TOP 5 ORCHESTRATION MISTAKES!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2024
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In this video I come clean about some of the horrendous orchestration mistakes I made on my 20+ year journey to understand how to write for orchestral instruments. It's never going to be pain-free but hopefully you can learn something from my mistakes.
Mistakes:
0:37 Harmonies that sound good on the piano don’t always sound good on other instruments.
3:23 High notes sound high even on low instruments.
4:34 Unintended comedy
5:52 Unison string doublings, especially for medium paced tunes.
7:01 Funky rhythms and how to write them for classical players.
Adam Neely's video "How and why classical musicians feel rhythm differently " which I mention in mistake number 5.
• How and why classical ... - เพลง
This is so great, I've definitely made some of these mistakes including the unison doublings and some suspect things with register! The "funky rhythm" thing at the end of course speaks to me - one thing that might help with syncopation is heavy dynamic accents on downbeats, which ends up with "lighter" feeling syncopations. Also somehow getting them to feel a longer subdivision (in that last example, half notes) ends up with a more natural result than trying to feel the rebound off of every downbeat.
Thanks a lot Adam, yes, although my solutions have helped make the rhythms at least playable I have to admit the actual micro-quality of the groove is an aspect which is almost impossible to discuss meaningfully in most classical ensembles both because it's not something they're familiar with thinking about, and also because it's virtually impossible to negotiate amongst more than say 4 musicians. One day I plan to have my own ensemble who work at it for months on end before they finally get the micro-groove I'm after (-:
A wild Adam Neely appears!
I think the habitat suits him around here (-:
look at that, my two favorite music boiz in one comment section, how grand
fangasm!!!!
I'm gonna be hearing that high B in my sleep
buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-(bubbles)-buzz, giggle, buzz
one of my main gripes is the sheer neglect of the percussion section! most composers see it merely as "decoration" what they don't realise is there are some beautifully melodic instruments in there, also the sheer vastness of tonal variation, for example....have you ever heard a tam-tam played with supper-ball mallets, a vibraphone played with bows or tubular bells being lowered into water. No other section of the orchestra has such a massive dynamic and tonal range. One funny one, a humble triangle as pathetic as most look at it it is capable of cutting over the top of the most powerful orchestral tutti and with correct muting can create a really funky and lively latin rhythm. So please all you composers.....give the percussion some love
Triangles can be things of beauty, or things or terror. I was a percussion tutor for a prominent high school concert band, and found the triangle they were using was just a $5 'toy' from a music shop, yet they had 4 hammered copper timpani, a selection of quality maple, birch, ans steel snare drums, quality mallet percussion... you get the idea. But their auxillary was completely overlooked. Luckily, the director was open to buying a nice Alan Abel triangle and set of different sized beaters, and a Grover brand tambourine with a head.
It just took a single one hour tutorial with the percussion section on proper striking position and technique for both, and it had an amazing effect. The the quiet section with the triangle starting the bar, and the flutes to entering softly underneath it with a melody and the clarinets and horns swelling in long notes went from sounding abysmal to beautiful. The tambourine added a real punch without the force of a drum for some quieter rhythmic passages... The director thought I was a miracle worker when really it was just few people treat aux percussion seriously, and thus by horrible quality instruments and don't bother to learn even the basic playing technique.
I remember one of the other bands were using a low quality triangle, and hitting with a drumstick (and we are talking bands made up of primarily 17 and 18 year olds)... in the adjudicator's notes he mentioned how the band whom I'd worked and another whom really respected the aux parts had done such a fantastic job with the aforementioned sections, and absolutely slammed the band that had the drumstick on triangle.
TL;DR I agree the percussion section has so much to offer, but unfortunately it often gets a bad rep because the percussionists are unfamiliar with correct playing techniques, and have 'toy' quality instruments. If writing for a specific band, it's often worth seeing the quality of their gear and choosing accordingly... their is know point using the beautiful effect of a bowed cymbal if it's going to be played on a $10 cymbal, or by a player whom doesn't know how to bow a cymbal :-D
Very easy to over-use, though. I have to filter out a lot of glock and bells because their effect would be so lessened if I included them as much as I truly wanted to. It's true there's many effects available to percussion, but tbh almost none of them have any sustained application. Bowing any tuned metal, like crotales, is an exception.
