Orchestral Music Production

A lot of people ask me what I listen to.  The short answer is a lot of orchestral concert music–and a little orchestral film music as well.

Of course, it is a new era for listening to music, and one of my favorite listening experiences is now to create a playlist in iTunes that includes a variety of pieces.  I find it fun (and challenging) to put together a playlist that holds together logically over a 40 minute (or so) span.  Sort of an exercise in long-term musical form.

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I know I’ve been blogging about this one chord for a month now, but I wanted to mention one more thing before moving on. 

This post will be about the horns.  (more…)

In the last post, we talked about voicing a chord like the overtone series.  This is a common recommendation found throughout orchestration literature.  One of the observations about the overtone series is that the spacing of the overtones begins wide and becomes tight as the series rises in pitch.  This often leads to a general recommendation – avoid tight spacing of chord tones in the low register.

In this post, I thought I’d talk a bit about whether I thought that recommendation was sound and when it should be followed.  I’ll go through two examples of tight voicings in the low register, one that works well and one that doesn’t. (more…)

One of the most common guidelines you see in orchestration literature is to “emulate the overtone series when voicing chords”.  I’ll state up front that I generally believe this is good advice.  In this post, we’ll take a look at the overtone series and how this compares to the Tchaikovsky chord we’ve been discussing.

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I saw some good questions on that last post, so I thought I’d take a quick minute and respond.

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Over the next couple of posts, I thought we’d take a quick look at a chord from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6.  The chord is a G major triad and comes near the end of the third movement. It is a short, accented, climactic hit.

First, here is the full chord as scored for full orchestra. It is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, crash cymbals, and strings.  (more…)

In the last post, we took a look at a horror cue that used some very dissonant chords, including a chord that used all 12 notes in the chromatic scale.  Such chords are very dissonant and not typically covered in traditional harmony courses, but they are useful in some commercial settings (like horror films).  They are also used by some current concert music composers.

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Hey everyone.

I thought I’d post a short sample from Orchestration II.  I made a quick, narrated screenshot movie of one of the topics.  It covers an example by Aaron Copland, a well-known melody from Appalachain Spring. In the topic, the basic musical material is presented first as a piano reduction.  Next, five different orchestrations that Copland used in the piece are shown.

Anyway, I thought it may be interesting to those who have yet to take the course. 

In our last two posts, we looked at a passage from the Overture to Wagner’s opera Rienzi. We’ve currently looked at a piano arrangement of the material and also how the harmonies were orchestrated.

Now, let’s look at the melody, which Wagner placed the melody in Violin I, Violin II and Cello, all in unison. (more…)

In our last post, we looked at a piano reduction of a passage from the Overture to Wagner’s opera Rienzi. The passage combined a diatonic melodic statement with lush, triadic chords.

In this post, we will look at how Wagner orchestrated the accompaniment figures.

In the accompaniment figures, he will achieve two things. First, they will supply the harmonic content of the passage…performing the triads previously seen in the piano reduction. Second, Wagner will infuse a light rhythmic pulse into the music. These rhythms will give the final orchestration a desirable sense of subtle movement.

Wagner placed the bassline in double bass and serpent. (more…)