How to write a piano reduction??

I'm trying to write a piano reduction of an orchestral work I wrote, but the issue is that there are places where I have 6 individual lines of music going at once and it's making it really difficult to reduce. Then there's the other issue of making the piano retain the atmosphere of the original piece. 

TLDR: Trying to write a piano reduction, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

You don't have to write everything but the esential.

First: melody and bass line.

With inner voices you have to arrange the harmony (enough with guide tones, you don't need the whole chord) and the rhythm.

Other characteristic or remarkable events can be suggested. But it's impossible to put everything.

Of course the whole must be playable on the piano.

I don't write many reductions. I used to do it to learn, time ago.

An example. Desdemona's ariain Othello (Ave Maria)

Reduction:

I've transcribed some of my works to keyboard (organ and piano).   You just have to decide which lines are more important and need to be willing to cut out others.  You may also have to change registers of important lines. 

8 hours ago, mercurypickles said:

Then there's the other issue of making the piano retain the atmosphere of the original piece. 

Depending on the piece in question, this might not be possible. Actually, it's probably not possible more often than not as the orchestra (or any other ensemble) has a much wider range of timbres, playing techniques, etc. that all contribute greatly to the atmosphere of a piece beyond the composition itself.

Also, pieces that contain a ton of different lines, like actual polyphonic textures are not likely going to be playable by a single instrument. You could notate it, but it would be a mess. 

So as others have said, the bassline and whatever the most important line(s) are is the way to go and I would look at using melodic fission where possible to imply secondary lines.

7 hours ago, mercurypickles said:

I'm trying to write a piano reduction of an orchestral work I wrote, but the issue is that there are places where I have 6 individual lines of music going at once and it's making it really difficult to reduce. Then there's the other issue of making the piano retain the atmosphere of the original piece. 

TLDR: Trying to write a piano reduction, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

 

Unlike what @AngelCityOutlaw might be suggesting, it is possible to write a piano reduction for a lot of orchestral pieces. Maybe not a piano solo reduction for most(Although I have done that with for example Mozart's Horn Concerto no. 2) but most symphonies, concertos, and orchestral suites can be reduced for Piano Duet(As I did with Haydn's Surprise Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and several other pieces). Even when high degrees of counterpoint like fugues get into the picture, it's still possible to reduce for Piano Duet, which counts as a piano reduction. And some arrangers are so talented at arranging for and playing the piano(thinking you Liszt) that they write virtuosic Piano Solo arrangements where others would write more normal Piano Duet arrangements(Beethoven's Symphonies, Schubert's Serenade(which actually isn't that hard for a Liszt arrangement, definitely not as hard as Beethoven's Fifth) among others).

And likewise, you can take a piano solo piece and arrange it for an orchestra. This I find to sometimes be easier than the other way around(Like with Beethoven or Rachmaninoff) and sometimes harder(like with Haydn).

1 hour ago, caters said:

Unlike what @AngelCityOutlaw might be suggesting, it is possible to write a piano reduction for a lot of orchestral pieces. Maybe not a piano solo reduction for most(Although I have done that with for example Mozart's Horn Concerto no. 2) but most symphonies, concertos, and orchestral suites can be reduced for Piano Duet(As I did with Haydn's Surprise Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and several other pieces). Even when high degrees of counterpoint like fugues get into the picture, it's still possible to reduce for Piano Duet, which counts as a piano reduction. And some arrangers are so talented at arranging for and playing the piano(thinking you Liszt) that they write virtuosic Piano Solo arrangements where others would write more normal Piano Duet arrangements(Beethoven's Symphonies, Schubert's Serenade(which actually isn't that hard for a Liszt arrangement, definitely not as hard as Beethoven's Fifth) among others).

And likewise, you can take a piano solo piece and arrange it for an orchestra. This I find to sometimes be easier than the other way around(Like with Beethoven or Rachmaninoff) and sometimes harder(like with Haydn).