Triangle tremolo doubled with high woodwind trills, and perhaps glock trill as well, is a wonderful texture.
Personally, I'm a terrible percussionist. So, I write very little percussion.
In my orchestral pieces, there is never less than four precussion players. I confess: I love percussion.
The ending of "Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is a great example of the thundering timpani and the "cutting" triangle.
If you want to use bassoon or oboe in a chord, remember that any dissonance will be much stronger than with other instruments
1:48 My new ringtone.
Sounds like your phone farted!
As an early teen writing Arrangements, I used to take my Horn parts over to a friend's house. He was an accomplished Saxophonist and I would have him play through my music so I could hear what it sounded like. I was rarely disappointed but one time the results of what I had written made me fall on the floor in uncontrollable laughter.
The thing that I love in your vlog is your charecter, not like most of the other music vlogs you don't show yourself as a "Super-Musician who knows everything" but in way you even admit the fact that you are not always knows whats right, and this humble
.personality (which sits well in many composers personality) is more humane and fun to listen to
And that is how learning curve is achieved. And guarantee of advancement. I just subbed for that. These people are the teachers I want to learn from.
Grieg once did the opposite of the "unintentional comedy" in that he wanted to create a satirical lampoon of what he considered an almost epidemic of over-the-top national-romantic pieces being composed at the time. But to Grieg's great annoyance people ate it up and loved it without any sense of the "parody" or "irony" he was going for, and like many others before and after, he had become the very thing he set out to destroy :p (the piece being In The Hall Of The Mountain King... a piece, according to Grieg in a letter to his friend Franz Beyer, so reeking of cow dung and ultra-"Norwegianism" that he himself couldnt bear to listen to it).
Sa-satire. Incredible
Very interesting for a non composer too. Please write a piece featuring all these mistakes. Could be hilarious!
"A composer's guide" or something like that.
Try "Ein Musikal Spass" by Mozart. (I think that's how it's spelled)
rodgrego Musical Joke by Mozart, as MrInitialMan suggests (but in English)
"So you want to write a fugue", which Glenn Gould said he intended as a sort of recruitment ad for counterpoint in composing, has a lot of witty things going on in opposition to what his singers are singing at the moment. For instance, "Never be clever for the sake of being clever, for the sake of showing off", and the instruments and vocal parts are competing with each other at that moment to derail each other with complexity, resulting in what the composer called the annihilation of a fugue at the end.
Check musescore.org for the world's largest collection of such pieces.
Thanks for this video. It's very helpful. Something my wife, who's an accompanist, pointed out to me on one of my pieces is that I didn't give the wind players many places to breathe. She told me they'd be keeling over during the piece. That's one of the unexpected challenges I discovered with notation programs; computers don't have to breathe.
"A mere stroke of the pen" was how an old mate of mine would describe an arranger who didn't do his homework. We never stop learning & your videos are very helpful. Thanks.
Two contradictory lessons I've learned are to make parts as easy as possible to perform, but then also don't underestimate a performer's ability and give them material that sacrifices too much complexity for its easiness. It's all about finding a balance, especially with instruments you don't play yourself, and it's taken me ages to finally crack the ratio for just writing for pianists.
It helps a lot if you can actually play the instrument in question, so you can try out what you've written. You don't have to be _good_ at it, because you can fumble and crawl as much as you want, but you should be able to figure out whether or not where will be physical difficulties in the part. Writing stuff that _sounds_ really difficult, but actually is easy on the instrument in question, makes both the musician and the audience happy. For example, properly constructed four-note arpeggios flying up and down over two octaves are easy on violins and violas, where they are exceptionally difficult if played on, say, a clarinet.
