Frozen Kittens for Orchestra

As some of you may be aware, in the past year I wrote a piece entitled "Frozen Kittens." Well, since I'm a young composer biting off more than I can chew, I decided to make an attempt at arranging it for an orchestra. Now, I know that this will suck horribly, as I know nothing about orchestration, but I figure that practice makes perfect, right?

I am aware of a few notational/engraving errors, and the fact that this piece uses just about no dynamics, and deeper comments on these things would be nice, but I am looking mostly for comments on why my orchestration is terrible, as that's what I'm really looking to get better at.

Also, I'm pretty sure that at points when many instruments are playing, certain ones won't come through on the midi because midi is weak shit. It's not anything wrong with the score if you don't hear something that you see.

Also also, I just put in simple rock drums, which I plan on replacing with more "orchestral" percussion in the future. It's all part of my master plan.

P.S. Please open the Sibelius file in Sibelius if possible, as the midi in Scorch and the .mid file sucks.

Okay, first...

1. First page of the score must include all instruments used in the piece. This helps the reader get their bearings.

2. Use a transposed score. It's fine to use a C score when you're writing (though I don't recommend that, either...), but when presenting your score, make sure it's transposed. That would also put the bass clarinet back in treble clef where it belongs.

3. You metronome marking would be easier to read as quarter note == 188.

4. m.16, your held notes are notated incorrectly as a half note tied to an eighth note, it should be a dotted quarter note tied to a quarter note, in keeping with your percussion pulse.

5. Since you didn't tell us how many horns are in the piece on page 1 (see #1 above), I can't tell which or how many horns play at m.17, and you don't place any indication, either. Ditto for the trumpets in the following measures.

6. By the time the orchestration thickens up around m.25, the harp will have become inaudible.

7. The timpani part is not practical, at m.33 you have four separate pitches that would normally be played by one or possibly two drums.

8. Again, at m.36, you've subdivided the beat incorrectly in the held notes.

9. The Eb Clarinet part is kind of superfluous, the part isn't particularly high enough to really need an Eb instead of a Bb clarinet. Two Bb clarinets would certainly be sufficient and would most likely sound better, since the Eb clarinet would be in a less suitable register to compete with the instruments around it.

10. The timpani part is again completely impractical at m.73... with 6 pitches used in the range of 3 drums.

11. Piccolo and flute parts will be inaudible at m.77 or so.

12. The woodwind klangfarbenmelodie at m.129 will almost certainly not come off correctly... I would suggest overlapping the notes.

Wow, thanks. I just forgot to hit the "transposing score" button in Sibelius, and I also forgot to show all instruments on the first page (I also just used an Eb clarinet because Sibelius has it in their orchestra set). I will certainly look into all of the notational and instrumental issues, though.

As for the klangfarbenmelodie, I wanted to arrange the theme to move all up and all down, as the original theme is simply A moving up in thirds with octave displacement, followed by A moving up in fourths with octave displacement. I don't fully understand what you mean by "overlapping" the notes. Do you mean that I should have each instrument sustain their note?

Thanks for your time and your detailed review of the work.

I think it's perfectly fine to write scores in C (but you really should indicate it on top of the score with a "Score in C" remark). I do it in all my scores and most conductors I know prefer conducting more "atonal" music from scores in C anyways. Your piece isn't atonal of course, but it still contains a lot of non-functional harmony which is IMO quicker to read in C.

The only advantage I see in transposed scores is that you see more easily in what register an instrument is playing, like if a horn has an insanely high note that might be "dangerous". You might also say that it faciliates communication with the orchestra, as the conductor can refer to specific notes for an instrument and the player sees directly in the part which note is meant. However, many conductors automatically transpose such notes to C anyways and will talk about -sounding- notes with the musician, not transposed ones.

Concerning the "Klangfarbenmelodie": I assume flint-wwrr means to have each instrument play at least two notes in a row, so that every note is played by two instruments: For example, have the piccolo after the first two 8th notes also play the E with the flute, have the flute also play the F with the Oboe, have the Oboe also play the B with the English horn, etc. Otherwise the line will not connect properly and won't actually come out as a line, but just a lot of single "dots", all in slightly different dynamics (and if you're unlucky, imprecicely). A "Klangfarbenmelodie" usually works better if the changes don't happen quite so quickly anyways, so you might also consider not introducing a new instrument at every 8th note, but letting one play for a couple of notes before changing (and again always overlapping the last note or better last few notes, i.e. having it played by the previous and next instrument at once).

Generally, the faster a passage is, the more you need to overlap passages played by different instruments if you don't want it to sound disjointed. (Which is especially important if it's played by a not-so-professional orchestra, or one that has no time to rehearse, as a lack of rhythmical precision will "tear apart" such passages even more.)

Anyways, I liked your piece a lot and really enjoyed listening to it.

All right, updated score/midi. More sparse instrumentation, too.

And I just listened to the .mid file, and it completely screws up the music. Rats.

I guess I'll upload the .sib file too.