Lesson with JairCrawford

I meant your thoughts on my corrections. After all, there's no point in my correcting your work if you don't understand why!

Originally Posted by Daniel

OK - attached are the midi and pdf files of the combined three exercises.

Now I will make some comments, but I will try to focus on basic principles rather than individual parts of the music.


Exercise 1
Mostly quite good. Be careful only to use one note per voice in this type of writing. If this were written for three singers, well an alto can't sing two notes! The appearance of an extra note makes the listener expect an extra voice, so in this type of writing, keep to one note per part. (Especially here, it is not saved by voice leading, as your F does not resolve to an E).
Another point: don't make the music too busy. If one part is moving quickly, it is often wise for the other parts to move less quickly. (This of course applies not to all situations).
So, for example, in measures 3 and 5, the alto needn't have had all those quarter notes.
That exercise was quite good, on the whole, though. You obviously have some grasp of harmony; we'll work on getting a little more-in-depth knowledge.

Exercise 2
Quite good.
The harmony of your second phrase is almost exactly the same as the first phrase, which makes it a little boring. Watch for this in future; boredom is the bane of music.
I expected you would continue more with the little motif, of which much use is made in the first phase. Think about what you would have done with that little motif (the dotted quarter, eighth, quarter motif which you use once in the 5th measure of the second phrase).
Again, try not to introduce an extra voice to the right hand; the first phrase used only one. The problem with this is consistency, as I mentioned regarding Ex.1. In the 6th measure of your second phrase, do you see the problem? The right hand has D C B, and with the G below, in the bass, those notes imply a certain dissonance (C above G) resolving to the G major chord (with B above G), but you have a B already in the left hand. Remove that B and listen to how much better it sounds. The problem is the clash between the C and the B, and the B ruins the nice suspension - resolution that the right hand gives over the G in the bass.
You did stay in character for the piece though, and it was fairly convincing, so a good attempt!

Exercise 3
Well you've really just copied and pasted it into a string quartet here. Nothing much to say. It would have worked equally well for voices, or woodwind quartet (if you transposed it), so this was not really orchestrating.
I will give you a tougher exercise next time on orchestration.
By the way, was the piano supposed to go with the string quartet? Because that does not make for a very good ensemble, when the piano is playing in such a 4-part hymn style.

Good work anyway. I will prepare another exercise.

It seems pretty self-explanatory to me. I think I understand what you are saying.

Whenever you're ready .

Free next week.
Been snowed under with coursework.
I hate winking smiley faces.

Originally Posted by Daniel

Free next week.
Been snowed under with coursework.
I hate winking smiley faces.

Ok. Sounds good. I don't mean to rush you. ... um I mean .

Difficult exercise this time.

Please refer to QcCowboy's orchestration masterclass for help in that part of this exercise.

Attached is a melody. The exercise: to create two different basslines (I.e., implying different harmonies) for this melody.
For each bassline & melody combination you now have (2), I want you to create a scoring.
Score one for a small string ensemble (string orch, string quartet, trio, anything). Score the other for small wind ensemble (quintet, quartet, etc.)

You will have to create other parts to fill out the harmony, and keep things interesting. You may wish to post when you have created your two basslines so that you don't orchestrate something which isn't as good as it could be.
If you post the basslines, post them WITH the melody - not just bass alone.

Have fun!

Ok, for the string one, I decided to do a trio. So far, I'm doing alright with the viola part, but the cello part is driving me crazy. I can't get it to sound right.
Here's what I've done so far. I've updated it.

You're not meant to start orchestrating it until you've written out the bass-line.
The bass-line comes first. Post that, and then you can work out a viola part (which is of course going to be easier).
The bass-line is the most important thing other than the melody, so it's what the meat of this exercise is.

Post me two melodies with their bass-lines - then we can worry about orchestrating.

Ah. Ok. I made the change. I figured that the viola part would be good for the bass line, so I moved it to the cello.

I DON'T want 3 parts yet!
(from what you have posted: avoid the bass and soprano always having the same rhythm. The Db in the melody could work with an F in the bass, in this type of harmony. The bass you have there is not good.)