Question for Orchestrators

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Words never were my strong point...

[KenNickels]

Oh, bloody hell - how inadequate words are when discussing music. If you're in the ring slugging it out, a result might appear, maybe not. Accidents produce art all the time. You have to be attuned to them, be ready for them. You're basically on your own. Sondheim used to smoke a little weed and lay on the floor, letting his mind go through the convolutions of all possible combinations of word/melody variables. In the end you have to hammer it out. No getting around it. The theory books say things like, no parallel 5ths,and if you use a third in the bass, that there should be a preponderance of the root elsewhere to compensate for it. It's good common sense,but after that,it depends on context, and context is as big as the world itself. Like others here have said, if it sounds good, it's good.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

No parallel 5ths and the world of rock and roll collapses. No bar or double bar chords. Sorry.

Hmmm... the Sondheim method...

[cowtothesky]

No parallel 5ths and the world of rock and roll collapses. No bar or double bar chords. Sorry.

Hmmm... the Sondheim method...

No power chords??? Come on, man!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK, but only with distortion...

[KenNickels]

Right, and we'll have none of this either: E6-F7. That's right out!

[stubbsonic]

I wonder if another way to approach this subject would be to give some kinds of "tips" and "starting points".

When I'm working on an arrangement, I may start with 4 or 5 distilled parts: melody, a bass part, several counterpart lines, maybe some chords with nice voice leading. Sometimes, working on the percussion section stuff first is more important-- depends on the piece.

Then I have to think about a few things. Who do I want to play the melody, and when? Solo? Section? Mixed instruments? Octaves? etc. What kind of energetic shape do I want from the passing of the melody to different timbres?

Having the overall dynamic arch/shape in mind can help with this. If you want to start tiny, for example, you can give the melody to a solo instrument and choose the personality that might be evoked by that instrument.

Another important fact-of-life about orchestrating is that the listener always brings a cultural context to the experience. In the industry, we say "some instruments have baggage." Here's a ham-fisted example: if you were scoring a film scene of an epic space battle and you chose banjo, spoons, and a kazoo as your instruments-- it might be wonderful music, wonderful art, but perhaps "wrong" for that moment.

The question that I continually grapple with in arranging is creating the right balance of voices when distributing the melody notes or the notes of chords to various instruments. Since not all instruments penetrate the mix in the same way, it is not just about balance, but also about the "texture" of the sound. I'm still working on this. Trial and error is a good teacher, but I'm a slow student.

The nuts and bolts of each instrument's range and capabilities is important to have a handle on. You can know that pushing those boundaries can create a certain quality that might be cool.

I deal mostly with student players, so I have to factor in the mixed abilities of students as I distribute parts and simplify some lines. There's some guess-work as I try to estimate how much the students will practice more challenging parts.

I hope you might find these meandering musings helpful.

[FMiguelez]

The question that I continually grapple with in arranging is creating the right balance of voices when distributing the melody notes or the notes of chords to various instruments. Since not all instruments penetrate the mix in the same way, it is not just about balance, but also about the "texture" of the sound.

Yes.
And I think this is a very hard thing to do because, if it's an orchestra, for example, you must first know what a real one sounds like, and then try to emulate that sound in the scoring, programming and the mix from that knowledge.

Otherwise it's tempting to just "adjust" poor writing in the mix by just turning the volume up, and that usually makes things sound even worse (like setting the flutes too loud even if they are playing in their lower range along with blasting horns over the full orchestra). I mean, it's possible to do so just by raising the volume so they can be heard, but those same flutes would never be actually heard in a real setting (and most likely never scored like that in the first place). So the mix needs to reflect reality (if you want to sound like an orchestra).

[Shooshie]

To take a slightly different direction, I just recently had MY mind changed about voicing from listening to some Vivaldi concertos I was recording. I had not really paid that much attention to Vivaldi's strings in the past, but because I was recording these pieces, the voicing really stood out. Parallelism creates a different sound that grabs the ear's attention. For example, if you play a scale with parallel 5ths separated by an octave, you'll hear a change of timbre that resembles synthesis. Essentially, that's what a synth does -- it adds overtones and creates relationships between tones that stay constant throughout the scale, thus creating a new timbre.

Voice leadings help to avoid those timbres, but they also help to create them when they're effective and not distracting. That's what Vivaldi taught me so distinctly just in the past couple of weeks. When you emphasize the right voices in a Vivaldi string section, you get what is a quintessential baroque "tone." Similar manipulations of the voices (and writing of them) can create the sound for any given era, or create a new sound.

What's important is not a rule, but what is being accomplished by that rule. Change the rules to change the sound, but be aware of what you're doing and why. Wheras Vivaldi is manipulating 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, and 7ths, you may also manipulate 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths to get sounds you want. Vivaldi may be going up the scale with alternating intervals of 5th, 6th, 5th, 6th, 5th, 3rd, 7th, octave… and so forth, but maybe you would be replacing those with Octave, 9th, 5th, 9th, octave… and you might find a coherent "sound" that gives your piece a certain character.

In my book, THAT is the key to the rules. They enable and bestow a certain character on the music. Change them, and you have a new character. The baroque composers emphasized certain rules, for this is what gave them the character that was popular at the time. Classical, romantic, impressionistic… they all changed their rules, but they HAD rules. Even if they were not formally developed with treatises about them and agreement by a school of thought, they were nonetheless guidelines that enabled a certain character. Then each composer adds his own touches to give it his own voice.

Philip Glass, when asked about what distinguishes him as a composer, and his music, has said in multiple interviews: "I know my voice leadings. Few composers do that now." True enough; he did study with Nadia Boulanger, and if you survived a few years with her, you knew your voice leadings and you knew why you were using them.

Where people get hung up is on that word "rules." Think of it as "ruled notebook paper." The rules are the lines that help you write straight across the page. They aren't laws that forbid you from crossing the line. Just aids. And if you lived in Vivaldi's time and heard parallel 5ths, with that synthesizer-like sound, your ears KNEW it instantly, and you reacted to it. We don't do that now. We've heard it all. So your rules will aid you in developing character, not in preventing people from sticking their fingers in their ears.

I hope that sheds a little light on this.

Shooshie

[KenNickels]

Well put Lizard Kisser . I have made these mistakes. It's hard because you're moving between a real environment and a virtual one. Sampled instruments will always sound thicker in the mix and will require some finesse to diminish the deceit. However, deception is not altogether wrong and can be used to the composers' advantage just by using his ears, and doing ... whatever it takes.

[KenNickels]

Shooshie, yes, change the rules to change the sound. I love the Baroque rule, really just a conformity, to play without vibrato, which you must have noticed big time in your Vivaldi. Here is Handel, doing more of the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0veaYKphLCU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rick Averill]

Banjo is never wrong for any moment.

[stubbsonic]

Banjo is never wrong for any moment.

Then nothing is ever wrong.


... but let's qualify, are we talking about a real banjo, or every synth banjo from 1980 up?

[Rick Averill]

It would have to be real banjo, because synth banjo is a lot like synth guitar. It never really works out.

But people assume that banjo = bluegrass, when it is capable of so much more.

[stubbsonic]

Yea. I like banjo. It's a cool sound. But talk about an instrument with baggage.

In a way though, that's what's cool about it. People don't hear banjo in other contexts very much. It's refreshing when you do.

Pedal steel is another one. Talk about a powerhouse instrument!