Contemporary Orchestration Techniques

Hi Everyone.

I’ve been posting a list, “Twelve Characteristics of Great Orchestral Music.”

Time for another addition, which is #12: (more…)

Over the years, I’ve heard the following sentence many times:  ”Orchestration is all about _________.”

The fill-in-the-blank has been filled by many things.  Orchestration is all about color. Orchestration is all about range. Orchestration is all about the variation of sound. And so on and so on…

What I’ve concluded from this is that orchestration is about a lot of things, and it’s hard to include everything in a single sentence.

So I thought I’d offer up my own opinion on how to fill in that blank—but fill it with a 12-point list. (more…)

One topic that comes up somewhat frequently in class is that of augmented sixth chords.  How are they spelled?  How do they resolve?  I thought I’d go over those questions quickly in a blog.

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The Petrushka chord is a chord made famous by Stravinsky in his ballet Petrushka.  It combines two major triads whose roots are spaced by a tritone.  For instance, a C major triad combined with an F# major triad creates the Petrushka chord. (more…)

Greetings Blogosphere!

As many of you know, I have been working on a new course for Berkleemusic during recent months.  I’m happy to say that the course is up and running!  The course is titled Music Composition for Film and Television.  I’m very excited about it.  It’s a topic that is very personal to me, and we were able to incorporate a lot of great film music as part of the course.  If you are curious about it, the course summary is available here. (more…)

I see a lot of notated scores (assignments and homework, mostly) that are in fact incomplete.  So I thought I’d post a “to-do” list for notated scores.  You can use it as a check list when notating scores on your own.
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I often get asked what software program I think makes the best DAW. Pro Tools? Logic? DP? Sonar? Cubase? Etc…

Honestly, I think that the best DAW program is the one that you personally know the best—and that varies from person to person.  When using a program you know extremely well, you think about the music you are writing rather than the program.  And that’s the most important consideration when you’re writing music.

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It’s an age old question…

“Is parallel motion between two voices OK?”

This often takes the form of a heated discussion between a music teacher and a student.  Most likely, the teacher has said something along the lines of…

“Don’t use parallel fifths.”

This is followed by a Bach-style harmony assignment.  The student, somewhere in there, uses some parallel fifths and gets scolded.

The student then gets annoyed, walks up to the piano, and pounds out a few bars of his favorite rock song.  Parallel 5ths and octaves abound.

“See!  It sounds good!”

Somewhere, Bach rolls over in his grave and the teacher can sense his unsettled soul.

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One topic that garners quite a bit of confusion (and admittedly, a bit of tedious boredom) is the basic layout of a page of orchestral score.  For a moment, let’s look at a page of score—minus all of the notes—and look at the brackets, sub-brackets, braces, etc.

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One point of confusion I see in a lot of student scores is a confusion between slurs and ties.

They look very similar.  They are both curved lines connecting 2 or more notes.  However, they have very different functions.  Ties are used to connect two notes of the same pitch, essentially turning them into one note.  Slurs are used to connect two notes of different pitches, ensuring a legato performance.
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