Sketch your ORCHESTRAL MUSIC like this!

foreign [Applause] what's up everybody I hope you're well the course 20th century Orchestra writing just got updated with an extra hour and 20 minutes of content this update is free for anybody who's purchased the course already and we're currently running a 30 sale until the 21st of June for anybody else interested in the course today's video is an excerpt from the update and I hope you'll enjoy it there will be times when you need to write something that is a little bit more abstract you know and some of the things we talked about might not necessarily apply in the same way so let's say for example you have a section made of some orchestral stabs and you're meant to resemble the chaotic kind of sound maybe a more action-driven kind of piece you can of course use some of the same rules we've talked about such as the use of structure and you know repetition of the same motific ideas to guide The Listener throughout the piece but of course you know not having a clear sense of Melody will make it so that your writing will be slightly different because you know everything we've talked about so far was pretty much based on reharmonizing the same Melody to fit you know the context of the music you meant to write so I've written this little piece of music to demonstrate some of the things I want to talk about for this class let's start by having a listen to the whole thing it's just eight bars and then we'll see you know how you can recreate the process thank you [Music] yeah this little piece of music hopefully does exactly what I tried to describe before you know is meant to sound chaotic there's a lot of things going on and it's a little bit more abstract being based on a concept more than anything else you might have noticed from my you know those session over here that I have two um you know tracks for the sketch the accompaniment and a lead part so to say so the accompaniment was uh you know my original starting ideas and we're gonna get into this very quickly but I wanted to show you how even with something like this we do still retain a sense of structure with an a idea you know in the first three bars foreign which is these you know Rising you know minor chords and then we have this B idea you know that kind of breaks the pattern and then right after this bar pretty much the same thing that we had before repeats foreign and then we end with something similar to what we had in bar a to remember this and this is what we have now and this may seem you know like a secondary aspect but it's actually quite important particularly for a piece of music like this that sounds a little bit more complex by Design and you know if you don't want it just to sound completely random it's important to have this little you know motific ideas that you repeat and and create the identity of the piece like we talked about in the past and like we'll see in some of the future classes as well so let's start with You Know sketch one [Music] thank you and let's stop it here as the end is a little bit different we'll talk about that later so straight away you you can notice how by taking away the lead part this musical example sounds a lot less complex than it did before we only really have a concept like I said before we only really have some minor chords raising a minor third increments right starting with the C minor then go into E flat minor then F sharp minor a minor and then we end with the base essentially holding a pedotone for bar eight just to create a little bit more variety just to make it a little bit more interesting I split the chords and the bass in two essentially creating two different parts right offset by a beat as you can see the bass lands on bit one and the chords on B2 and on bar 7 the harmonic Rhythm doubles up so we end up with the bass on beat one and three and the chords on B two and four so there's still offset by a quarter note but you know it sounds like the piece is picking up momentum and is creating intensity and this is intentional you know because we want to keep the piece interesting throughout even if it's only eight bars so this progression if you want to consider it a progression even it's just a bunch of chords being raised in minor thirds increments right so what are we gonna do on on the second half of the piece from Bar Nine we're gonna be doing exactly the same thing almost foreign it's almost the same in terms of you know using the very same idea you know these chords minor chords being raised in minor thirds but we're now starting from any flat minor and then we're going into F sharp minor again and then we end on these a minor just like we talked about in some of the previous classes you know I don't like the idea of repeating myself exactly the same way twice in a row so a simple way of continuing to expand on that one idea that we have for this little piece can be for example flipping the chords and the bass you know as you can see we have you know the chords now being played on bit one and the bass being played on B2 something as simple as doing this is gonna do the trick and what about bar 11 and 12. thank you it's a very similar kind of concept we basically have this triplet figure being displaced by an eighth between the base and the chords so it's basically the same concept as the rest of the piece now that we've broken this down let's have a closer look to sketch number two and I think it may be helpful to color it differently so you can see it in context with the rest of the music okay so sketch number two is going to be colored in blue now so let's have a listen to the fourth thing foreign all right so you might have noticed that we never really have more than three parts going on at the same time and this is actually quite important I think it's crucial to follow these rules if you still want to retain that element of clarity Within the Music even when you're doing something there it's a little bit more abstract and complex like we're doing here also if we have a closer look at my sketch you can see how rarely these parts overlap you know we start with a bass we have the chords in the middle and we have you know this answer phrase you know the lead part in blue same thing on the second bar and so on and this is a very efficient way of writing you know filling all the available spaces without never really feeling like the music is too busy because you know as one part starts the previous part drops out and so on obviously it can it can get a little bit more complex near the end you know like like we see with these tabs over here you know where these patterns start to overlap with each other but by the time we get to the end hopefully our main idea have been stated enough times so that the listen I can see or follow us and get you know what we're going for also and this is quite important as well and something we mentioned in the past picking a specific register this is gonna help a great deal as you'll see later on as we proceed with the orchestration of this little piece it's quite important I think as you're sketching to always try and have a rough idea of what you're going to do later on with the orchestration because that is going to inform us of the some of the decisions you make you know as you're writing by you know telling you where to play a certain part of the on the piano and that's also something we've mentioned in the past that is still relevant you know for this little piece of music so let's have a more in-depth look at this on the first bar we had on the base see you know and then a C minor chord and similarly what we have in this little lead part is C minor descending down to flat minor and then the second bar is pretty much exactly the same concept you know but up a minor third so as we have an E flat you know in the base and then E flat minor in the chords similarly we have this little descending minor Triads starting from E flat and then going to G minor and then going to F sharp minor and then what we have on bar 8 is a little bit different it's just something to keep the music a little bit more vary so what I had in mind as I was writing this part was this little Melody [Music] and to spice it up a bit make it a little bit more interesting is separated by an octave like so [Music] what we have in the following bar is pretty much the same concept as before but remember you know second time through we're gonna do something a little different so if we bring up you know the accompaniment as well you can see how the music gives a feeling that is descending right because we we we flipped the pattern between the bass and the chords and we now have the chords and B one and the bass on B2 so what I'm gonna be doing with the lead part in blue is something similar right other than having the music ascending like we had in the first two bars I'm gonna make it so that this little phrase you know goes lower in register in the second bar and also I removed one of the voices and made it so that these are quite literally only just minor thirds [Music] similarly what we have on the second bar really is just quite literally the same thing but is now played on an F sharp foreign and lastly we have the true balance at the end with the interlocking triplet figure we talked about before that is quite similar to what we had on bar8 but sounds a little bit more complex because of course we we we're adding the bass first of all but also we have this triplets starting in different points that are not necessarily you know beat one and in terms of chords what I decided to do is just an A Minor in the bottom over F minor on the top the reason is I just wanted to create a little dissonance you know so this is one way of creating a three-part sketch that uses many of the same rules you know we talked about in the previous classes as well without necessarily having a Melody that drives the piece forward once again the more important takeaways should be the use of structure first of all and then you know establishing patterns like for example for specific to this piece was using minor Triads raising in minor third increments but also offsetting the bass with the chords and those you know triplet figures at the very top you know to create this colon answer sort of feel to the music and finally at the very end we talked about the importance of registers and sketching you know having a rough idea of what the orchestration is going to be what we're going to be doing in the following class is expanding on this by taking a look at how this little piece could be orchestrated by extracting some of the paths that we already have in the sketch and apply them to the orchestra

Channel: Master The Score

Views: 7,297

Keywords: orchestral, tutorial, onlincecourse, composition, orchestration, filmmusic, filmcomposer, sample libraries, music production, trailer music, epic music, production music, trailer music composer

Id: yJ_re8eTtEc

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023