Bagatelle No.1 in F Major for Piano and Orchestra

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share an orchestral arrangement from one the Bagatelles for piano that I composed a few weeks ago. 

With the hope of trying to keep on learning orchestration I bought a couple of days ago the new sounds for MuseScore 4 by Berlin Orchestral Tools and the Adler's Orchestration book. I found the sounds extremely satisfying (specially considering that they work in my laptop which is a little slow for most things) which led me to test them by trying to orchestrate one of my Bagatelles. Of course, the score presented here is a performance score, the original file for the audio is much more complex to try to make the most out of the Berlin sounds.

For this arrangement I have added several sections that are not in the original piece: 

1. Lyrical introduction (m.1~8)
2. A motivic transition to the main theme from the F minor B section (m.43~49). 
3. Restatement of the closing two bars for stronger ending. 

The rest is the same as the original piece but I got rid of the repeats (as the piece would have been too long and the orchestration repetitive). The piece is still in the form ABA' with the A part in F major and the B part in F minor. 

I have been listening a lot to Ghibli Films orchestral music by Joe Hisaishi lately so some influenced might be found here (not on purpose, but rather just by pure listening). The only thing I did on purpose was the use of the piano as the main instrument (which Hisaishi does a lot).

Feel free to criticize anything you think is bad. I tried my best and tried to study the details of the instruments as I was needing them, but I am well aware that orchestrating is a hard task and I consider this orchestration a "draft" as there are probably many mistakes. I tried to choose similar dynamics to the ones I used for the audio rendition but I believe maybe most dynamics should be increased by one level for a real performance to sound as in the audio, but I am not totally sure.

Any feedback, suggestion or comment is more than welcome!

Thank you for listening and hope you like it!

--- Original Piano Version ---

Bravo,
It sounds phenomenal and, although I believe that in orchestration one never reaches the top, it is all balanced.

9 hours ago, Luis Hernández said:

Bravo,
It sounds phenomenal and, although I believe that in orchestration one never reaches the top, it is all balanced.

Thank you so much, @Luis Hernández! I am really glad you liked it! 

I agree., there is so much to learn about Orchestration. That is why I started studying  the Adler's Orchestration book (it has many audios so, for people like me that can not often experience orchestral instruments' sounds in real, it does help a lot). Lots of pages and information so I guess I am in for a really long journey into Orchestration!

Thanks for listening and commenting!

Hi @JorgeDavid!

I really like this orchestration!  I like how you didn't just orchestrate the piano piece but instead chose to meld the piano and orchestra into a kind of short little piano concerto.  I also loved the serene and simple introduction which really fit the character of the piece nicely.  The introduction also seems well related to the main thematic material of the piece.  My only gripe is that sometimes I feel like the orchestration is too light.  For example, I felt like when the contrasting F minor development theme comes in, I would have expected it to be more padded by some background sustained tones.

Nit-picks:  In the score order, the solo instrument (in this case the piano and solo violin) goes on top of the string section, just under the percussion.  Also, I feel like the piano was really dry in this rendition and could have used some more reverb and/or delay to really make it sparkle (imo).  Thanks for sharing!

10 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Hi @JorgeDavid!

I really like this orchestration!  I like how you didn't just orchestrate the piano piece but instead chose to meld the piano and orchestra into a kind of short little piano concerto.  I also loved the serene and simple introduction which really fit the character of the piece nicely.  The introduction also seems well related to the main thematic material of the piece. 

Thank you so much for your feedback, @PeterthePapercomPoser!! 

I also like the introduction very much. I am normally really bad at making up introduction but this melody just came to me immediately as soon as I wanted to have an introduction. Most of the times I avoid creating introduction at all but maybe I should for myself to have one like in this piece. That way it will slowly become easier. 

10 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

I felt like when the contrasting F minor development theme comes in, I would have expected it to be more padded by some background sustained tones.

Nit-picks:  In the score order, the solo instrument (in this case the piano and solo violin) goes on top of the string section, just under the percussion.  Also, I feel like the piano was really dry in this rendition and could have used some more reverb and/or delay to really make it sparkle (imo).  Thanks for sharing!

Thanks so much for the suggestion!

As soon as you commented about the F minor theme being too dry I could only agree. So I though on ways to fix that. The problem is that the piano is playing counterpoint so I did not want to muddy that. I tried several things and ended up adding a really sparse accompaniment with french horns. I I need to learn how to harmonize complex piano lines like this one without muddling the result :S. Also, I need to find out if the current arrangement could be possible because I am not 100% sure whether the french horns can be played as soft as to have a piano being properly listened to. 

I also changed the piano and solo violin position in the score. About the dry piano, I also agree with that. I tried buying "Berlin Orchestral" pianos but there are some playback issues so I am using the original by MuseSounds. Eventually I hope I can find a better piano that is less dry! 

Thank you for the comment!

12 hours ago, JorgeDavid said:

About the dry piano, I also agree with that. I tried buying "Berlin Orchestral" pianos but there are some playback issues so I am using the original by MuseSounds. Eventually I hope I can find a better piano that is less dry!