 

When a person says "piano reduction" they typically mean a single piano.

3 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

When a person says "piano reduction" they typically mean a single piano.

 

Well, that's a bit restrictive. When I think piano reduction I think of these 2:

• Piano Solo -> What you say most people mean by piano reduction
• Piano Duet -> What should be counted as such since the only instrument in there is the piano

And rightly so, Piano Duets should be counted as Piano reductions as it's either a single piano(1 piano 4 hands) or 2 pianos(the more common 2 pianos 4 hands). And most symphonies, concertos, and orchestral suites can be arranged for the Piano Duet. So I'd say that a lot can be arranged for a piano reduction.

1 hour ago, caters said:

Well, that's a bit restrictive. When I think piano reduction I think of these 2:

• Piano Solo -> What you say most people mean by piano reduction
• Piano Duet -> What should be counted as such since the only instrument in there is the piano

And rightly so, Piano Duets should be counted as Piano reductions as it's either a single piano(1 piano 4 hands) or 2 pianos(the more common 2 pianos 4 hands). And most symphonies, concertos, and orchestral suites can be arranged for the Piano Duet. So I'd say that a lot can be arranged for a piano reduction.

 

A reduction is inherently meant to be restrictive.

A reduction is not meant to have every single part or convey the entire piece. It's essentially reverting the composition back to a sketch.

If you're going to basically have the exact same piece, but on pianos, with every detail, then you don't have a reduction; you have a piano arrangement.

2 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

If you're going to basically have the exact same piece, but on pianos, with every detail, then you don't have a reduction; you have a piano arrangement.

Yes you do have an arrangement and yes you have a reduction. Thomas Goss, one of the greatest orchestration teachers around, even mentions what my idea of a reduction is in his Arranging vs Composing video or whatever it's called. Reduction just means fewer instruments playing the same material with or without alteration. So orchestra to String Quartet is a reduction as is Orchestra to Piano Duet as is Orchestra to Piano Solo. In contrast, an expansion arrangement means more instruments playing the same material, normally with alteration, so String Quartet to Orchestra and Piano Solo to Orchestra would both be expansion arrangements.

Neither has to be a perfect note by note copy of the original, it just has to get enough of the original across to sound like an arrangement of the original.

Take for example Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. I can't have a note by note copy if arranging for Piano Duet, especially not in the Overture, I have to get rid of some of the material that I perceive as not relevant to the arrangement.

Haydn's Surprise Symphony in contrast, I can have a note by note copy for Piano Duet because that's just how Haydn is when it comes to arranging Haydn.

But both of these would count as reductions because I have reduced the instrumental palette from a full orchestra with hundreds of instruments to just 2 instruments, both being the Piano.

@AngelCityOutlaw Your idea of a reduction seems fairly narrow in scope. In addition to that, I made this post asking for advice, maybe some more specific instruction, rather than discouragement telling me that it was "probably not possible."

@caters Would you be willing to try and tell me what I would have to do, in a bit more detail?

1 hour ago, mercurypickles said:

@AngelCityOutlaw Your idea of a reduction seems fairly narrow in scope. In addition to that, I made this post asking for advice, maybe some more specific instruction, rather than discouragement telling me that it was "probably not possible."

 

We don't even know what your piece is.

I also did give you advice. You just didn't read it obviously 

@AngelCityOutlawAll you did was repeat advice back at me, that wasn't even relevant in the first place. My problem is that there isn't, "bassline and whatever the most important line(s) are", to copy by themselves. Large swaths of this piece are based in canons and rounds, which are a lot harder to reduce. So maybe instead of insinuating that I didn't read what you wrote, you can give me advice which actually applies to my music, which by the way, is this: https://musescore.com/mercurypickles/symphony-in-e-minor

1 hour ago, mercurypickles said:

@AngelCityOutlawAll you did was repeat advice back at me, that wasn't even relevant in the first place. My problem is that there isn't, "bassline and whatever the most important line(s) are", to copy by themselves. Large swaths of this piece are based in canons and rounds, which are a lot harder to reduce. So maybe instead of insinuating that I didn't read what you wrote, you can give me advice which actually applies to my music, which by the way, is this: https://musescore.com/mercurypickles/symphony-in-e-minor

I told you that you could use melodic fission to represent the other lines in your piece.

