Lesson with RMClarinet

Hello,

This lesson will focus on eventually helping RMClarinet learn more about orchestrating in various styles. We'll begin by doing some work on learning about the basics of orchestration by using his recent romance for strings, as seen here:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/...41-strings.mus

The piece demonstrates some lack of knowledge in terms of the capabilities of string instruments, as the triple and quadruple stops he requires would be impractical and even impossible.

To start things off, I think it would be beneficial for you to read the following texts that I've collected for you which describe the basics of orchestrating for strings.

The first is a basic description of orchestral string instruments and their ranges and various other things as provided by the Northern Sounds Forum's transcription of Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration textbook. Please read the section up until it starts talking about woodwinds, we won't worry about that yet:

Lesson 1 - GENERAL REVIEW - Strings & Woodwinds - northernsounds.com

Next, an article in our very own Wiki about violin double stops:

http://www.youngcomposers.com/articles/Violin-Double-Stops

Lastly, this document has some fingering charts which will be useful for determining which multiple-stops are possible to play on a stringed instrument:

http://home.hetnet.nl/~fgjabsil/archpdf/fingers.pdf

Once you've taken a look at those, your second lesson task is to revise your string romance so that it's more conveniently written for your string players. If you feel that you absolutely NEED a certain double stop and can't remove it, then you'll need to add another staff and another instrument part. So if you really NEED a quadruple stop in the violins, then you can split it into Violin I and Violin II (the added staff) and then have a simple double-stop in each instead.

I'd prefer it if you could finish this task before I leave on July 1st.

Good luck :o

I will start tomorrow, I can't read this late.

Marius, I went to the library, and got an orchestration Book. :happy:

Wonderful; read up on strings especially for now, so you can do your revision, then you can focus on the other instrumental choirs too.

Incidentally, which book did you get?

For Orchestration, I got Rimsky Karsokov's Orchestration Book. I got a notation one I cannot remember the name off the top of my head.:)