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re: writing parts that are sensible for the intended instrument - At the end of the spring semester at my college, the composition class would have to debut and conduct their final piece with the top wind band. I was fourth horn and was once given a piece that had me start like ten ledger lines below the staff and go up to about five ledger lines above the staff. With sixteenth notes. In a single measure. We played through the whole piece once, and the director of the band (who was also the composition teacher) asked me to try to play my part. The composer quickly realized that the french horn isn't the best instrument to have play through like five octaves over the course of a couple seconds. e: This also happened like ten years ago, so details are probably wrong.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:33
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Erwin posted:Cobaltshift's other point is a great one - something you write may sound good in Finale, but may be difficult for the instrument it's written for. You have to consider intervals and range for brass, the break on clarinet, and you want to avoid an angry mob of violinists murdering you when you write something in Db. Definitely run parts by someone who plays that instrument. I'm happy to look at trumpet parts and tell you if the intervals are too mean. For a concert I played earlier this spring we had a Schubert vocal piece that had been transposed to D flat, except the guy who did it couldn't figure out how to get whatever program he was using to do D flat and printed out the parts in C#. Really. We actually tried it once and it was hilarious. Played Brahms 3rd Symphony in my last concert and he makes the first violins do some pretty lovely things. I remember a particular >4 octave jump with less than a beat rest to do it. Big name composer that he was, I can't imagine he was ignorant of what a violin can do so I have to guess he was simply... unsympathetic.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:57
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I'm gonna say that learning the rules of counterpoint first will be a good way to make sure your lines for each part make sense. The problem I have with a lot of amateur vsti orchestra composer/producers is that everything sounds like an effect rather than a melody (lots of stabs and arpeggios and me falling asleep). You don't necessarily have to follow counterpoint all the time, but if you understand how to think of music linearly (individual lines resulting in harmony) rather than vertically (going from chord to chord to chord) you can A) have a greater range of effect when you know how to do both and B) think more diatonically (or step-wise at least once you get out of the realm of tonal harmony) which most non-chordal instrumentalists do (I think). If you start with some good, fundamental knowledge your pieces will probably turn out more mature and interesting once you start playing with more abstract things like chord colors and the timbres of instruments (and the combining thereof). So analyze Bach for awhile and do some 4-part SATB writing. After that, I like the idea of going through prominent composers of different periods because the harmony and orchestration do become increasingly complex (as part of a general trend). On the orchestration side, my experience worked out like us first looking at each family (strings, brass, percussion, woodwinds) and the various characteristics of the instruments inside that context: range, tessitura, common roles. We also briefly talked about the history of each instrument and how that effects the way they are generally used; ie brass instruments playing fanfares a lot because of their origin as non-chromatic instruments (only able to play the notes of one harmonic series). It started out simple with us just orchestrating out Greensleeves for a string quintet, then a minute of music for a full(ish) orchestra for our final project. It helped to break it down like that because you can first see how an instrument blends with others in its family, then you can see how different instruments occupy similar (but still different) roles generally and play with that once you are more comfortable with how they work together. Form is sort of tricky because the same name means different things (or really nothing at all) depending on which period you are looking at. I'm sure you can call any drat thing a Sonata in 2015 and no one will care at all. A google search for different forms will probably give you enough information though. The only thing I'd say is that if you are breaking a form down by section, you generally want to think of it in terms of harmony than anything else, ie this section is in I and this one is in V. Starting with simple song form (intro-verse-chorus-bridge-etc-outro) isn't terrible because the concept of a form is basically something leading to its consequence and then coming back either the same or sort of different. Also when I write (I don't write classical, however) I like to think about the "Golden Mean" or basically that the climax of whatever I'm writing is going to occur about 2/3rds of the way through the piece. Also also, one of the things my last theory professor drilled into my head was that the best compositions tell you everything that is going to happen within the first few bars: the tonality, what intervals everything is based on, what rhythms are going to be used, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean that you are using the same notes and rhythms all the time, just that a more tight and clever composition is going to develop based off of a few components. I wish I could recommend books and resources but my theory professors never made us buy books (thank god), it kinda sucks though because I don't have anything to go back and reference because I also didn't take any notes. I'm basically saying that google is your friend but also sometimes your friend might have dumb opinions about different things so take it all with a grain of salt. Listen to stuff that you like and want to sound like and let your ear guide you through everything past the fundamentals. God that took a long time to write. Isaiah Brofist fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jul 11, 2015 |
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Jul 11, 2015 21:34
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Thanks for the guidance, guys. I ordered this http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Orchestration-Recording-Package-6th/dp/0130771619 (ouch I haven't bought a text book in a while) and have started reading through it. It's dense but not incomprehensible (so far). Still waiting on Tonal Harmony to come in. Everything seems to be indicating that I should be reading scores as to supplement these resources. As someone who doesn't read music very quickly at all (though trying to improve) that's a little intimidating. I'm very much not at a point where I can look at a score and hear what's going on. Should I just be looking for things like "ok, the various section of the strings are playing the notes to a Gm7 here" or....? Any helpful advice related to beginner score reading?