Basically, if you have a grasp of the instrument sufficient to know what its characteristic idioms and tropes are, and you know _why_ its players gravitate toward those techniques, you'll be able to wield that instrument a lot more effectively than if you're just using a book or tutorial as a guide. Done right, you can end up with really complex compositions consisting entirely of parts that the individual musicians find relatively simple, or maybe that there are a handful of trouble spots that will require dedicated individual practice.
It's interesting to see what it is musician's have more or less difficulty with, especially when it's opposite what you expected. Sometimes, (probably more with less experienced musicians,) it's not even about the instrument per se, it's about what the musicians are familiar with, like his examples about funky rhythms.
Music that shows off technical ability does not require complexity. The most difficult music tends to be what's musically difficult rather than technically difficult. The things that sound difficult tend to actually be easy while the things that sound easy are likely more difficult.
E.B. White some players are incredibly skilled and will blow you mind. I’m always surprised by what many professional musicians can do.
I would never write a piece of music in terms of easy or complex. That's just doing something for the sake of it. To me, writing music is like expressing a story through sound and melody.
Good stuff. On another note, a few tips I've learned to pass along when orchestrating with midi keyboards. #1: Never play a string chord as a chord -- always voice it one part at a time. In this way they each have their own vibrato rate and it sounds more "real." Played together it will sound embarrsassingly like 80's synth stuff. #2: Understand the range and abiilty of the instrument. Just because that oboe CAN play 32nd notes in eight octaves doesn't mean it should. #3: Keyboards are tuned perfectly to A 440. Consequently when playing in the upper register, they will sound a little flat. And the bass will sound a little sharp. People don't realize that even temperament is a sort of "cheating" and what most good players do is compensate somewhat (even subconsciously) when playing in the upper register by going a little sharp. But an electronic instrument doesn't know that, and the pitch becomes difference becomes apparent if one's ears are fine tuned. When playing a note two or three octave above middle C I find I have to "bend" it a bit to sound in tune. As for bass, I set up my bass guitar so that the E string and B string are a tad flat, and that in turn sounds more "in tune." And #4: When playing counterpoint I find that instruments that have a similar timbre will clash. This is a case of simply finding what sounds best, but an English horn and a bassoon playing counterpoint can wind up sounding like one messy rhythm. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule!
Why would different octaves not sound equally "in tune" in equal temperament? Every note is related to itself in other octaves by either division or multiplication by 2. As far as I'm aware, the reason certain instruments sound sharp or flat in different registers is because of how they were made. For instance, I know that the altissimo range in saxophones has multiple occurences of the same note tuned differently, so players may choose one or the other and then proceed to lip it in tune. Another example is that most woodwinds sound sharp in the higher register and flat in the lower one because playing higher notes requires more air and mouth pressure, which in turns sharpens the note.
@@karlpoppins That's a part of it, but there's also a matter of even temperament. It isn't exact. It's somewhat "squished" so that we can extend the range. (Many renaissance period instruments were only a couple of octaves). We can't really hear it in the middle register but it starts to become apparent in the extended range. That's why many piano tuners use "stretch" tuning. (Making the upper octave a tad sharp and the lower octave a tad flat).
@@NelsonMontana1234 I don't understand. If I multiply A 440 Hz by a natural number I will keep getting octaves of A. Now, if I multiply A 440 Hz by 12√2 n amount of times, I will get the note which is exactly n half-steps above that A. Equal temperament was designed to be exact and symmetric, while sacrificing intervalic quality. It shouldn't sound flat or sharp in any octave.
Are you talking about the process of tuning? Because, for instance, tuning all notes in a piano in relation to A 440 Hz, any error will accumulate the further away we are from the centre - and that's why pianos are tuned by octave, from the centre and outwards.
@@karlpoppins Theoretically, you are correct A440 should double to A880 and so forth as you go up by octaves. However, pianos are tuned sharper as you go up and flatter as you go down to account for something called inharmonicity (based on length, tension, and properties of the wire), which is characteristic of the piano. If one tunes pure octaves, the 5ths will end up too flat (Comma of Pythagoras). The bigger the piano and the better the quality of instrument the lower the inharmonicity will be. Some orchestras and other musicians are having their pianos tuned to A442. I'm a piano technician. Hope this helps!
