Samulis

"Hmm... I'm stuck between grey flannel/blue shirt and grey flannel/darker blue shirt... Maybe I should just flip a coin." He also almost always has the exact same hairdo. I think his texture/balance/function thing has a lot of applications really- not just writing music but also playing it. If one section is too loud for a background part, remind them that they need to balance and that their function is less than the melody or whatever. Definitely food for thought at the least, hence why I shared it. :)

Sometimes the parts aren't supposed to fit together, such as in programmatic/media music where the mood needs to change. That's where transitions come into play. If you're writing art music as I think you suggesting, U238, then yes, you probably wouldn't need such transitions, but I wouldn't know since my specialty is program music.

Heh, I sketch with 22 staves. Beat that! :P A friend of mine who is a jazz composer linked me to an interesting site about advanced scales and modes, but it's all in French (darn it!), so I can't read much of it, but it points out some interesting looking patterns using the number of halfsteps (scroll down a bit and you'll see). Perhaps it might be fun for those of you trying to write more interesting stuff to pick one and see what happens if you're looking for a way to spice things up! Just pick one and build a melody from it, then try to stick in that scale with harmonies (or don't)... it's all about experimentation, I say. Theory can give you a very solid foundation, but only experimentation can give you the remaining 10%- if your 'ear' points you one way, try going another, and best of luck Stephen and foreignwords in your work. :)

I'd dare to respectfully dissent, Justin. Many professional composers, especially in tight time budgets, hire people to orchestrate their ideas for them. This is, at least according to the books I have read, quite common in the film industry and, according to those random e-mails offering to orchestrate my music for me (yeuch!) I get every other month or so from random person somewhere, it's a rather far reaching one too. I think the reason he calls himself that is that it is in Orchestration that he does MOST of his work, but not all, which he mentions in his 50th birthday video (titled ironically "A Composer Turns 50"). Yes, Thomas Goss is rather opinionated (if not VERY), but he has some very good points and years more experience than most people I know. He also has studied scores religiously and seems to understand the elements of orchestration as well if not better than the principles of composition. For that reason, I think he has a bit of a right to be opinionated and authoritative (his video where he berates Bernstein for being this way made me laugh a little).

There's lots of stuff out there about working with voices and plenty of scores on places like IMSLP. However, writing a brief opera or full orchestral work of even 10 or 15 minutes is a lot of work. The good thing about opera is that words tend to go rather slowly, so you don't have to have a large libretto- you can literally buy a pocket libretto of Wagner's Ring Cycle (which is more hours than I have fingers) and it's about the size of a small pocket notebook. The bad thing is that as a result, operas tend to be quite long to allow time to tell the story. Wagner and Verdi both come from different sides of the opera family, if I recall correctly- I think German Romantic Operas and Italian Operas are different in the way the singers interact and such. I've never studied opera specifically, but I'm pretty sure that division exists. If I were you, I'd write some short orchestral pieces for full orchestra and then some pieces for choir, and once you are comfortable with the parts independent, start featuring choir and/or solo voices singing words with orchestra to get a feel of how to do it. If you're going with the Wagner approach, you'll want to practice creating and using leitmotifs, or phrases/"chunks" of music that appear and are tied to certain characters, emotions, or scenes. Once you are comfortable with the orchestra, you'd probably want to sketch out your general flow of the piece on piano or something and write the libretto (or find one). I've never written an opera before, but that sounds like the easiest way to start- 'sketching'. Regarding how to deal with what instruments get what part and harmonic division, that's all part of the field of Orchestration. There are some manuals online that deal with Orchestration (such as the Rimsky-Korsakov one updated by garritan, although it's fairly outdated compared to modern standards), but it's also a subject that can sometimes be best learned by listening and reading scores. I draw a lot of inspiration for my orchestration from listening to different periods of classical music. When you listen to a piece, take it bit by bit and hear what each part is doing in relation to others. Mark harmonies- such as when an oboe and a bassoon might exchange phrases. The best rule of thumb is just splitting up the chords across the instruments according to pitch (effective for string writing esp.)- violin I, violin II, violas, cellos, contrabasses. Orchestration is too large of a subject to really condense into just a few words, but I'd say the biggest thing is just having an ear for harmonies and experimenting until you find a good mix- sometimes unconventional ones can be really gorgeous. Good luck!

Not sure how many have seen this, but a professional orchestrator out of New Zealand named Thomas Goss created a great youtube channel with quite a few excellent videos about his take on orchestration. It also has some neat "featurette" videos on certain instruments and has a whole lecture on his concept for successful orchestration- Texture, Balance, and Function. Regardless, anyone interested in working with an orchestra or even part of one should definitely check it out- if not only to see what he has to say about the manuals and materials out there that can help you.

Yes, I can NEVER find a good enough trombone virtual instrument! Never enough emotion and never mix well enough... always just straight, plain, boring.

This is an age-old issue that can be resolved in a number of ways. Arguably the easiest is to use a form. Start with one theme in one way, then repeat it again in a slightly different fashion. 2-4 times is usually good. Then move on to the B section. You can do this via a key change such as a 5th or 4th or going into the relative minor/major key of the first melody. There are tons of ways to do this and it isn't locked, that's just one way. Depending on what form you use, you can return to the A section after that in a varied sense or move on to a third melody. Forms is something I myself would like to learn more of, but there's lots of material out there. Consider analyzing works from the Classical and Baroque period, which are form-heavy. As for moving between the sections, there are a number of transitional elements you can use. For orchestral, it could be a cymbal roll with a crescendo, or a timpani or drum roll with the same, or even subtle dissonance or augmentation of the chord in the last two half of the measure. For electronic, it can be things like sweeps or effects. Sometimes the music might just "pop" straight into a new phrase without ceasing, while others it might go through a 4-8 bar transition where you might wander around or have an extreme variation of one melody- or even just random fragments of melody that eventually lead into the next section. There's a bunch of chord theory that addresses transitions and cadences, which might be beneficial to look at. Keep compos(ed/ing)! -Samulis

Congrats, guys. Just got a chance to listen around a bit here. Very good work! Just wait until I write that Waterphone Concerto like I've been planning to for the past year. That 'oddest ensemble' category will be mine yet! ;)