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Old Apr 5 2007, 11:42 AM
QcCowboy QcCowboy is offline

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first, an orchestration comment:
If you've been reading the Samuel Adler book then you should know that the flute does not go below middle C (or the B just below that with the B-extension... which is still relatively rare). You have it going to the A below, as well as, if memory serves, a few Fs. That's quite outside the range. Even if you were using an alto flute as your third flute (which is a waste of an alto flute considering the usage you are making in this case, and would require its own stafff in any case - never share staves for "different" instruments) it would not be heard as that part of its range is so soft it is easily drowned out by the rest of the orchestra. If your intent was to use an alto flute as the 3rd flute, then it would be first of all wisest to place it in its own staff (NEVER share staves for "different" instruments). Secondly, as an added note, even the alto flute would be almost silent in that register with what was going on in the orchestra at the same time. The flute, generally speaking, is NOT an instrument that gets to play very much in its lowest octave in orchestral pieces. Its sound doesn't carry over the other woodwinds, and certainly not over brass.

My first major complaint about your orchestration is the quasi-constant tripling of the flute part in octaves. One thing to watch out for while orchestrating is placing instruments from the same family in different parts of their register. In this case, what you are doing is placing 1st flute in its extreme high register, which is quite piercing. Flute 2 is in the mellow mid-range, which carries but not as dramatically as flute 1, and flute 3 in the weakest (and at times non-existant - check those instrument ranges!) lowest register.

It would probably have been more felicitous to create some harmonic pattern for your flutes and actually do the octave doubling with the other woodwinds and french horns.

You need to work more on creating orchestral planes of sound. There are foreground (melody), midground (accompaniment figurations) and background (sustained harmony notes) planes. These three planes, when used carefully, are what create the depth and colour of an orchestration.

Your piano writing is idiomatic. So there's not much to say there.

Musically, I find that the attempt to blend jazz harmony with non-jazz harmony isn't quite there. The contrast between the two is a little too strong. There needs to be some sort of common ground. I'm thinking particularly of the scat-ish piano riffs. They come out of nowhere, and don't seem connected to the rest of the music.
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