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Copyright © 2022 by Master The Score
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of
brief quotations in a book review
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Copyright Information
Ta b l e O f C o n t e n t s
About Master The Score
3
Preamble
5
Chapter 1
6
Balance and Tonal Balance
8
Panning
13
Reverb
15
To Conclude
16
Chapter 2
18
How To Achieve Clarity Within The Orchestration
19
Clarity Within the Parts
20
Idiomatic Instrument Writing
25
Use Of Voicing
28
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About
About Master The Score
Founded in 2021 by composer Nikolaus Daim, Master The Score delivers high quality online
courses to students from all over the world. Covering any imaginable topic about media music
production, Master The Score (MTS) provides valuable insights and possibilities for aspiring
composers as well as professionals. To us, MTS means much more than just pro t. Our ultimate
goal is to accompany the musical development of our students and to provide the environment
they need to grow and learn in the best way possible. To connect people sharing the same
passion and interests by establishing a thriving community was and always will be of huge
importance to us. And why is that so? Simply because no successful career was ever established
alone. Even with a marvelous musical mind, you will need friends along your way. The whole
MTS team is excited to be part of your musical journey and we hope you will truly enjoy our
courses!
Master The Score came to live through a collaboration
of passionate composers and teachers. We all share the
love for music, and furthermore the wish of passing on
our knowledge to students around the globe. Besides
being collagues and fellow teachers, the team around
Master The Score is de ned by friendship and support.
We really hope that our passion and positivity shine
through our courses and provide a helpful and inspiring
resource for our students. Many minds were involved in building this platform and we are thankful
to every single one of them.
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About
Besides the contribution of our teachers, we want to mention the amazing work done by our
graphic designers, web developers and technical experts that brought our vision to life. Nothing
of this would have been possible without all the students putting their trust in us. We appreciate
every single one of them and take nothing for granted.
By joining Master the Score, students receive access to a thriving community with the possibility
to interact with their teachers and exchange with fellow composers. The aspect of establishing
connections in the music industry is an essential part of musical development and often
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by some of the most accomplished VST and plugin companies.
Last but not least, thanks so much to all of you for checking out our rst ebook. We are looking
forward to see you in our courses, happy composing everyone!
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Preamble
Preamble
First of all, thanks so much for diving into Master The Score’s rst, little E-Book “Orchestral
Clarity”. We are more than excited about being part of your musical journey.
When it comes to writing cinematic music, more often than not, we want to achieve an open,
clear orchestral sound that keeps our listeners fascinated. The denser and busier our tracks get,
the more dif culties we will encounter in maintaining this open sound.
There are two main aspects when it comes to achieving a clear orchestral sound. First, we want
to make sure that our orchestration is as good as possible and does not “muddy up” our pieces.
Not even a perfect mix could x some unfavorable orchestration choices. By keeping in mind a
few simple principles when writing and orchestrating our music, we are able to improve the
sound quality of our pieces immensely.
Second, we want to make sure our pieces sound the best they can be by improving our mixing
and production skills. By having a good understanding of equalization, reverb, panning and
compression, we can give our pieces the nal touch they need. At the end of the day, a good
mix can simply make the difference between having our music signed or not.
By combining a proper orchestration with the magic of mixing, we can nally achieve the sound
we are aiming for.
We hope that our E-Book “Orchestral Clarity” will help you in achieving your goal of improving
your music production and that we can provide some insights of what to expect from Master The
Score courses. Happy composing everyone!
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Chapter 1
Chapter 1
About the Author:
Joël Dollié
Joël Dollié is a French Mixing and Mastering engineer whose work can be heard throughout the
music and entertainment industry.
His talents have been utilized by companies including Ghostwriter Music, SPM Music Group, Sonic
Symphony, Cavalry music and more. His mixes can be heard in trailer campaigns like ‘‘Loki’’ (TV
Series), ‘‘Abominable’’ or ‘‘The Chosen’’.
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Chapter 1
Joel's works also include productions by electronic media giants Ubisoft and Riot Games as well
as major artists like Grammy winning producers ‘‘Cubeatz’’ as well as Gryf n, Simon Khorolskiy
and many more. Spit re Audio's acclaimed BBC Symphony Orchestra and Appassionata sample
libraries showcase demonstration tracks mixed and mastered by Joel.