@@karlpoppins Brent explained it perfectly. That applies to all instruments and it's especially apparent on midi instruments. It may SOUND like an English horn but it's still an electronic A 440. And the "inharmonicity" becomes apparent when going to the register above C7 (That's two octave above middle, not C dom)
2:40 These are not french horns, these are dinosaur horns, by John Williams :) Knew the soundtrack by heart since childhood!
1:46 feels like a ship tanker captain sipping coffee when entering the port. G Sharp Flatte Latte.
He was right, that horn solo at 5:18 was quite hilarious 😂
really great , honest and entertaining as well.
Thanks for pointing out the 2 violins in unison, I hear many composers do that one incorrectly, and like stated, all your mind pays attention to is the slight difference in pitch. Can drive someone crazy I feel
i actually love the sound of that chord
Your comment about writing a very difficult passage for the horn player reminded me of a composers' workshop I was in, back in the last 1970's, with the composers also being the performers. The composer/performer whose primary instrument was the piano wrote a challengingly soft, high horn part for the brass player (me). After auditioning it in the first rehearsal, and discussing that she really did want those notes, we agreed that the better (i.e., safer) approach was for me to play it on flugelhorn.
Good points. That syncopated clarinet example at the end is cool.
Even though I’m a pianist, I almost never use the piano to compose with. As you observe so well, it can give a false sense of what the end result will sound like.
How kind of you to own up to your earlier mistakes so that the rest of us might avoid them in our own writing. Thank you.
I have found that studying the overtone distribution of different instruments is very enlightening and can be really enabling to make artistic orchestrations not just standard or safe choices. Also I love you channel! You really seem to have a genuine wealth of knowledge that make your videos very valuable (refreshing compared to most musician youtubers). I would love more content to hear your opinions of contemporary music and the future.
The way I learned bits of orchestration was taking an old score from the 1800s and up and putting the whole thing into notation software so that I got to study each individual part and the little nuances between each instrument. The hardest part for me was learning the tons of string techniques such as harmonics, pizzicato, the different types of sounds, etc.
James Brown told his bass players to play the one - after that, they could syncopate all they wanted. Without the one, there is no funk - just bouncing around.
Which later oooozed over to George Clinton Pfunk. Bernie Worrell always incorporated classical music in the song.
Wonderfully informative. Thank you, David, for another great video!!
Very helpful. Thanks, David!
This is the channel I've been waiting for. Thank you so much for this great content!
Amazing Video!!. Your voice and the way you explain and speak (pauses etc.) it's very smooth !
Very usefull content!!
David your videos are amazing, keep up the good work
These are some great tips! I've recently been thrown into an "orchestral rut" lately, and this has helped immensely! Thank you!
David your channel is excellent!! I know nothing about composition, and it is amazing to hear all these thoughts that go into it! Mind blowing!
Thanks for being so humble with your talent and sharing the mistakes you’ve made. I would love a sequel to this! Goes to show that even the Pros stumble from time to time
Thank you David! All this priceless knowledge so easily accessible. I am grateful. I really believe it's the best time to be alive.
thank you so much for this honest video. I've never seen a composer actually admitting and owning up to their mistakes like this - so much respect! I feel so much more motivated to carry on now
I am so happy that I came across your channel! Keep up the good works.
The honesty in your video is what I appreciate the most.
This is so enlightening. I learned so much. This will improve my skills as a music listener. And, I love David’s willingness to criticize himself and not take himself too seriously.
This is fantastic!! Thanks for sharing your knowledge man. 👍
Thank you Bruce , your videos are most I formative and entertaining. There are probably a lot of people who like myself have the education, but through career imperatives as media composers, have only seldom been in fully orchestral situations, and i think you are catering to us perfectly :)
You're very humble and gracious for sharing this. Much respect.