I also told you that this is a good idea because a reduction which encompasses it all is not necessarily always possible in polyphonic textures.

Also no, the other guy is stretching the definition of "reduction" much too far. 2 pianos, with multiple hands, playing the piece straight just on a different instrument isn't a "reduction". If you're looking to play the same exact thing on a single piano, you're not looking at making a "reduction", you're just trying to make a full-piano arrangement. In which case, why are you even asking for help?

This is all sound advice for someone who proclaims to

10 hours ago, mercurypickles said:

have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

But judging by your most recent posts, and apparently knowing what advice does and doesn't apply to your music (which you never even shared until this last post), and apparently knowing what counts as a "narrow scope" for a reduction, you must know what you're doing.

So maybe instead of being snide, you could just not ask for advice you obviously don't need.

1 hour ago, mercurypickles said:

@caters Would you be willing to try and tell me what I would have to do, in a bit more detail?

 

Yeah, I would. I have more experience with the Piano Duet so I will start there. With a Piano Duet, I often have Piano Primo(the first piano) take the role of either mostly Woodwind material(with some strings and brass material when it comes to chords and whatnot, but when in the bass register, making sure to include Bassoon material) when arranging a symphony or if arranging a chamber piece(like Mozart's Wind Serenade in C minor), the high notes(like Flutes and Clarinets material for example). And I often have Piano Secondo(the second piano) take the role of strings material for symphonies or low notes for chamber music(Bassoons and Horns for example). And sometimes when I am dealing with an instrument in a naturally lower register that I'm concerned would get too close to the bass(such as the Horns in Mozart's Wind Serenade in C minor), I take the liberty of raising it up an octave to avoid muddiness with the bass.

For symphonies, this sometimes results in an antiphonal texture(each piano taking its turn) between the 2 pianos because of a Question and Answer structure between Woodwinds and Strings in the symphony itself. It sometimes happens with chamber music too, but less often than with symphonies.

In either case, it depends partly on the composer as to whether I can do a note by note copy or have to add or subtract. With composers like Beethoven, there's no way that I can arrange for Piano Duet without some subtraction, because their compositions are just that harmonically dense. With Haydn symphonies, I find that a note by note copy often proves to be sufficient. With Mozart symphonies and concertos, I actually find that I have to add notes more often than subtract them. Same goes if I am like arranging one of his string quartets for an orchestra.

In either case, there are some changes that happen regardless. For example, say that there are repeated notes in the strings. Depending on the composer, I might turn these repeated notes into octave tremolos(this is most likely what I would do for Beethoven(outside of repeated note motifs of course) as he tends to have octave heavy passages) or Alberti Bass(this is what I would do for Mozart(with a few exceptions like his Wind Serenade in C minor where I would lean into a more Beethovenian bass of octave tremolos)) or maybe if I arranged Chopin, I would do like a chordal arpeggio(similar to what occurs in his Nocturnes). And say that somewhere along the line, there is some material that I can't copy note for note without overlapping with the other material as happens in the Overture of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. When that happens, I look at the material and see what I can get rid of without ruining the piece's integrity. This often leads to me getting rid of repeated notes entirely in favor of melodies, especially in Tchaikovsky.

This is similar to the subtraction that I do with dense composers like Beethoven, but not the same, as here I am getting rid of entire phrase chunks of material, whereas with Beethoven, it's more like subtracting notes from chords while keeping the harmony intact.

