Orchestration Hacks (5 Quick Tips)

all right let's talk a little bit about orchestration this is not gonna be some comprehensive class i will not like cram four years of study into like a ten minute video but i can do little um you know quick tips like little things that i've learned in school or little things that i've learned along the way you know at sessions or from orchestrators i can do that i can put little quick tips into videos and compile them so let's start with number one melody if you want a melody to be heard make sure you put it into enough instruments something very common when you hear those really lush melodies there's really big like john williams-esque or late romanticism stuff where you have these soaring melodies usually that means that a large portion of the orchestra is playing the melody so something you will see very often is um you will have the first violence play the melody in a high octave second violence doubling one octave lower you have the violas doubling another octave lower so you already have the melody playing in like three octaves right there sometimes even the jelly will be on the melody or at least half of the cello section this doesn't work in mock-ups by the way so careful with that um but normally the easiest way is to just have the chelly and basses play in octaves play the bass line done that's your string section most of them play the melody in octaves and then you have the bass line played in octaves boom then what you're going to see very often is that the woodwinds are going to be doing exactly the same thing so the piccolo is going to play the high string line and then the regular flute is going to play an octave lower doubled by oboe doubled sometimes also by clarinet depending on how high it is then another clarinet an octave lower maybe english horn octave lower um and then bassoon bass clarinet double the jelly and the bases that's your woodwind section done so they're playing exactly the same thing and then you can have the brass fill in the cords you could have the trumpet double the melody as well not quite as common but it happens but so horns and trombones are really great for filling in the chords now between the bass line and the melody because you really have the melody covered now you have it in several octaves playing um across the strings and woodwinds so someone needs to do the chord work now and this is really the trick don't be shy to have a ton of instruments play in unison or play in octaves if you really want to bring a line out put a bunch of instruments on it have them play together it's also nice for a section when they actually play as a section instead of being separated out likewise you can have the melody also played in the horns like if you have a really soaring horn melody but that will usually also be doubled like usually you will have um like the cello section at least half of them play with the horns so you have this really soaring quality in the horns all of a sudden sometimes also the violas sometimes you will have the bassoon doubling the horns as well sometimes even the clarinet depending on what colors you want to choose brass tends to be generally the loudest in the orchestra so the horns don't need that much help but definitely doubling them with the jelly gives it a very soaring quality that the horns by themselves don't always have and also if the horns are going to be playing the melody just put all the horns on the melody like yeah you can dvc them and you can like um you know break them up and play counter lines and stuff but if you want to be on the safe side and you really just want that horn melody to come out on top and just you know be the most soaring thing possible just put all the horns on the melody no harm done don't be afraid to have people play in unison it's fine you don't need to split out every player onto their own line number two dovetailing very often you will have the woodwinds play with the strings so strings can play runs endlessly of course woodwinds cannot because they have to breathe so what do they do they employ something that is similar to choir breathing you know when a choir is trying to hold a note longer than they normally can they do choir breathing meaning the different singers breathe at different spots so that it seems like they're holding this note endlessly when really you know they're all just breathing quietly in different spots to hide the breathing and so you can do something similar with endless woodwind lines for example endless runs that just go on for pages and pages so say you have two flutes so then you would have the first flute start the runs play the run for like two bars or something and then as it tails out before they get a break the second flute will taper in so they will have overlapping notes for a portion of the run and then the second flute takes over for two bars plays the runs so the first flute can breathe and then the first flute dovetails in again while the second flute tails out you can do that if you have double woodwinds a double setting so two flutes two elbows to clarinets they can just do that with each other and it will be very seamless you will not actually hear that it's two players you can also use that as a color though so if you only have singular woodwinds you can do this between like flute and clarinet or oboe and clarinet or something or flute and oboe um you'll have a color change then of course but that's okay you can use that deliberately as well but so dovetailing is how you usually solve the issue that um woodwinds just can't