Why composers use instruments out of register
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- Orchestral color is one of the most important aspects to composition and arrangement. But even for beginners it's possible to achieve very unique sounds without using complex techniques and effects.
Alex Vaughan - www.alex-vaughan.com
Vaughan Williams Tuba Cadenza performed by the incredible Daniel Schneider.
Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring - New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein: • Igor Stravinsky - The ...
Debussy - Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune - hr-Sinfonieorchester, Alain Altinoglu: • Debussy: Prélude à l’a...
Ravel - Bydlo, Pictures at an Exhibition - Walter Hilgers, NDR Sinfonie-Orchester: • Walter Hilgers - "Bydl...
Stravinsky - Septet, Passacaglia - Ashkenazy: • Stravinsky: Septet - 2...
Unusual trumpet example - Epithumia, Alex Vaughan: • Alex Vaughan - EPITHUMIA
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#composition #musictheory #orchestration #arrangement - Hudba
Guess I should be proud of myself for seeing the title and icon of this video and immediately thinking, "that bassoon from Stravinsky".
Yes you should be! 🤣
My first thought was the double bass in Mahler 1.
Same
Stravinsky was writing for a French bassoon. The French basson can easily traverse the high register all the way up to high F; thinner bore, thinner reeds, easier fingerings. The German bassoon has more of a challenge in the high register; wider bore, wider reeds, complicated un-logical fingerings in the highest register, great for playing the lowest Bb to the high Bb. Some professional players keep a single reed for years just for Rite of Spring.
I'm a bassoonist and basically all professional bassoonists (most of whom play German bassoons) can play up to D5 on demand on almost any reed. Eb5 and above is a whole another story though lol
@@willmorris8198 That is true today, but not in the early 20th century when Stravinsky wrote the Rite of Spring.
As a jazz musician I find it very funny to listen to you talk about all these complex musical concepts and then have to make sure everyone knows what a plunger mute is.
I don't think they're encountered nearly as often in classical music as in jazz.
There’s an incredible example of Ravel using a DOUBLE BASS at its absolute highest register for a quiet, ethereal melodic line. It’s at the beginning of his Opera, “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.” Accompanied by Woodwinds.
Musicians will "love" that you are asking them to push the instrument much beyond it was built to work. 🌝
😂 Yeah, I was worried about that.
As a trumpet player I'm really proud that I guessed correctly at 6:11! Trumpets can get a very dark (sine wave like) sound when you use a very small aperture and play quietly. Then the reverb of this room makes it sound even more eerie along with the breath attack. I've played sounds like this myself when practicing my high register at home.
I missed the plunger mute sound though, however I could hear the metallic nature of the instrument.
It sounded like a soprano voice at first. Very interesting effect
My favorite instrument sound is a high register trombone. Where it sounds very similar to a French Horn but just different enough to give it a unique sound. Combine that sound with a Trumpet playing the same notes and the same octave is my personal favorite brass sound
How about alto trombone? Some orchestra parts specify alto, tenor, and bass trombone (Mozart "Requiem" for example).
Former Boston Symphony Orchestra bass trombonist Doug Yeo has written about bringing that instrumentation into the BSO. Most orchestral trombone players now use pretty large bore (tube diameter) instruments. If you go back in time, that was not the case. So the BSO 1st player brought in an alto trombone, the 2nd player used a small bore tenor (Bach 36 or Conn 6H), and Doug Yeo brought in a very old bass trombone. They did not tell the conductor.
Bernard Haitink was rehearsing a Brahms symphony, and when the trombones entered, that really got his attention. Such a section has a lighter, brighter sound than is typical. Haitink liked it, and they kept using that configuration for the piece.
Doug Yeo also points out that the trombone sound is different depending how loud it is played - a loud trombone is *very* intense, and the alto sounds more intense at a lower volume level. So the trombone section has to pay attention to their ensemble, to achieve a balanced sound.
Yes. An Alto Trombone gives the same effect. I think the reason it isn't utilized much is because most modern orchestratrial Trombone players are expected to be able to play most of the alto trombone's range on a tenor Trombone.
