The tuba’s unique tone should be considered carefully when scoring brass chorales. In older scores, tuba is often placed on the same staff as the bass trombone. But don’t be fooled – these two instruments are nothing like each other. The fundamental wave-form of trombone or trumpet is saw-tooth, whereas tuba is more of a…
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Orchestrators must be mindful of the amount of breath required to sustain a note or phrase on the tuba. Tuba can be a surprisingly agile, even delicate instrument, capable of great subtlety and range of expression. It’s in some ways the opposite of the bass trombone in the same lower registers. Some composers have used…
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Despite the hugeness of the tuba, it still has the ability to blend with great subtlety, if properly scored. This relates somewhat to the role of the tuba in most scoring. While it’s a powerful bottom end in a brass chorale, and an overwhelming color in a low brass unison, the average role of the…
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Never underestimate the tuba’s enormous powers of projection. Tuba is one of those instruments that gets overlooked quite often by beginning orchestrators, or added to a score as an afterthought – a little bit of extra weight here or there for the heavy brass. Actually, it’s quite a fascinating instrument, with great potential for interest…
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A video installment in my daily series of tips. Please follow me on Twitter for the Orchestration Online Tip of the Day at @OrchestrationOL, or join the Orchestration Online Facebook group for feedback, resources, and advice. Tips of the Day for this week: Monday, January 28: Shaping Orchestral Phrasing Tuesday, January 29: Defining Themes by…
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The parameters of technique and execution must be considered in scoring a phrase to an instrument or section. Here’s one last tip about orchestral phrasing before tomorrow’s video about Tchaikovsky. The easiest way to say this is: “one size does not fit all.” But this goes past character, timbre, inflection, and other factors I’ve written…
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Inflection is often key to matching a thematic phrase intuitively to an orchestral instrument or section. Once again, we have a parallel between language and music. In speech, inflection is defined by a certain shaping of vocal tone to reinforce the meaning of a sentence. The most obvious of these is a rising voice for…
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Thematic development which is driven by the character of the instruments should determine the nature of the accompanying orchestral texture. For the past three days, I’ve examined the role of instrumental color in determining the shape of phrasing and the development of themes, empowered by obeying the basic rules of linguistic communication. Today, I’m going…
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The qualities of instrumental color should dictate the development of thematic material in a orchestral score. This, I feel, is one of the hardest things for a beginning orchestrator to grasp. Very often, I’m seeing beginning scores where thematic development is very pianistic, and of course that’s natural as most composers nowadays are pianists or…
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A great orchestral theme should use certain precepts of communication for maximum emotional impact. Yesterday I spoke about the importance of shaping a phrase orchestrally to fit the appropriate instrument. Today’s topic takes this further – not merely shaping a phrase or musical sentence, but an entire theme that’s more like a paragraph – composed…
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