How To Achieve Clarity Within The Mix
Joël Dollié
What I want to tell you about in this little document is how to achieve clarity in an orchestral
mix . While too much clarity isn’t the ultimate goal and can also ruin the vibe, it is usually very
much needed when you have to deal with mixing raw orchestral stems.
The fundamentals of mixing, and orchestral mixing in particular are quite simple. The right
combination of panning, balance and tonal balance and reverb really are the pillars of
everything. Let’s focus on these concepts a bit.
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Chapter 1
Balance and Tonal Balance
Balance and tonal balance are the most important things when it comes to orchestral mixing.
This starts with orchestration of course but then, your job in the mix is to sublimate all of that.
Acoustics aren’t perfect, instruments aren’t perfect, so there are plenty of things you can do in
order to increase power and clarity. This is of course not something that can be taught in a few
pages, but as an example: Bassoons tend to have nice bass but it is usually covered by an overly
present mid-range, Tubas tend to bene t from being boosted a little in order to bring more bass
support to the brass section, as trombones and trumpets can be very loud and sometimes
overload the brass with mid-range… While it might be tempting to look into crazy advanced
techniques to improve your mix, most of the results come from simple moves. A satisfying
balance and tonal balance with good EQ are everything, and that’s where clarity come from.
Let’s talk a bit about balance. A good level balance is the sublimation of a good orchestration.
Technically orchestration is the rst stage of balance, as orchestration technically balances out
timbres, loudness per harmony line, and much more, by deciding which instruments and sections
do what (lead? Bassline? Mid harmony?).
However, even if you have the best orchestration in the world, other factors like the room, the
players, the mic arrangement of the orchestra (among others) will dramatically affect how the
balance (and tonal balance) feels.
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As a mixer, you have to judge from where problems are coming from. Sometimes it’s a balance
issue so a volume change is what you need, sometimes it’s a tonal balance issue, in which case
EQ is probably needed. A ‘’bad’’ orchestration can be bettered with a good mix balance, but you
will always be limited by the weakest link in the chain. If you are orchestrating something to
sound huge but your melodies are way too quiet, the track will lack personality and drive. If you
are writing basses on the same octave as the celli during a climactic part, there are good
chances that your track would sound much better with a lower octave instead.
If you don’t spread out the instruments correctly with good orchestration, they will mask each
other, create overall clutter and also reduce the overall impact as you might be underutilizing the
human hearing range (for example, missing out on low end by not writing bass in the ‘’correct’’
octave). In which case an orchestration x is the best thing to do.
Think of it this way, if your goal is to make your track sound as epic as possible but all the mids
are cluttered and all the instruments cover each other in an ugly way, and you’re not taking
advantage of the lowest bass and highest treble, you’re missing out on some ‘’frequency
information’’ you could feed to your ears. Now the goal isn’t to go to extremes, boosting too
much highs in the strings or overdoing the sub on the tuba will sound fake, but tastefully
enhancing the instruments will go a long way. All the orchestral instruments technically overlap
in terms of frequency range, and that’s perfectly normal and good, but how they overlap and
how
you EQ them will make or break a track.
Going a little more in depth, a tool that will help you a lot with your tonal balance is Multiband
compression (or dynamic EQ, they’re very similar, but for simplicity purposes, I’m going to use
“MB compression” for the rest of this document).
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Chapter 1
Now, simple static EQing is de nitely the most useful tool you will use but EQ can’t x
everything, and this is where MB compression comes into play. Dynamic EQ / Multiband
compression is becoming more and more popular in modern mixing as it does one particular thing
really well: it cuts frequencies only when they go out of control. This is great as it kind of “locks”
a sound in a certain tonal signature by preventing sudden harmonics to peak out of the sound
and unlike normal EQ, it doesn’t cut/boost all the time, which preserves fullness in the mix. You
will understand that with the following examples.
For instance, when it comes to the piccolo, its lower notes tend to be round and nice and have
nice audible air 8-20k at the same time. You generally tend to get a fairly balanced sound, but
here is where problems generally start to occur; As you go up the range, the fundamental
harmonic starts to become extremely loud and overpower everything (usually around 1k).
