How To Write and Arrange For Strings The Basics

hi everybody I'm Rick Beato in today's everything music we're going to talk about how to write for Strings we're going to talk about the ranges of the instruments and some idiomatic elements of each of the instruments in the string family and also how to voice chords within the strings that's coming up next okay first of all let's go over the ranges of each instrument all right let's talk about the range of the double bass the lowest note just like the bass guitar is a low E then the bass being tuned in fourth says the next notes a D and G now some bases with an extension on them will go down to C that C you will find in certain orchestral pieces you'll see the extender on the bass if you've ever noticed when they stick way up above the headstock on a bass on a double bass and those will go back to C and the Act will actually have different levers that you can push to go back grammatically you'll see them in certain workers rows depending on what types of pieces they're playing you'll see those in film scoring because you'll have a lot of really low extra low bass notes in certain film scores but typically the lowest note of the basis is LOI now this low E is actually written as this note but it sounds here so this is the line below the base clef the first line below the base clef it's that E but it sounds here it sounds an octave lower than written next is the cello the lowest note of the cello is this low C here now the cello is tuned in fifths to the next note G D and hey see g-d Hey now one of the things about the cello is that you can play chords on it just like on the violin and the viola an example of it would be this spread triad it's the open C string open g string and then the e a step above the open D string so chords you can play on the cello if I were to play these notes C sharp G sharp this would be in half position which is the first position on the two lowest strings so this is the to open lowest strings this is half position you can do things like plate sixth intervals as well so you can really create some really great intervals down in the low register on the cello continuing on we have the viola violas lowest note is the C below middle C now the viola is written in alto clef which means that the note middle C is right in the middle of the staff where a B would be in trouble clef or D would be in bass clef so here's the lowest note this is one octave above the cello which is down here so we have C G D a now you can also play chords in the viola like you can with the cello and lastly we have the violin the violin begins on this G right below middle C so here's middle C this is the lowest note of the violin below G then D a and E is the top string so it's tuned in fifths G D hey II so this is a perfect fifth above the viola so the viola starts here then the lowest note of the violin is here low some of the viola low some of the violin then if you scan over here lowest note of the cello and then lowest note of the bass so bass cello viola violin violin those are the ranges of the instruments okay let's talk about orchestrating a few chords here we're going to take some really large chords so we can talk about deviis ease that can happen in the string orchestra okay so the first chord we're going to do is this big fat that would be like an e AO lien voicing okay so I have an e active in the base the slowest e happens to be the low E string of the of the bass but then I'm going to actually divide the bass section up to play octaves so I have the basis will play the low E half a plan Ian active up on the D string then in the cellos I'm going to have the cellos play divided up and played see G okay now this can be done either by splitting a section or having the entire section play a double stop okay the double stop of the fifth is very easy to play since all you need to do is borrow your finger across the string so that can be done you really need to know where these you really need to know how these instruments are set up so that you know how to write for them so that's the first part so those are my cellos and basses I get the basses doing activies I have the cellos let's say we're going to do it where they're playing just a double stop the entire section is playing double stop see G it'd probably be better in tune if they split if they did it to V Z and you gave them the section C half the section G either way you probably get you probably good intonation either way and then we're going to take the violas and we'll split them up inactive F sharps okay so we've got bass cellos then vo us and then here's my violins so the second violins are gonna divide and play G D and the first violins we're gonna play the high melody note a okay so why have the power on that imagining that that's going to be leading somewhere once again bass bass cello cello viola violin too violent too and then first violin I'll play the whole chord so that is a one two three four five six seven eight nine note chord voicing to be spread out over the orchestra now we can do some really easy voicings for example you could do a simple f-sharp minor chord I basically did a spread triad I give above okay so you can put the bases and the cellos on unison f-sharp or you can have the bassist take the f-sharp cellos can take c-sharp Peola and the violins can all play there or you could have we have the basis bass cello cello second violin there's a few different ways you can divide these chords up and what you need to think about is what the range of the instrument is if you want intensity you voice a lower instrument higher in register so that it speaks with more intensity so I might take attention note that if I have a chord like this sharp against it in the cellos because that's in a higher register as opposed to being a really low note in the violas of Yolo lowest note is here then you're at it second string which is a g-string and it's one note above that it's a relatively low note in the viola but sharp is a much higher note in the cello if you think of the cello is a more intense sound so you have to take into consideration the range of the instrument and if you have a a note that you want to sound exciting you voice a lower instrument higher to give it the power because as the string gets shorter and you're playing in higher and higher registers the notes become more intense because there's less string length okay let's say we voice another really complex chord so let's say that it's something like this guess what I have here I've got AB see c-sharp okay so I've got a poly cord I've got a major over F major but the it's sharing the know a okay so now this is a fifth which I can easily either play the cello slang these dividing these up we're playing it as a double stop I can play the bass on F the cellos and see okay might not have the quite the weight that you wanted to have if I put the basses I know and then the cellos the bzf at sea and then then I put the violas on a purrs violence okay so there's a lot of different ways that these chords can be divided up and you have to really know what size Orchestra you have how the court is going to speak within the different registers many times the bass will simply double the cello on the same note which means it's sounding an octave lower but there may be special effects that you want to have if I want that spread try it at the bottom of the order to have a lot of weight I'm going to try and balance it as evenly as possible okay I don't want to necessarily give too much weight to the root okay I might want to really divide those up I could even play honestly I could play the basses playing it fifth like that okay F and C it's very easy to play in the bass and I could actually have the cellos plan now the viola thus note a is on the second string on the g string okay so it's not going to have as much intensity it's not going to speak as loudly is this double stop is so you want to really think about this when you're orchestrating these chords that's all for now I'm going to have more of my orchestrating four strings in part two I'm Rick B Otto

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 392,393

Keywords: Rick Beato, Everything Music, arranging for strings, how to write for strings, music theory, orchestral strings

Id: ETGhduIhGIE

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2016