Now if we want to talk about interesting effects with side instruments how about trumpet players playing with a piccolo Trombone to achieve that glissando in orchestra. Or Trombone players utilizing Euphoniums to get that special sound as well. The brass section in orchestra can also achieve different sounds and color by playing instruments that aren't usually written for orchestratrial music, exactly like you were saying with the alto Trombone.
I’m loving your channel man. I feel like it’s one of the few orchestral channels to give as much love to timbre as it does composition.
I picked out that muted pianissimo trumpet immediately. Of course, I'm a trumpet player so it isn't much of an accomplishment. I didn't immediately identify the mute as a plunger. At that dynamic it sounded almost like a cup mute within the orchestral textures (that and plungers are not at all common in orchestral playing).
A composition that experiments with orchestral colors is _Bolero_ by Maurice Ravel. The trombone timbre you mentioned (hornish) is in that sexy upper register solo the first trombone gets to play. Another part that got me was when the horn played the melody with flute harmonies over it - in one particular recording, they were so well blended I thought I was suddenly listening to a synthesized instrument. It wasn't until I was fortunate enough to perform the piece that I was able to see what was going on.
Oh, and that shirt you're wearing kills me.
Tuba mentioned! Heavily underrated in both Orchestra and especially cocnert and marching bands as a "solo" or "melody" instrument. Of course it has its limits and it is limited by its range and timbre, but I could see so many instances where it could be utilized so well in both its extreme highs and lows.
lol I’m thinking of a part in Petroushka where Stravinsky puts the clarinet super high and it sounds silly (dance of the peasant and the bear). This is a great video- and also a great summary on what a lot of contemporary music attempts to explore! I’m think Pression by Lachenmann, Chanber Concerto by Ligeti, Threnody for Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki. Thank you so much!
Another example is the unaccompanied low-register piccolo solo opening the second section of Edgard Varèse's _Octandre_.
As I fellow composer and orchestrator, let me tell you, apart from this being an exceptionally great educational video, I was laughing at your subtle jokes like if I was watching a Monty Python sketch. Keep up the great work. Also I need that t-shirt, it's gold :)
And very important for musicians to continually explore and test their abilities on their instruments. I can tell you it is no fun having a weekly concert and the director gives a piece of music that makes demands you're not sure you can meet well.
Always enjoy a new Score Circuit video!
I was not expecting that trumpet example. I thought it was a flute for something! And I play the trumpet!!
Ravel also does this with the oboe in Daphnis et Chloe
I didn't need to guess the alto flute in the Rite of Spring, it's one of my all time favourite pieces of music. I used to listen to it over and over, while following along with the score.
One caveat. Any composer or arranger looking to write extreme parts for their players to gain some sonic effect should know their players. Because if they cannot create the effect, then neither of you will end up happy with the result.
severely underrated. the editing and commentary is perfect, im suprised you dont have at least 20k subs
wow, this is quality content!
Wow, this is the energy Im looking for out of composer CZcamsrs. I can only hope to match this humor and energy in my next videos. Instant subscribe! Awesome video
These videos are SO GOOD.
Very interesting and presented in a fun way, keep up the good work, thanks for the video.
Great video! Excellent topic and your editing and commentary is fantastic and fun to watch and listen to.
Its very interesting to watch this video in the context of playing the French horn. Because of the way the overtone series work, early horns without valves used in baroque music always play very high in their register to be able to play somewhat of a melody. This trend was kept going forward and even when valve became a standard. This is interesting considering now that valves let hornists play melodies in the lower register witch should be considered the as you said "goldy lock" register composers still didn't . They did as well but kept the very high stretched register because the sound color that it gave was so appreciated. The examples you gave of the horn in the video is about in the fourth octave on an F horn. This is also why French horn is so god damned difficult
Editing is just enough to be engaging but not annoying. I really like the baffling names of these old pieces
Not to make too long a post, but I played in the band that premiered Maslanka's "in memorium". When we rehearsed with him, one of the trumpets asked him why he wrote the opening for Bb trumpet instead of something smaller. He replied the opening fanfare represented the sound of a telephone ringing, bringing the diagnoses of fatal cancer. That had to sound painful, and therefore he wanted it played on a larger instrument that had to strain and work to get up there. Give it a listen, you'll hear it
Thank you for giving composers an advice to make our life as musicians harder :)) but no joke, good video
Loving these videos, keep up the great work!