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Jul 13, 2015 16:21
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Bolange posted:Thanks for the guidance, guys. I ordered this http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Orchestration-Recording-Package-6th/dp/0130771619 (ouch I haven't bought a text book in a while) and have started reading through it. It's dense but not incomprehensible (so far). Still waiting on Tonal Harmony to come in. Like in the post above yours, start writing four part counterpoint. Lots of music uses that as a starting point and adds other voices and rhythm to fill out into a full song. E: the reason this is useful is that you can start recognizing patterns which will enable you to read a full score easier. In theory, anyway. I actually don't have much experience reading scores other than transposing individual parts, but pattern recognition helps me do that faster. Kibner fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 18:35
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I'd recommend working on ear training on top of all the advice above. Being able to see a note on paper and being able to hear it in your head is a fundamental part of reading music without an instrument to sound it out for you, and ear training is how you improve that.
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Jul 13, 2015 20:34
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Mederlock posted:I'd recommend working on ear training on top of all the advice above. Being able to see a note on paper and being able to hear it in your head is a fundamental part of reading music without an instrument to sound it out for you, and ear training is how you improve that. Yeah, I've picked up a copy of Auraila and just started with that. My ear is terrible.
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Jul 13, 2015 20:54
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I recommend Bach (keyboard) stuff for analysis because you can just worry about harmony and voicing first rather than trying to figure out instrumentation choices and such at the same time. Basically you want to start by looking at functional harmony ie this chord is V in this key. This is very slow and tedious at first because you are basically going beat by beat looking at each note going "uhh, I think this makes x triad." At the same time you want to think, harmonically, where things are going and where things are coming from. For example, if you see a V chord you can reasonably be sure that it will get to I. In earlier music this resolution will occur pretty quickly after being set up, but once you get to late Romantic stuff these guys like to take their time/hide if they resolve something at all. The coming and going aspect of harmony is important to understand because you're gonna see notes that don't appear to be part of the chord you are looking at, so you have to decide if that means the chord is not what you thought it was or if that note is leading to something else. It gets complicated because obviously the "rules" for music are not cut and dry, so it helps to think of things in terms of relationships. You first listen to something and form an opinion of how it sounds, then you ask yourself why it sounds that way, then you look at how these two notes played together sounds, or how that chord played after that chord sounds, or how this chord played in this key sounds. It's like the concept in jazz of hearing changes; not literally hearing any chord and knowing exactly what it is (which plenty of people do), but hearing changes and going "oh this sounds like the changes in x tune." It becomes about recognizing the patterns that make a particular sound. I for one am terrible at this because it's not what I practice, but I did retain most of the general concepts which are a good thing to keep in mind as you go through the grind of daily analysis. Don't forget that it's all tension and release. e. What kinda stuff are you looking to write? Do you have a particular composer or piece or anything like that in mind that you are into/want to emulate? Is it just the instrumentation that attracts you? Isaiah Brofist fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 22:01
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Bolange posted:Yeah, I've picked up a copy of Auraila and just started with that. My ear is terrible. The hardest thing I did in college as a music minor was write out a four-bar melody as the teacher played it note by note. The only thing we had to go off of was the name of the key and the sound of the root chord. Well, either that or having to perform a short piece of music where we had to play piano with one hand, conduct with the other, and sing all at the same time.
