Jump to content

Handy website for orchestra writing


roy

Recommended Posts

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...