Orchestration: PART 1 (woodwinds) discussion

Ok, here it goes.

I have re-written exercise 5 and I directly went to 6b, don't know why - guess I was eager to test 4 horns. I think I have failed with the resonance completely. I guess I got a bit carried away

I will redo it again. I don't really know how this turned out since I spent too many hours on my first attempt, and I just recently deleted the entire thing and re-did it.

Enough of crap talk, here it is.

ok, a quick "correction"... horns 1 and 2 go on one staff, and 3 and 4 on the other.
don't divide them "high horns on one staff" and "low horns on the other".

the exercise seemed a bit "square" to me... with the instruments coming in in pairs the way they did, and on sort of breaks in the phrase. I think your other exercise was more of a success than this one.

You won't get an effect of "resonance" if the resonant instrument is playing the same note values as the rest of the ensemble.

There needs to be some sort of rhythmic difference between planes of sound - Melody, Accompaniment, Resonance...

I will redo it

I was frankly just curious to hear and get some critique, since I had spent too much time at one go, giving me no perspective to it in the end.

Thank you

If this can help in any way: when composing something with the intention of creating different planes of sound (ie: melody, accompaniment, resonance) it is improtant that you consider this from a compositional point of view.

If your melody is all in quarter notes, then making the accompaniment in quarters and the resonance in quarters will just create this big bland mass of sound - very homophonic (and no gay jokes!).

On the other hand, if your melody has characteristic rhythms, and uses values that are substantially different from the accompaniment, and your resonance is allowed to "carry-through" long held notes (they just have to FEEL longer than what's around, they don't have to last measures on end), then you truly create planes of sound that will be subtle but distinguished by the mind's ear.

So basically if my melody is not too rhythmical I should vary the accompaniment, and if my melody is more rhythmical I should consider longer accompaniment. ?

I guess that solves my awful attempt

yes, in a simple way of putting it, that IS basically what it is.

Contrast is the important issue - there should be some sort of rhythmic contrast between foreground planes and background planes.

Remember that more movement generally equates to more attention.
If you accompaniment is extremely active, it should at least not be too harmonically active. If it is very active then make sure that your foreground plane is at least orchestrated so as to bring it out over the accompaniment - in other words it should have more "mass", be in a prominant register, have more characteristic timbres...

For example:
a solo flute in whole notes in its lower range against a full string section in 16th notes covering a wide range...
which one do you think will "SOUND" like the foreground and which one like background?

Hey - just notifying you that I'm back from the grave. Sorry about the long wait on my part - I could make excuses, but I don't want to bother you with my problems.

I will do my best to catch up, and I promise that the next post in this forum will have lots of exercises!

Alex

Getting in on this a bit late, so I just did exercise #1. I'm going to move slowly as you recommended, both to allow better creativity and also to incorporate the feedback/corrections you give. #1 was very simple, though you did seem to oversimplify the problem of tessitura into "strong" and "weak" categories... some instruments might not be said to be either at any point in their range, but only different in timbre.

Please point out any mistakes, make any comments you wish, I'd appreciate anything and everything! Sorry these are separated into eight PDF files, I have no way to merge PDFs into one document and I wanted to be a little creative with my choice of key. Noticed in another student's exercise that all four were on the same staff... were you meaning for us to use the same key for all weak versions/strong versions, so they would play together?

well, the oboe could have been higher still to explore the "weak" range, and likewise the basson could have gone much lower to take advantage of its louder adn more pungent low notes. flute could have gone still highe to keep as much of the melody in its "strong" range.

I think I mentionned that the terms "weak" and "strong" were relative and that all the ranges were usable.

Obviously, exercise 1 was meant as a "getting to know you" exercise first and foremost.

The idea of "weak and strong" registers is more one of getting into the habit of understanding that certain instruments will have an inate strength in certain registers whereas a different instrument might not be able to compete in the same register.

This concept is particularly important when creating doublings. Both weak and strong registers can and should be used to best advantage when creating mixed timbres, however, first comes the need to understand that there ARE weaker and stronger registers for various instruments.

I wrote a melody for solo flute, trying to write a 12 tone row that sounded nice, and (hopefully) succeeded. Then, I decided to try and orchestrate it for winds, as I'd completely forgotten about this, which I am very sorry about Michel, I know how much work you've put into this and I hate myself for not putting the same amount back

Originally I wanted to go for ex.5, but I didn't think it was long enough to get the full use of 2 of each, so I tried it for wind quartet, hope that's ok

The 12 tone row is the flute part, the bassoon is playing a counterpoint and the oboe and clarinet doubling motifs and filling in the harmony in the latter part. I've tried to include as many performence instructions as I could to convey what I wanted to, but I'm not sure if it worked; I was going for a kind of light, bouncy feeling, hence the stacatto and fairly fast tempo.

Once again I'm sorry I've not given your exercises as much attention as they deserve.