonically) voiced an objection to my written direction that the parts were to be performed “aggressively.”
“Aggressively? Perhaps ‘Assertively’.“
I said to Mister Eisenberg, “It says ‘aggressively,’ I’d like it to be played aggressively. Can y’all play it aggressively? Problem?”
He muttered something under his breath, my blood ran cold, and I could see some of the other musicians kind of squirming in their seats (I later found out that NOBODY ever “talked back” to Irwin Eisenberg—and who was I? Georg Solti?)
So we ran the part once, then recorded it, doubled it, and it was over, and I was able to start breathing again.
Both Win Kutz (the producer) and David Jackson later said that it was about time someone told Eisenberg where to get off. . . which was not my intent; I just had a specific attack in mind. I had no idea I’d breached decorum.

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If you come to London , I’m in air with 37 strings in June. + a very good orchestrator, I could send you some before and after , to see how my sampled demos are orchestrated and copied for the real players.
The violas will have their own clef poor bastards, it’s always a note out.
I’ll check with my travel agent / wife. 😉
 
In the internet era, probably the best thing would be to just send the performer a link to an audio example and say "this is the kind of style I want." I agree that extensive bowing notation for multiple pages might get redundant, as mentioned above it's sort of default to play in a fluid manner in the absence of notation to the contrary. Without regard to key or time signature, something like the below would get the point across (writing for violin), but again probably doesn't need this much explicit bowing.

One thing that might be worth explicit attention is the 'glissy' transition between notes 4-5 in example 1. I don't think it merits a full-on portamento (fig. 1 below), but I've seen indications such as a shorter dash (fig. 2 below), which will suggest to slide in. It may be simply a position change and often players will add a flourish there. But some will take effort to hide a position change, so it doesn't hurt to indicate if you want a 'lazy' shift.

fig. 1
notes1.jpg

fig. 2
notes2.jpg
Assuming this is for violin or viola, there are a couple more considerations actually, as there are different types of shifting. If I were to play this on the D string for example, I would have my first finger on the E, then slide it up to a G below the A, then play the A with the 2nd finger. This is the way most people shift up, always to a note below the target note with an anchor finger. It's how we measure distance on the finger board. Why not slide up to the A with the 1st finger? Well, if the phrase continued up I probably would, but since I have to play a G I would have locked myself into a position that would cause an awkward string crossing in the middle of a lyrical phrase - something we like to avoid.

Alternatively you could play the whole thing Sul G, in which case I would slide from E to A with my 3rd finger, so you would not only get the full slide, but also a nice juicy vibrato as the 3rd finger is the best vibrato finger for most of us.

In short there are many, many variables best left to the player to decide. Just write the decided emotion and let them decide.
 
As a professional cellist, I think composers working with samples are mostly too fearful of not being clear enough. Most pro musicians will interpret the phrases you throw at them in the way you imagined them and beyond. As for portamento, we do it naturally when it serves the phrase, sometimes it's inevitable when we are on the highest string.

I actually just made a video about this very topic which might help clear up some terms so that you can go into the rehearsal with confidence.


It covers all these jumpled up terms like legato and portamento (which is mostly actually NOT legato.)

Cheers:)
 
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