The best thing would be to work with live orchestra / musicians.as this teaches you other things you can´t see or learn with samples, but as for the midi composer guy like me, I find help in such procedures. Sure for that you should have some descent sampled libraries. I try with that way to deconstruct the things with samples which helps me to learn how the colors blend. Another thing is that I mock up with samples famous pieces with help of a live reference and I look up why certain blends work and how they sound. I do that in playing solo lines a lot in all registers and all available dynamic timbres.
#Spectrotone chart how to
To your question, I am not sure if I get that right: So you mean what is the best way to know how to write effectively to the strongs of the instrument? If so.I would say: Get to know the timbre characteristics of the instrument or section. Reminds me a little on the spectrotone chart, but yours looks clearer and to the point and not so packed with trillions of colors. I'm sure lots of juicy WW details will be covered in Orchestration IV but I welcome anyone's thoughts about what are the best ways to consider distinct woodwind registers when score reading and when orchestrating?Ĭlick to expand.First of all, great work on that chart. This is what I have so far -Įverything is placed "as written" because I'm going to use this chart while score reading. I'm also going to be able to survey a professional orchestra or 2 before Christmas. Right now I'm working on a concordance of tone-registers based on consulting every orchestration text I can find (Adler, Piston, Forsyth, the Spectratone chart, Korsakov, and Kennan are all sitting on my desk right now.). and as a non woodwind player I have no idea who's authoritative. However, every orchestration book seems to have a different breakdown of where woodwind registers start and stop. These considerations also apply slightly to the brass and, even as a string player, I can tell you that the cello has SOMEWHAT distinct tone-registers despite its smoothness of sound throughout the range.
#Spectrotone chart manuals
I'm trying to develop a shorthand language for orchestration and one of the elements I think is very important to encode is register.Īll the orchestration manuals agree that woodwind registers are fairly distinct in tone color & have important differences in how well they blend, stand out, get covered etc. SPECTROTONE CHART 70TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION BOOKLET 1 PAGE 1 OF 7. Contra-Bassoon - written in music notation an octave higher than presented on the Spectrotone Chart, but when played sounds as shown on the Spectrotone Chart (an octave lower).
![spectrotone chart spectrotone chart](https://img.yumpu.com/6869438/1/500x640/special-alu-webde.jpg)
This is somewhat inspired by Mike's "Orchestration III"seminar. Spectrotone Chart, but when played sounds as shown on the Spectrotone Chart (an octave lower).