Handy website for orchestra writing

Might come in handy when writing for instruments you are not familiar with.

It is pretty extensive. It covers basically all the techniques and (quirky) individualities of the instruments you can come a across in the orchestra, as well as the relation between different groups of instruments and other information you could need (like seating plan, history and the differences in orchestras, score layout etc).

Almost everything has audio or video in which the musicians of the Philharmonia Orchestra (London) demonstrate what they mean, and show you how it sounds.

I think I am going to spend some time learning about the instruments before writing for them, maybe you should too :)

http://www.mti.dmu.a...nual/intro.html

Hey Roy -

totally forgot this! Haven't looked at the whole page. Although this is handy, I strongly suggest buying Peter Alexanders books: Professional Orchestration. Deals with this and much more with full score examples and audio

I've used that site sometimes, especially the video's with tips and tricks are really nice to watch. For people without access to a real orchestra this is an impressive resource

LSO has YouTube Masterclasses that are worth checking out

Horn player in this collection talks too much and demonstrates too little. And sucks at multiphonics. Everybody else is awesome. xD

Ah I've seen that website before it's alright, but personally I prefer: http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/77-Principles-of-Orchestration-On-line

It's a book Korsakov wrote on orchestration thats been typed up with (nearly) all of korsakovs examples embedded into the pages as scorch files or something so you can see score and hear roughly the effect hes talking about.

I say roughly because it's GPO not a real orchestra but its not too hard to then listen to an orchestra playing the tunes on youtube etc.

Also it has comments throughout it to offer more subjectiveness, they basically say: well Korsakov says this but it has been done by debussy.