play for endless amounts of time they need to breathe at some point the same thing goes for if you have runs up for example like say you have like a grand finale or something or whatever big crescendo and you have woodwind runs that go all the way from like the base range all the way up to like the piccolo range then you will have um the low instruments start and then the other instruments slowly come in and while the low instruments start to fade out because they're out of range at some point the high instruments take over but it's all overlapping so it seems like one continuous run up when really it's all the woodwind instruments just kind of interlocking to make that uninterrupted run happen here's a word of wisdom you need at least three strings to make it sound like a section let me explain if you have a chamber size string section you always want to make sure that at least say three violins are on the same line playing in unison you don't want two two is bad why is it bad because they're gonna be slightly out of tune with one another because on a violin i mean you know a tiny fraction of a millimeter already changes the pitch very slightly and they're gonna try to correct themselves and play in perfect unison but it's so hard to do and so they're gonna be very slightly off and you're gonna hear that however when you have three violins it kind of evens out you cannot like they're gonna be slightly off but it's gonna even out to the correct pitch like your ears are automatically going to hear it like a section and hear one correct pitch unless someone is completely off but that's unlikely with professional players it's a bit less of a problem in the lower string sections but definitely with violins and violas you always want to make sure you have at least three people on a line it's similar to you know how on the piano on the higher register you have several strings for the same note and they're all slightly detuned but you're hearing one pitch that's pretty much what's happening interesting side fact if you want to double the volume or the perceived loudness of one violin you don't need two violins you need ten so two violins do not sound twice as loud as one violin make your piece work without percussion first unless of course it's a completely percussion driven piece and the percussion is in the forefront yes okay but if it's a melodic piece or a harmonic piece or both or you know counterpoint whatever is happening and the percussion is not meant to be in the forefront make your piece work without percussion first it's something that we learned at conservatory but also uh reading uh korsakoff's orchestration book apparently this has already been a problem like a hundred years ago or more he says young composers overcompensate by overriding for percussion this might be true just saying but so to fix that what i do usually is i if i write a score like fearless for example the klaus family or any of those those more traditional orchestral scores with melodies and stuff i will first write it without percussion every cue first gets written without percussion in it and then the percussion is added later because the percussion is only meant as accents or to enhance something or as a color but it's not meant to take the center stage of the piece so in any of these scores you could take out the percussion and it would totally still work in in most of the compositions of the composers that we admire you could take out the percussion and it would still work 100 percent here's another thing i learned at a session so i was in london at air it's a london symphony so whatever went wrong was definitely gonna be my fault and so we were playing through this piece and we had three trumpets and they were playing like a somewhat high melody line but not at the edge of like the range and they were just consistently out of tune and i couldn't figure out why because this was not a particularly difficult line but also it's the london symphony so obviously it's not their fault and thankfully we had a very experienced orchestrator there and he said trumpet number three dropped down an octave and all of a sudden everything was in tune so they only had trouble playing in unison with three people not with two people and now they had this really great foundation and octave lower from the third trumpet i don't know why this worked i don't know what the secret here is but it's something i learned that day and something that was fixed very quickly thanks to having a an experienced orchestrator there this is why having experienced orchestrators at sessions is so important because i wouldn't have known how to solve this now i know so if this ever pops up again i know how to fix it but yeah this is something i learned that day [Music] i hope this was helpful um i can make more of these don't forget to like and subscribe i don't say that very often in my videos but i was told that i should say it more often so like and subscribe and hit the bell so you get notifications when i upload more content you

Channel: Anne-Kathrin Dern

Views: 81,761

Keywords: film composer, film scoring, recording, orchestra, strings, violin, viola, cello, bass, melody, orchestration, music notation, flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet, bassoon, percussion, brass, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, film music, composition, korsakov, nikolai, rimsky, instruments, musicalinstruments, tutorial, tips, tricks, hacks, soundtrack, recording session

Id: qqJbXflRpPs

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022