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Jul 13, 2015 23:06
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Isaiah Brofist posted:e. What kinda stuff are you looking to write? Do you have a particular composer or piece or anything like that in mind that you are into/want to emulate? Is it just the instrumentation that attracts you? Great question. I guess the shortest answer to what I'd like to compose would be 'film score' type stuff (I know, I know, so trendy). I like huge brassy stuff and if I had to pick a favorite historical composer it would probably be Tchaikovsky or Wagner. Modern pieces that interest me are stuff like Lux Aeterna, Time (Inception OST), or something like zelda-symphony.com. Really, I'm all over the place. As you mention, I find the instrumentation attractive and I fully expect to eventually blend classical instrumentation with synth lines (too heretical?). It also seems like a great exercise to improve my reading and piano technique.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:28
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Do you have any friends who play 'classical' instruments? It might be fun to have some guinea pigs to work with as you progress. Hell, once you have some simple SATB pieces written, I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least 4 goons who'd be interested in recording one of the parts of it so you could blend them together. Count me in for brass stuff in the tenor (or bass if you can't find one) range 
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Jul 14, 2015 02:12
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Whoa, that would be fun. I'm in too, though my sole source of decent recording is a Zoom H4N. Could be worse I guess.
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Jul 14, 2015 02:25
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Bolange posted:Great question. I guess the shortest answer to what I'd like to compose would be 'film score' type stuff (I know, I know, so trendy). I like huge brassy stuff and if I had to pick a favorite historical composer it would probably be Tchaikovsky or Wagner. Modern pieces that interest me are stuff like Lux Aeterna, Time (Inception OST), or something like zelda-symphony.com. Really, I'm all over the place. As you mention, I find the instrumentation attractive and I fully expect to eventually blend classical instrumentation with synth lines (too heretical?). It also seems like a great exercise to improve my reading and piano technique. Not important now, but just keep in mind that Wagner used somewhat unique instrumentation. He used the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet, and contrabass trombone specifically for the Ring Cycle. You don't hear those instruments often today. So, if his music feels a bit different when you listen to it, that may be a reason why.
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Jul 14, 2015 03:23
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Bolange posted:Great question. I guess the shortest answer to what I'd like to compose would be 'film score' type stuff (I know, I know, so trendy). I make my living in this style (which adapts to video games, bands , and other mediums quite easily). Listen to everything Holst ever wrote. Throw some Mahler, Stravinsky and the Russian Romantic era masters in there. It's nearly impossible to find now, but if you can somehow find a copy of the long out-of-print film orchestration book "on the track" make copies and praise whatever god you wish that you found it. The Sam Adler book on orchestration is aces as well, and very common.
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Jul 15, 2015 20:49
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ComposerGuy posted:Listen to everything Holst ever wrote. Or just listen to Planets.
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Jul 15, 2015 21:22
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Winter suite, first and second suite in Eb and F respectively, Japanese suite are all good too. Second suite in F has a bitchin euphonium solos(actually one of the best ones in the literature actually)
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Jul 16, 2015 00:08
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I'm a tuba player and I don't know how many times I've played second suite but it's one of those ultra bandey band pieces that I don't actually cringe to see in a folder. bu-bu-bu-bu-bum. I think first suite would get more play but directors hate low brass players so a euph-tuba duet at the beginning of a piece usually kills it for them. Any other college students use Naxos, or like anything different? That's the best database I know of for recordings although YouTube can be impressive. YouTube's the only way I can find say Moscow doing Shostakovich or something similar.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:10
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Kanthor posted:I'm a tuba player and I don't know how many times I've played second suite but it's one of those ultra bandey band pieces that I don't actually cringe to see in a folder.  Low brass bros
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Jul 29, 2015 02:19
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Mederlock posted:
Lotta brass players itt lookin back some. we need somma this in here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYRMbj6U2Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxftY2-v1FM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4Rul-qYAGQ the best part about mnozil brass is they just get to sit around and gently caress with all the "great works" and poo poo on classical music conventions and everyone loves them for it because holy god just listen to them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYftmh4wz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziHwCNoDSXE aaand vintage CSO low brass is pretty much infallible depending on who you talk to and I'm one of them. edit: modern CSO low brass is infallible too duh I forgot.
