Orchestration: PART 1 (woodwinds) discussion

Hey, I had a go at the woodwind-orchestration-over-the-strings-part exercise, please let me know what you think.

Here is the audio:

Woodwind Orchestration Exercise

And the score (woodwinds only):







Cheers!

I think, at this point, it would be interesting to get some feedback from some of the other participants on this.

I see a serious problem in the very first measure. Did anyone else see it?

Is it out of the Oboe's range?

Was just about to say that as well.

Yeah, Chris, you keep the oboe in the squaking range for a good bit of that, if not too low. Would work if it were an English horn/cor anglais. Also, aren't the parts usually written on one stave? Flute I and Flute II together, Oboe I and Oboe II together, ect. Is it ever acceptable to divide the parts into separate staves?

Hey, about my chord and what you said... that makes a lot of sense, thank you, QC.

Alrighty... I'm doing Exercise 6 over again, this time with my own and original melody and not some one that I had stuck in my head that turned out to be O Tannenbaum. This new one is in two separate phrases, melody emphasized in the bass clarinet and bassoons, the rest is support.

I took two tries at it.... my old and weaker attempt is after the first and more successful one, which is my newer attempt with the horns added for resonance. Is there too much movement in the horns? Anything else stick out to you? Comments from anybody are welcome.

Yeah, Chris, you keep the oboe in the squaking range for a good bit of that, if not too low. Would work if it were an English horn/cor anglais.

Thanks for that!

Also, aren't the parts usually written on one stave? Flute I and Flute II together, Oboe I and Oboe II together, ect. Is it ever acceptable to divide the parts into separate staves?

I have no idea mate!

I'll take your word for it though.

Thanks.

Notation-wise, you can write double parts per staff (ie: flutes 1&2 on the same staff, etc..) if the score won't be too messy.

Otherwise, there is nothing saying you can't place one instrument per staff.

Obviously, if your score is absolutely massive, with woodwinds by 3's and huge brass section and multople percussion parts and harps and all, then it's probably best to condense a bit.

With chamber music, however, it's fine to place individual instruments on individual staves.

For these exercises, I think it's good that you do them each instrument to a staff. That way, you start to consider them ALL as individual instruments.

One of the biggest problems young orchestrators have is that they tend to treat each staff as a single line, regardless of whether there are two instruments or only one per staff. Which means I've come across scores with 2 flutes on a staff, but only a single line written for 90% of the score, and the occassional divisi.

This does NOT make for good orchestration.

Remember that an instrument in its high register can be treated like a DIFFERENT instrument from the SAME instrument in its low register.

This is a large part of what I'm getting at with understanding the weak/strong range relationships of the instruments.

Ok, I've made my corrections and added a few parts.

OK, I'm just wondering what those few piccolo notes are doing there in the first page?

Not to be too strict, but the exercise is one of unison, octave and multiple octave doublings. No harmony permitted

Other than that, the piccolo part would stick out like a sore thumb, it's a little too disjointed from the rest of what's going on.

Other than that, the piccolo part would stick out like a sore thumb, it's a little too disjointed from the rest of what's going on.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I originally had this part an octave lower on another flute I think but I couldn't hear it for everything else.

Not to be too strict, but the exercise is one of unison, octave and multiple octave doublings. No harmony permitted

Oh, I totally got the wrong idea, lol

I'll do this again tomorrow.

Cheers.