Great channel, great musician and teacher! Your videos are so unique in all aspects, so straightforward, helpfull and inviting!!! Thank you David!!!
A very interesting lesson with great examples. Thank you!
Very interesting video and kudos for taking examples in your own body of work ! That’s courage to me.
Exactly the Video im looking for for quite some time! Liked and Subbed! Keep it up
Very informative and helpful(and I can relate to a lot of this being a composer myself!)..thank you!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I found it very interesting and informative.
As a violinist I cannot agree more on the two strings together. The hardest passage in Boheme has always been for me Mimi's death as a coprincipal, trying to blend all the notes with the first violin is much more difficult that many virtuoso passages in the opera. And those are different notes! Unison is a hell of a beast in two
One of the best music tutorials I've yet seen on TH-cam.
Very nice. We enjoyed this video very much. We learned a lot today.
Fantastic! As a bassoonist who works in jazz and funk and utilizing an electric pickup-I’ve screwed up so much being addicted to the grid of Logic and even Finale to some degree. The advice you give is so valuable to those of us who like to play and attempt to write music of many idioms. Thank you!
Enjoyed that David - especially your face at 4’20” - valuable points mate
Great perspectives.. and very welcome ideas!
Wonderful stuff!
Entry of the Gladiators is the Mistake No 3 brought in another level.
Always enlightening. Thankyou.
Another good one to remember, especially with regard to woodwinds, is that their lower registers, all in all, are more timbrally distinct than their higher registers. Lower-register notes have much richer harmonic content than higher-register pitches, so there’s more to distinguish them to our ears!
Really liked the Chord in the beginning. It has a dark jazzy quality to it like some pieces from Bernhard Herrmann or Morton Feldman. Like your videos, it is really good work. Keep it up!
amazing video: interesting, educative, and very honest. thank you Bruce
Thanks for this David :)
Several of these I have noticed myself, the rest I’ll take as sage advice for the future! Thanks!
Thanks for your insights. Generally, it is more effective to learn from mistakes, either my own or somebody else's. Great channel, by the way.
The two string problem is a classic. I was taught "three violins play better in tune then two" and it's true every damn time. One of my first arranging opportunities as a teen was for a small pit band with strings 2 violins, a viola and a cello. (Ya, bass too.) I was lucky the violist was really good, because I added the viola to the violins when we needed a rich unison, and that's way closer to your nose on viola than on the violin.
Amazing! Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for sharing! Quite encouraging!
Great video! I watched this the first time four years ago when you first uploaded it. I thought that all the advice given then was good. I wasn't, however, working on anything particularly relevant at the time, so I didn't really have a chance to explore or experiment with your suggestions in mind. I've recently been working on some pieces which require a variety of tone colors. Your video is definitely helping me steer away from what could have been some of the most unintentionally ghastly and painful assaults on human ears. Thanks so much!
You look really zen when you speak. I really enjoyed this.
Great vid! Well explained and useful!
A courageous video. And a very instructive one. Many thanks. :)
Thanks for this video. Often, performers get blamed for a poor result when, in fact, the writing is a product of lack of experience. (And yes, sometimes an piece simply isn’t learned well enough.)
I like your humility.
Very helpful. Thanks!
Ooh I can really relate to this, especially the third mistake!
I was orchestrating a piece originally written for solo violin, played it back on MIDI and couldn’t stop laughing at the percussion part!!!
Thanks a lot. This gave me much more ideas about layering.
I'm watching this right before beginning work on my first symphonic composition XD
Thank you David!
Great job. Thanks!
Thank you for sharing your hard won expertise.
Brilliant, the wisdom of experience!
I am so glad you shared this. I totally understand the funk versus classical orchestration moment as well as the unintended comedy. I did those mistakes in undergrad and did not understand why and then gave up for 10 years. I wish
I had had teachers in undergrad who could have pointed this out to me or had been open enough to have learned.
Fantastically interesting advice clear and very enjoyable. Thank you.
Nice video chief. Thanks for candidly sharing your growing pains & cringes. Great.
