The “horn pad,” once thought obsolete and to be avoided, still has possibilities for the imaginative orchestrator. From the Late Classical through to Romantic Periods, composers would often employ what’s come to be known as the “horn pad” – 3-part and 4-part harmony sitting softly in the background, while the strings or strings+winds dominated the…
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Orchestrators should learn the difference between stopped notes and muted notes on the horn, and also how to ask for mutes and give time for their installation. One bit of common knowledge in older orchestration manuals like the Piston is that composers don’t seem to differentiate between stopped notes and muted notes in scores, sometimes…
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Be mindful of range when scoring stopped horns – the best notes are inside the treble staff. The higher the pitch above top G, the greater the risk of cracking. The lower the pitch below middle C, the flabbier the tone. It’s interesting that neither Piston nor Adler (or most other texts) address the issue…
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The orchestrator needs to understand how difficult it is to make the double bass speak well, and to what lengths players go to get the ideal sound. There are a number of different considerations, but I’ll touch on the three most important here. The first is what choice of bow. The most common bow that…
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The double bass body is an acoustic compromise, smaller than optimum for its range. This also affects the tone. The Wikipedia double bass article contains a charming bit of misinformation: “Despite the size of the instrument, it is not as loud as many other instruments due to its low range.” Actually, BECAUSE of the (smaller…
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(Tip no. 99 from “100 Orchestration Tips,” Part 5: Strings) A resonant low note on the basses can reinforce the upper partials of a major harmonic, with good and bad results. This is especially true if the bass is playing an open string a little too loudly. What will happen most often is that the…
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The C-extension on the double bass’s lowest string is not needed most of the time, even uncharacteristic to the instrument in a way. It’s a common tendency for beginning orchestrators to fall in love with the basement-scraping abilities of the double bass, and score much of their early efforts with that instrument playing almost exclusively…
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The double bass has a phenomenal range due to the length of its strings, but there are some limitations. The strongest register, of course, is the first octave and a 5th – the instrument was essentially built specifically to access those notes. The next octave is not so strong – the effort involved in playing…
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Double basses can carry the bass part alone, but the tone of their part will be different from cellos alone, or doubling with cellos. One of the great boons of orchestration since Beethoven is the liberation of the double basses from doubling the cellos exclusively. Basses can easily hold down the bottom end while the…
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(Tip no. 70 from “100 Orchestration Tips,” Part 4: Harp) (and if you tl:dr this tip, it’s on your own head) (*ahem*) The harp is NOT a piano! Do not assume what works on a piano will work on harp – much of the time, it won’t! This is the biggest error I see in…
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