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Jul 29, 2015 02:46
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Kanthor posted:mnozil 
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Jul 29, 2015 04:12
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Kanthor posted:I think first suite would get more play but directors hate low brass players so a euph-tuba duet at the beginning of a piece usually kills it for them.  You know we actually get a lot of poo poo for overplaying classic works like that, especially at festivals. Also I would play First Suite twice a year if in exchange I had a euphonium and tuba section that could handle the drat thing. (Well...and if I taught HS or college.)(I'm secretly just jealous because the horn parts are quite a bit more boring than the euphonium parts. I am supposed to get all the mellow-sounding brass solos, drat it!!)
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Jul 29, 2015 05:53
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Can't you horn players just lay back and let the euphs do the work ? You get all that wicked classical orchestral music to play with, all we get is brass bands, concert wind Bands, and marching bands and that's about it, so I'm mighty defensive when I get a Wicked solo. Plus the euph just sounds better in the tenor range
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Jul 29, 2015 16:36
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Come on you guys know euphoniums and horns have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to interesting band parts, at least compared to tuba. I love having good euphonium students working on whatever Grainger or Holst thing so I can finally read all the cool poo poo y'all do. I'd read horn music but i am a tuba player and transposition just kind of makes my eyes glaze over while I start to drool. That said I do wanna jam on some Mozart horn concertos this year.
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Jul 30, 2015 02:50
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Any sax players hiding out here? The pro models I designed are about to ship from the factory, and I'd love to start a pass-around to get some opinions and (hopefully) positive reviews. Student clarinet too!
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Jul 31, 2015 02:39
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The Grapist posted:Any sax players hiding out here? The pro models I designed are about to ship from the factory, and I'd love to start a pass-around to get some opinions and (hopefully) positive reviews. Student clarinet too! I don't want to overstep my bounds, so let me know if this is a no-go: I have a friend who is looking for some student instruments. He just became the new director of bands at a high school that hasn't had a band program in 15 years and has to start from absolute scratch. He is currently working with local music stores to acquire donated instruments for his 48 students. Should I put him in contact with you? He is predominately a clarinet player, but I know he also plays sax.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:48
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Kibner posted:I don't want to overstep my bounds, so let me know if this is a no-go: The pro model wouldn't be a permanent donation, but I can work something out for student instruments. I did for Hawkgirl. Jeff@jeanbaptiste.com
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Jul 31, 2015 03:21
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The Grapist posted:The pro model wouldn't be a permanent donation, but I can work something out for student instruments. I did for Hawkgirl. Thanks, I'll forward him your email.
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Jul 31, 2015 03:31
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The Grapist posted:The pro model wouldn't be a permanent donation, but I can work something out for student instruments. I did for Hawkgirl. Yeah, I never posted about it or emailed you but I totally got those two instruments at the end of the school year and they are GREAT. Kids were so excited to see them and I was too. Thanks man  edit: Mederlock posted:Can't you horn players just lay back and let the euphs do the work Obviously, we will just have to agree to be bitter enemies until the very end. Just kidding, my jealously is localized to marches and Holst basically and yeah, the rest of our rep is pretty awesome. I GUESS you can have a few pieces to yourself.Kanthor posted:Come on you guys know euphoniums and horns have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to interesting band parts, at least compared to tuba. I love having good euphonium students working on whatever Grainger or Holst thing so I can finally read all the cool poo poo y'all do. I'd read horn music but i am a tuba player and transposition just kind of makes my eyes glaze over while I start to drool. That said I do wanna jam on some Mozart horn concertos this year. You should learn to transpose, it's not THAT terrible and it makes you infinitely more useful. Plus a tuba rendition of Concert Rondo would kick rear end. Hawkperson fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 04:44
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I know the how's and why's of transposing so I can write parts out, there's already a ton of horn-tuba transcriptions. I meant more like getting a part in Eb treble cleff set in front of me for something and being able to read it down and not poo poo my pants like would normally happen. All I need is practice, the reason I'm not good at it is I never see that stuff, does happen from time to time though.