For Piano Solo, this is sometimes just as easy(Mozart, or at least his concertos tends to be easy for me to arrange for Piano Solo) and sometimes it's way, way harder and I don't bother(Beethoven). The same considerations are at play here(What to do with repeated notes? Is the harmony too dense, do I have to subtract material? Is it too sparse, do I have to add material? What if there's a whole phrase chunk that I can't have in there without overlap? Do I have to take the liberty of changing the octave of the material from a certain instrument like the horns to avoid muddiness with the bass?)

Here are some of the arrangements I have done for Duet and Solo:

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/5802674

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/5903637

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/6783979

There are more that I have done but I either didn't upload them yet(Chopin for example), lost them(this happened with a lot of my Beethoven arrangements), or tried and failed(Bach, specifically his Brandenburg Concertos, just couldn't get the voicing to both match the figured bass and be my own(which is what I try to do with Baroque Era arrangements))

14 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

 

So maybe instead of being snide, you could just not ask for advice you obviously don't need.

 

I do need advice, just not from people who are incredibly unhelpful and rude.

@caters Thank you very much for the specific information, this will be wildly useful.

1 hour ago, mercurypickles said:

I do need advice, just not from people who are incredibly unhelpful and rude.

The advice the first three posters gave you was not "incredibly unhelpful". Your post was extremely vague and you come back with a know-it-all attitude right after you admit you don't know wtf you're doing.

Caters is not only wasting his time with an ingrate, his advice isn't anything more relevant to your piece than what anyone else said and most of it is being framed in the form of questions rather than answers, which is what you allegedly sought.

This is why I don't give beginners advice on forums much anymore, either in the threads or over the DMs. It's just too much time and effort to do it for free and half the time, the person asking the questions isn't serious about it anyway. 

@AngelCityOutlaw I'm sorry things got so heated before.. I just really didn't know what "melodic fission" was (and I still don't). So that was part of why I got so frustrated. My comments were reasonably uncalled for and all I actually wanted was some help. There are just a lot of interlocking parts to this piece and all kinda have to be there for it to work, I'm not saying there aren't things that can be cut for it to be playable, I just don't know what. If you're not too upset, could you still try helping? I feel really bad about the argument.

1 hour ago, mercurypickles said:

@AngelCityOutlaw I'm sorry things got so heated before.. I just really didn't know what "melodic fission" was (and I still don't). So that was part of why I got so frustrated. My comments were reasonably uncalled for and all I actually wanted was some help. There are just a lot of interlocking parts to this piece and all kinda have to be there for it to work, I'm not saying there aren't things that can be cut for it to be playable, I just don't know what. If you're not too upset, could you still try helping? I feel really bad about the argument.

Melodic fission, I think the "Schenkerian Anaylsis" people call it a "compound melody", is when the listener perceives two or more distinct melodies from a single line.

This happens because the lines are in different, distinct registers and/or have different timbres. 

This is an example from Bach's violin partita in B minor

The red and blue notes denote the different lines you can hear within one part.

You'll notice that the registers have at least a couple intervals distance between them, and both tend to move in stepwise motion. This really helps separate them as does the lower register part mostly coming in on the downbeats 1 & 3.

So if you have two lines you want to incorporate into the right hand part on a single piano, you decide which one stands out the most in that passage, put it as the top part, and choose some of the most important notes from the lower register part and combine the two. The left hand then plays your bass/cello accompaniment.

Essentially, it creates a new, single line out of two or more, but the listener can still pick out two distinct parts.

9 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Essentially, it creates a new, single line out of two or more, but the listener can still pick out two distinct parts.

I see that a lot in 1 staff solos, especially by Bach or any other Baroque composer to give the feel and sound of counterpoint within a single staff. I've even seen Bach do 3 line melodic fission, especially in cello solos(Cello Suite no. 1 is a good example of that, 3 distinct parts becoming a single melodic line).

I see it a bit in Haydn and Mozart(some of their concertos, symphonies, and sonatas do this), but by Beethoven, it's essentially lost in favor of chords, octaves, motifs, and octave displacement and transposition of single line melodies.