I found, and I think this is common, playing above bass cleft on bassoon tends to start to hurt physically if its done for more than 4 bars or so. Its like it resonates with the bones in your jaw.
Great video! Your hard work shows :) very informative and interesting
Just found your channel--love it!!
Fantastic video and channel!
there is a slight caveat to the Bydlo example for tuba, it was written in a time in france where the french C tuba was the norm, when h C tuba is the same size as a euphonium and an octave from the common Contrabass CC tuba used in a majority of orchestras around the world. It is also common practice to just use a euphonium for Bydlo and then switch back to the main axe for the rest of the piece. Moral of the story, Ravel wrote bydlo in a more comfortable register for the instruments at his disposal.
There’s playing around with register and pushing limits, and then there’s what so so many contemporary composers (imho, stupidly) do: I.e. writing for the brass trio in a sinfonietta, all muted: Trombone on top, horn just below and trumpet lowest. Often muted and in pp, and in or close to the triple high notes. It’s so common, at least in my experience from sinfoniettas, and I just don’t get it.
Stravinsky, however, seems to understand the instruments well and do things quite right. I just hope this video encourages aspiring composers to push limits in a good and constructive way, rather than writing stuff that is unneccesarily difficult and not well-sounding.
respect to that tubist, i played tuba for 13 years and i know how hard it is to hit these tunes
very informative
Rite of Spring is in every orchestral bassoonist’s basic repertoire. It’s on every audition, most big orchestras perform it every couple of years. Shostakovich, on the other hand wrote some fiendishly difficult bassoon parts, some of which almost have to be relearned every time. And, by the way, that floating picture was a bass flute, not an alto flute.
Super underrated channel! Great video
Awesome video!
In the rite of spring, the tuba was also pushed to play higher during “the ritual of abduction”
Just found your channel, thank you Music's James Holden (xD thank you Alex)
On a side note, his shirt is very funny with the fff but marccato on a high D w/ dolce😭
I’ve seen a lot of smaller tubas or even euphoniums come out for that excerpt in Pictures
Orchestras at Bydlo: "Yeeeaahhh let's just use a euphonium for this one"
in fact, I would applaud modern composers if they made the euphonium a standard part of the orchestration. You can do a LOT of interesting things with it (different sound to the horns, more agile than the trombones, doubling an octave up of the tuba with a similar sound colour, a general solo- and countermelody instrument, etc)
As a euphonium player, I strongly agree. I love it when the tubas and euphonium are a section. Good concert band music has some really fine euphonium parts - sometimes I'm scored as the lowest member of the French horns, sometimes with the trombones, or with tubas.
@@steveruzich3273Otto M. Schwarz loves writing euphos and horns together to open up the sound of the horns slightly through us in the high register, it works REALLY well
What the heck
I'm not an orchestra person but got both the mystery instruments exactly
This shall be my proud moment of the month
The bydlo tuba solo was written for a French tuba, which is pitched in the C higher than the Bb euphonium. It's not a large instrument
Amen! I sometimes score Trombones or French Horns at the top or bottom of their usual accepted written register, for the sound and tone color I desire. For most orchestra instruments, the lowest note playable is what is capable for that instrument. Though many wind and string instruments (except for piano, harp, guitar, organ...etc) can be played higher than the usual "accepted" written note, by very experienced players. If I am using winds and brass in pairs, as I often do (except for my usual 4 F Horns), I might score parts for brass that need a "brassier" sound for full chords with the Trumpets than using F Horns below them. I have taken flack from some players for this, but never professional players from orchestras, because they know, that I know, they are talented and very well capable of playing what I score. After all, though I respect high school and community orchestras, they are not who I am scoring my orchestra parts for... Peace and Love! 🎼❤☮
Here's another unusual bit of orchestration from "The Rite of Spring" - the use of bass trumpet.