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Aug 1, 2015 22:27
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Kanthor posted:I know the how's and why's of transposing so I can write parts out, there's already a ton of horn-tuba transcriptions. I meant more like getting a part in Eb treble cleff set in front of me for something and being able to read it down and not poo poo my pants like would normally happen. All I need is practice, the reason I'm not good at it is I never see that stuff, does happen from time to time though. Do you know how to read transposed treble clef? (ie. What you would read in a British Brass Band) How about tenor clef? I'm just an amateur euph player right now, but I can read both of them as well as horn parts in F(that's the standard transposition for wind band French horn parts, right?). It's been incredibly useful as a euphonium player. I've had to help our horns out on a few pieces (gently caress yeah on the Star Wars horn parts I got to play when the euph had boring poo poo or 20-60 bars of rests), and when there's only 2 bass clef parts and 2 treble clef parts for a piece and we have 3 players, 2 of whom can't really read treble clef , we don't have to scramble and whip together a photocopy anymore. You could say I'm PanCleftual 
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Aug 1, 2015 23:15
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Kanthor posted:I know the how's and why's of transposing so I can write parts out, there's already a ton of horn-tuba transcriptions. I meant more like getting a part in Eb treble cleff set in front of me for something and being able to read it down and not poo poo my pants like would normally happen. All I need is practice, the reason I'm not good at it is I never see that stuff, does happen from time to time though. If you can do that, then learning to transpose on the fly will be pretty quick for you. It's kind of the same brain space as changing key signatures, you know?
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Aug 2, 2015 00:30
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Mederlock posted:Do you know how to read transposed treble clef? Yeah, just not in a sight-readable fashion. And honestly in the lit I have to worry about playing it's really a non-issue, I'm thinking more for getting into quintet gigs or smaller brass ensembles like what you were just mentioning. Again it's all just practice, if I got a part like that I'd get it down and start getting more fluent, it's just not an issue for band and orchestra tuba playing. I'm sure somethings gonna make me eat my words on that statement someday, though. By the time technology got to tubas composers had an easier time writing ledger lines so they just said gently caress it, these guys just get to count lines up or down now. Learning different keys of tuba is kind of low brow transposing though. Going from Bb to C and Eb or F is just learning to apply the same fingering patterns to new sets of pitches. Thats more of a learning issue though and it fades, if I'm comfortable with say C or F, I just pick either up and the transposed fingerings are automatic. So long as you know the instrument there's never a transposition issue as you're just reading concert pitch. Sorry I'll stop soapboxing of why I dislike transposing and go practice.
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Aug 2, 2015 23:20
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Transposing in treble clef isn't that bad, transposing in other clefs (like alto/tenor/soprano) is harder, for me at least. I guess them being more foreign doesn't help... As with all transposition though, practice makes perfect.
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Aug 5, 2015 06:58
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I'm miserable at it despite frequently having to read church music that is in C (I play horn in F). It just doesn't click. I created a cheat sheet for myself that takes a key signature for a major key, transposes it from C to F, and gives me the major triad for it. Of course, I haven't had a chance to use it since I made it.
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Aug 5, 2015 12:50
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Having to read clefs other than treble and to transpose into different keys on the fly? What a strange and terrible world you brass players live in... 
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Aug 5, 2015 23:57
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Tenor clef best clef
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Aug 6, 2015 00:08
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ub posted:Having to read clefs other than treble and to transpose into different keys on the fly? What a strange and terrible world you brass players live in... It's largely a French horn thing (though it's certainly a thing for low brass as well, and to a lesser extent for trumpets, clarinets, and flute/picc players reading older music or some orchestral works without a secondary instrument in the right key). It's because back before valves were a thing, you would have a natural (no valves) horn and like 12 "crooks" to change keys. They basically replaced your tuning slide with longer or shorter slides so you could play different notes. Well, that was a humongous pain in the rear end for several reasons, mostly that natural horns are freaking difficult. So when valves got popular, instead of lugging around a horn and 12 slides, people just started learning the different transpositions. Now it's just part of our whole smug identity as horn players, that we can transpose better than you.
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Aug 6, 2015 00:36
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Mederlock posted:Tenor clef best clef Please leave now. Soprano clef master race.
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Aug 6, 2015 01:58
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As long as you aren't a high string, you're cool with me. Those sounds are like nails on a chalkboard to me.
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Aug 6, 2015 02:13
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Hawkgirl posted:...trumpets...reading older music or some orchestral works without a secondary instrument in the right key). I cry when things are in F or G
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Aug 6, 2015 22:26
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