By Chopin and Liszt, it reappears only to be lost for the most part in music by the Russian composers(Rachmaninoff in particular uses it sometimes in his Preludes(ex. C# minor Prelude in the Bass staff(or staves))

Apologies to the original poster if I missed this somewhere in the string of posts above, but what is the purpose of making your reduction?  That will determine how you want to go about it.  Is this an exercise in writing reductions?  Do you want to be able to play your whole symphony yourself on the piano to demo it in musical circles?  Is this a rehearsal aid because you have got an orchestra ready to premiere your piece?  

If your goal is to create a piano version of the piece as its own stand-alone arrangement, then since you are the composer of the original and the arranger of the reduction, you can do whatever helps keep the flavor of the original, while making changes that make it fit a piano nicely.  Long held notes, which your orchestral instruments can sustain for the full duration, but a piano can't, can be restruck if necessary in the piano part, so that no note fades out too early in successive chords.  

If your goal is an accurate representation of the piece, either as a playable sample to attract prospective orchestras, or a rehearsal aid, you need to think more about how to get as many notes as possible from the original score in there, and keep them in the original octaves.  It will be important for each instrument to be able to hear the entrance of each note in the correct octave at the right time, but because a piano can't sustain like a violin or a flute can, you can shorten note durations to let you get your fingers where they need to be in time for the next note in another part.  Restriking notes that when the piano runs out of sustain is actually a bad idea in this situation, because a player may hear the restrike as another part entering and get lost in the score.  

I hope that's a bit of a help.  I'm not a pianist, and am not particularly good at doing reductions, but here's a double choir piece that I just added a piano reduction to, to be used in rehearsals.  I cheated a lot of note durations to free up fingers to get all the parts in.  In some sections I shortened notes to de-difficult one hand because the other hand was already difficult enough on its own.  But all parts always stay in the correct octave and each note enters at the correct time, even if it peeters out early.  Compare the choral parts with the reduction.  

@pateceramics The purpose of this was to be able to play it for people on a piano. Your advice appears to be quite useful, and I'll definitely bear the bit about restriking notes in mind.

@mercurypickles

Hi again.

That method above is particular and specific. It's not going to work for all the music. Unless you keep the basic rule:

MELODY + BASS is the essential, I insist. Not only for a piano reduction but for any compositions we can make.

If you don't have those parts perfectly represented, your reduction will sound different.

Go to google and check, your. see everybody says the same:

https://kevinpadworski.com/2015/08/20/the-art-of-the-piano-reduction/

 here are six basic rules that I humbly submit when considering a piano reduction:

1. Don’t consider it – do it. Music notation is cake nowadays, so just add the extra stave and your pianist will thank you for it.

2. Know what to omit. This requires knowledge about orchestration, both chorally and orchestrally. For orchestral reductions (who does write these, anyway?) identify doubling and core melodies, and make it feasible to play with 10 fingers. For choral reductions, utilize stems to identify parts, words like unison, and articulation and breath marks.

3. Keep the melody and the bass parts. 

4. Maintain the vertical harmonies, but remove those unison notes.

5. Always maintain the rhythmic integrity, but…

6. …Know what is idiomatic for the piano. Some notes shouldn’t be played in that octave on the piano. It sounds terrible. Some passages are too fast for most rehearsal pianos, particularly repeated notes. The keys won’t respond. Make it a tremolo.

------------------------

Just try.

Take a single phrase of what you have to reduce to piano.

First: analyze it, harmony, what's important and what not (unisons, octaves, etc).

Write the melody above.

Write a representative bass line.

Fill in with harmony and rhythm.

9 hours ago, caters said:

Here are some of the arrangements I have done for Duet and Solo:

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/5802674

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/5903637

https://musescore.com/user/50070/scores/6783979

@caters  I've listened to these reductions and are quite good. I like them.

In the end, tha basics are the same, your've been very respectful with the melody and bass line (sustaining harmony).