Thank you so much for your work!!!
Can it be difficult to communicate with performers through the score? In other words I imagine score clarity is something novice composers take a while to get their heads around and it probably takes a lot of experience to refine? Back in college a composer friend asked me and a singer to perform his song for soprano and piano. The vocal line was written under the piano part! But even more fun was that the song was clearly in C minor but rather than using a key signature he opted for accidentals. (His refusal to make my suggested revisions was partly because he was shocked to discover he composed a piece that had functional harmony. Oh, what outrage!)
+AndrewJC
You actually can read a vocal part that's below the piano line, it's just awkward when you're not used to it. Still, its absurd to write a vocal line below a piano line because nobody's used to it and it doesn't make sense intuitively.
@@AndrewCout In some older scores, vocals (at least choirs) would go between the cello and viola parts, spliting the strings in half; I'm not sure why, though. In modern scores I think that all vocals are written directly above the strings.
Great information! Thank you.
These were fun to hear! I was thinking that lines like that high clarinet would sound great on a wood piccolo at low volume and you might still be able to salvage a more "pure" blending quality.
Glad you came up in my recommended, just subscribed and looking forward to more!
I've been told as oboes play higher the sound gets softer. Although my piccolo is wood, not everyone has one. Perhaps cues written for oboe or piccolo?
@@rheamorales1329oboes certainly become very soft in the high register but unfortunately the range is cut pretty short :(
ALWAYS write trumpet parts from F below the treble clef staff down to Ab below that. GLORIOUS!!!!
;-)
I'm envious of your large collection of different instruments
Vey helpful information, Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing these experience！！
Very useful vid! Thanks for uploading. Instant sub!
Fascinating! More on orchestration please...
As always, great video.
Thanks for the great tips! The best advice I ever got is to tailor the complexity/difficulty of the piece to the musicians who are going to perform it. This is especially applicable for amateur/developing composers writing for school/uni ensembles. The music I would write for my high school orchestra was way too difficult and routinely performances sounded awful. I remember going to a workshop with a composer who told me he was writing a piece for a children's guitar ensemble. He knew there was no chance they were going to play in tune or with good tone so he made the piece focus on rhythm and percussive qualities more. He managed to get the best music possible out of that group.
I feel like your advice about avoiding doubling unison strings could depend on the the skill of the ensemble. I'm pretty sure in Debussy's string quartet in the 3rd movement there are some passages where the viola doubles the violin melody. I agree that would be best to avoid unless lucky enough to be commissioned by a top string quartet!
Informative and useful.
I love your video content!! It''s so useful!!
thanks!
As a horn player, please don't write me music...
such honesty hahahahaha
As a trombone player, please write more for brass, especially low brass. Low brass is too underrated.
@@AlgyCuber I like muted low staccato brass.
Thank you for this lesson! I have problems both larger and smaller than yours: I arrange for a Scottish bagpipe band! A dozen players all playing identical instruments, each with the same 9-note range. The good: due to the limited range the harmonies are always tight, and due to the Just Intonation tuning certain chords blend better than on piano. The bad: due to the limited range there are loads of chords you'd love to do but can't, and due to the Just Intonation tuning there's one brutal interval, the very narrow 5th between C and G (the Major 2nd and the Major 6th). Also all players sound continuously (no articulation or rests) the timbre is strident and every note of the scale sounds at its unique (and unchangeable) volume level. Low Ab honks out super loud while high Ab is quiet and sweet. (The notes generally get softer as you go higher, the opposite of many instruments.) Nevertheless the top Pipe Bands such as Field Marshal Montgomery, with 25 pipers, get a lovey blend with rather complex arrangements.
Fascinating. I am not a composer myself, but it was enormously interesting to learn a little about all the issues involved. Sometimes when listening to contemporary music, it seems like there are no rules, but when it comes to making such music that is sonically coherent and has artistic integrity, it is clear that there will always be many rules!
That was ENLIGHTNING!
Good stuff!
A million thanks for a very informative video indeed.