The bass trumpet plays in the same register as the trombone, so why specify the bass trumpet?
If you just had a bass trumpet in the midst of other brass, you probably couldn't pick it out.
But Stravinsky scores the bass trumpet and the regular trumpet in octaves, so the passage is very prominent. They match up perfectly well, so it is very obvious that the lower octave is played by a trumpet, in a range you don't expect. The first time I heard this, I was startled, and immediately sought out the score to see what was happening.
I love that dolce fff shirt!
awesome shirt 😅
That last excerpt sounds so brassy for me that the trumpet was an obvious guess here.
In the upper register, where all instruments start to sound the same it's better to look not necessarily at the timbre of the voice (pitches and overtones), but the way in which sound is produced. For brass instruments it's more wobbly and chaotic (dynamics combined with a sound wave rhythm) in comparison to woodwinds, where those characteristics are much more stable and closer to the perfect sine wave
I thought it was a soprano voice.
I want that T-shirt.
my favorite out of register part is the tuba's, in "bydlo" from mussorgsky's pictures at an exhibition
edit: i should have watched a little more of the video lol
Listened to the trumpet bit again and, still, I could hardly believe it.
🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Is this soft of thing reflected in software and if so how well?
Good video very informative will use this information on my future work, i would work on a softer endinf rather theh a cut to black
Interesting material, but I don’t think you can compare ophicleide with modern tuba. Although now the parts in Symphony Fantastique are played by a tuba, it’s important to note that it would be a F tuba, not CC or BBb. That puts it in a very different register than if you imagine it on a huge contrabass tuba. The same thing goes for Bydlo in Ravel’s Pictures. In America it’s common to perform it on tenor tuba (euphonium), but if it was performed on tuba for some reason, it would also be on F tuba. Again interesting material, I just think your missing some crucial information that drastically changes the perspective on the concept you’re discussing.
Fantastic comment! Yes, ophicleide is very different and yes, these would usually be played on F tuba. The big problem is that every country and even every orchestra seems to handle this sort of repertoire differently depending on taste and the abilities of their performers. My main goal was to get people even just thinking about tuba because it’s so often simply ignored. But perhaps it would be best for me to make a stand-alone tuba video sometime in the future explaining these things. I come from the European brass tradition and I know that it’s quite different from in the US. Thanks for bringing this up!
That modified Vaughn Williams cadenza is so goofy🤣
Believe it or not, it's actually a variation written by Walter Hilgers.
How do you have below 1000 subscribers? How do you have less than 1000000 subscribers? Good luck.
3:15
3:17
Re: the high tuba, in many cases high tuba parts are played on a tenor tuba which is essentially a euphonium. Less tubing, same shape, so the high partials are less dense, and less air to displace, so both these things ease the high parts. Of course in the Vaughan Williams the tubist isn't changing horns, that's all done on a more typical tuba.
3:43 very minor nitpick, that's not actually the tuba harmonic series! tubas start on Bb, not F.
The tuba from the example is in F. Sorry, I probably should have made that clear.
@@ScoreCircuit oh u right then mb
6:08 what piece is this btw?
It's one of mine 😂 link is in the description.
@@ScoreCircuit nice
2:23 AYO?
OK?
All wrong. Find sweet spot and compose in that range. This guy is not understanding the fact that experimental music is not meant to be popular.
It is definitely great to use that sweet spot sound, but I think there is a place for experimenting with these different sounds. Sure, you can overdo it, but used well it can lift a piece. The basson at the start of Rite of Spring is a prime example of using it well.
I am confused by what you are saying. Are you saying Stravinsky isn’t popular. He certainly isn’t experimental now. At the time he wrote rite of spring, he was, but that was over a century ago.
@@jimatsydney something can be popular while becoming tiresome and hurtful to the ears depending on context of showcase.
@@jimatsydneystravinaky is garbage.
@@Whatismusic123 You're a troll
Aren't we about done with "iconic"? It has become the word to use when one doesn't have a strong sense of what to say. This guy, for instance, thinks instruments have "iconic" registers and "iconic" sounds.
Bet this guy also thinks most every little problem is "existential".