You can use MS Basic Soundfonts, Musesounds or Berlin Orchestral Piano, it doesn't matter.  The only thing that matters is that you apply a reverb or delay effect to the piano track.  You can do that in Musescore by downloading from MuseHub Reverb and Delay effects which were originally created for Audacity.  Of course, Musesounds tracks already have an applied automatic reverb so you shouldn't have to apply another reverb to it.  But another thing that the Musesounds Piano might lack is the ability to nuance the dynamics.  Usually you should be able to bring out specific notes you want to bring out in high relief above other notes in the same hand on a piano, by going into the properties tab of a note and increasing its velocity.  But that doesn't work with Musesounds pianos, only MS Basic Soundfonts (and that is how I prefer to do it).  Using MS Basic Soundfonts it then becomes necessary to apply the audacity reverb effects to make it sound better (the piano sounds by themselves aren't that different from each other I think, but they can be really made to shine with proper application of reverb, panning, delay, and bringing out the most important notes through velocity values).

17 hours ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

You can use MS Basic Soundfonts, Musesounds or Berlin Orchestral Piano, it doesn't matter.  The only thing that matters is that you apply a reverb or delay effect to the piano track.  You can do that in Musescore by downloading from MuseHub Reverb and Delay effects which were originally created for Audacity.  Of course, Musesounds tracks already have an applied automatic reverb so you shouldn't have to apply another reverb to it.  But another thing that the Musesounds Piano might lack is the ability to nuance the dynamics.  Usually you should be able to bring out specific notes you want to bring out in high relief above other notes in the same hand on a piano, by going into the properties tab of a note and increasing its velocity.  But that doesn't work with Musesounds pianos, only MS Basic Soundfonts (and that is how I prefer to do it).  Using MS Basic Soundfonts it then becomes necessary to apply the audacity reverb effects to make it sound better (the piano sounds by themselves aren't that different from each other I think, but they can be really made to shine with proper application of reverb, panning, delay, and bringing out the most important notes through velocity values).

Thanks for the info! Apparently MuseScore 4 does have ways of changing the individual velocity of each note! I will test it and see if I get the hang of it. MuseScore and Sibelius seem to lack a lot of options, though. Apparently Dorico is the software that mixes best DAW features with a notation software. 

I had the Reverb but it was really low. I increased it but, as you said, the piano does not sound realistic without putting care into each individual note. What I did originally was having 4 different staffs (so two right hands and two left hands) so I could have one with only the melody and extra notes I wanted to be louder and other one for the rest of the notes. Of course this was cumbersome and annoying, so from now on I might be better off changing individual velocities 😅

Thank you!

Very nice! I think my favorite part is the violin solo near the end - it adds a nice contrast. The only thing I would say is I feel like m. 55 could be a bigger moment. I think more crescendo and a molto rit. here would really make this moment shine and make the sub p chord on beat 3 more impactful.

Great job, and thanks for sharing!

11 hours ago, gmm said:

Very nice! I think my favorite part is the violin solo near the end - it adds a nice contrast. The only thing I would say is I feel like m. 55 could be a bigger moment. I think more crescendo and a molto rit. here would really make this moment shine and make the sub p chord on beat 3 more impactful.

Great job, and thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much @gmm! I am really glad you liked it! My favorite part is also the entrance of the solo violin, specially because of the build-up during the previous measures.

And you are totally right! Now that I listened to that section once more, I think your same advice might also apply, not only to m.55, but also (to a lesser degree) to m.53. II will try to modify the final score to add some tension to that final section. 

Thank you so much for listening and commenting!

Hi @JorgeDavid,

I really like this arrangement; I love the clarinet melody at b.15, and the middle section does sound like in Ghibli films! 

I feel like you can feature the piano much more. Even though it’s not playing the melody, you can have the pianist accompany the orchestra as in the slow movement of a piano concerto! That would make the texture even more interesting!

Thx for sharing!

Henry

On 9/30/2024 at 11:28 PM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

Hi @JorgeDavid,

I really like this arrangement; I love the clarinet melody at b.15, and the middle section does sound like in Ghibli films! 

I feel like you can feature the piano much more. Even though it’s not playing the melody, you can have the pianist accompany the orchestra as in the slow movement of a piano concerto! That would make the texture even more interesting!

Thx for sharing!

Henry

Thank you @Henry Ng Tsz Kiu, I am really glad you enjoyed the arrangement! 

I agree with the missed opportunity of the piano being featured as an accompaniment. I though about that too but, to be honest, I was afraid I would destroy the piece if tried to get too adventurous so, for this first arrangement, I decided to keep things quite simple focusing on making something beautiful that followed the original piano piece quite faithfully (that is why there are not many instruments and, except for the new added sections, there are not many extra layers or notes that did not appear already in the original piano piece). I am planning to try to get into more complex orchestrations and accompaniments in the future as I increase my skills, let see how it goes! 

Thank you so much for listening and commenting!