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|  Writing for an orchestra [HELP] | |
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PPH
  Member
Topics: 48
Replies: 843
Registered: 13.Jul.03 |
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You'll have to get a notation program such as Finale or Sibelius. There is a free version of Finale (Finale Notepad, I think it's called) that might do the trick, at least in the beginning.
When you start Finale, it let's you choose the instruments you're going to use in your track. So, if you choose the whole orchestra, Finale will open a template that has all the instrumental parts in the correct positions of a score (i.e. woodwinds on top, followed by strings, I think, etc, etc.)
You have to take care with transpositor (I don't know whether that's the word in English) instruments. The score for these instruments is not written as they are played: they are written transposed. For example, the score of double basses is written one octave above, so players must transpose the score one octave down when they are playing. This is the simple case: there are instruments that are written with other levels of transposition such as fifths.
Anyway, I guess a good program such as Finale might take care of the trasnpositions too.
You might want to look in the Internet for some more info on writing score. Also, there are several composer communities that might help you. Composer Forums comes to mind: www.composerforums.com.
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"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"
-John Galt, "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand |
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SpiralBox
Member
Topics: 14
Replies: 180
Registered: 18.Aug.04 |
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In my experience, you've also got to consider that some key signatures are much easier to play than others on different instruments.
I remember back when I was doing my A-Level Music, I wrote a great-sounding string quartet just using Cubase and my synth module. I played it to the teacher, and showed him the score and he just said something along the lines of "That's all very well - but it would be impossible to play". I then just transposed the whole lot to a different key signature (Just E-minor up 1 to F-minor or something like that) and it instantly became much much easier to play.
There's also similar things relating to intervals. You might think that F# going up to C# sounds great on your computer on a Clarinet sound, but that might be very very tricky for the performer to play.
I've completely made up all of these examples, but they're along the right lines. Oh - and you also don't want to exceed the range that it's physically possible to play on the different instruments!
i
"It's okay to be imperfect... the imperfections are where the magic is.
Perfect music sounds sterile and dead."
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