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Originally Posted by MusicManJ4
Okay, two things: my rework of exercise 4, and my first shot at exercise 5 and/or 6.
Exercise 4 (slightly reworked) - I could only use one of the bassoons. To use the second bassoon, I would have to put it in octaves, since you asked for little or preferably no à due. To have another bassoon in octaves wouldn't sound right, it would either be rather high in range and unbalance with the rest of the winds, or is below it would just not sound right, being too low relative to the original octave the melody is in. I know what you're saying about how it isn't flowing well. I was trying to have the melody tossed between the instruments, like a conversation. I'm still trying to preserve that idea, but I worked on making it a little more fluid, or continuous, as you put it. Does this work now?
Exercise 6a - Okay, this is going to need a lot of work. I did exercise 5 and went right on to adding the horns. Go ahead and listen with the horns muted first, I know there are plenty of things wrong floating around with the woodwinds alone. I'm concerned that this wasn't a good choice for the exercise, what do you think? I also added horns 3 and 4, but I wasn't sure what you meant by sharing between the horns and woodwinds. Should I now give the horns a melodic part somewhere in exchange that a woodwind must fulfill the resonance rule, or?
And yeah, I know I need to work out how to use less instruments, I'm using too many of them the whole time.
Oh, by the way, if you could recognize the tune I used (I changed it to minor), I would appreciate if you could tell me the name of it, because I don't. I know I've heard it before, though.
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O Tannenbaum? ("O Christmas Tree")
OK, I see no reason to be so hard on yourself. I think the use of the horns was pretty good for a "first try".
one thing I WOULD be careful about, and it's not an "error", it just could create boring orchestration in the long run, is the use of too many octaves.
Don't be afraid to have 1st flute and 1st oboe or clarinet play in unison.
Don't be afraid to have the 2nd flute play a 4th down, and the 2nd oboe to cover the 3rd of the chord.
If you carefully "weight" the melody (ie: have enough instruments playing the melody) you can even have one instrument play harmony notes ABOVE the melody without disguising it too much.
Orchestration is a game of balancing acts... balancing relative weight and density of sound... balancing the "thickness" of the sound... the volume.
- A simple melody can be played all in unison and octave doublings
- The same melody can, in another context be played with unison, octaves AND 3rds and 5ths doubling (thickened melody)
- That same melody can be accompanied by a simple counterpoint that goes in opposite direction from the melody itself
- That counterpoint can take on an entire life of its own