In the context of a mix, what you end up with is a ute that kind of just sounds like a 1k sine
wave, a piercing sound, with inaudible higher harmonics and air. You tend to lose lots of the
emotion in the sound because it just becomes ugly and unpleasant to listen to. What people
generally do to counter that is that they just heavily cut 1k, but the result is that lower notes
which were balanced, now become overly mid-cut and scooped and lose some emotion as well.
Acoustic instruments aren’t perfect. It’s ok to change their natural tone. A piccolo would never
sound that balanced in the real world. Being able to compress a speci c frequency range of an
instrument is a fantastic way to preserve balance and beauty in a mix which would otherwise be
destroyed by an overly loud peaking harmonic. Below is a representation of the tonal imbalances
of a piccolo, and a dynamic EQ xing the issue.
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Before Multiband Compression
After Multiband Compression
As you can see, on the left side of both pictures, which is the lower note of the two, the balance
is fairly good. The fundamental is still louder than the other harmonics, which is normal, and the
tone feels balanced. However, on the right side of the top picture, you can see that the piccolo’s
rst harmonic suddenly jumps in loudness. The ratio between the fundamental and the 2nd and
3rd harmonics is way more unbalanced than when we were playing the lower note. The piccolo
feels unbalanced and that rst harmonic becomes jarring.
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Chapter 1
This is where Multiband Compression comes in, as our magical situational tone correcting tool.
Look at the 2nd picture. When playing the lower pitch, on the left, it is not really doing anything
which is normal, as there aren’t any harmonics triggering it, but on the right, when that really
loud harmonic happens, it is detecting it and compressing it. What this does is that it effectively
reduces the differences in volume between the rst harmonic and the 2nd and the 3rd, and the
next ones as well, and prevents that fundamental harmonic from going out of control and
blasting through the mix.
In a sparse arrangement, that will make the piccolo way more listenable and easier on the ear,
and in a busy arrangement, this will allow us to hear the overall tone of the instrument better,
including higher frequencies.
So, in your own mix, if you can’t hear the complete tone, instead of just boosting its volume until
you can hear the other harmonics and air as well, make sure the tone is balanced to begin with,
and then you can raise the instrument overall in the mix.
Here are a few examples where MB comp might come in handy as a tone correction tool:
1. Low resonant solo cello (150-250hz)
2. Flutes (1k)
3. Resonant violin low notes (500hz)
4. Solo acoustic guitar (jumpy high bass/low mids)
5. Harps (jumpy high bass/low mids)
6. Vocals (200hz-1k can sometimes be inconsistent)
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Warning: Only use MB comp for tone correction if you have an instrument which is way
unbalanced from note to note (or has an ugly resonance just on a speci c note/set of notes. If
it’s unbalanced as a whole or there’s just a frequency range that pops out of place all the time,
you might as well use simple EQ. The piccolo is an extreme example. Many instruments will just
be ne with EQ (if the tone is consistent but you just want to make the texture a bit nicer). Some
instruments can be tonally inconsistent from note to note because of how they are but for some,
it’s just the room that they were recorded in that generates resonances in certain areas of the
frequency spectrum, usually in the lower mids down to the sub bass. The tone of all instruments
is also supposed to change a bit from note to note, which It is normal. Don’t start using MB comp
on everything. It is up to you to gure out if there is a note that is jumping in a bad way and
hurting the mix.
Panning
Panning is very important as it will help your brain to differentiate different instruments with
Left/Right separation. A wide track will also sound way more engaging than a narrow sound.
When it comes to panning libraries, what I would recommend is to rst listen to the natural “out
of the box” panning of the library. Most libraries that include different instruments of the same
family (strings libraries or brass libraries for example) were recorded by putting the players on a
stage, in different spots. They were also recorded with different mic positions, stereo mics, etc.
What that means is that a French Horn that naturally sounds slightly on the left out of the box in
your library will also have more room ambiance that comes from the left, and the sound waves
will reach the left stereo mic before the right mic which also participates in the perception of the
panning. That timing difference is also called the haas effect.
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Chapter 1
The difference of volume between the L/R channels isn’t the only factor that determines panning
strength, accuracy and feel. Keep that in mind when panning things around. First try to stick to
the natural panned side of the library but if the arrangement calls for it, it’s also ne to swap an
instrument to the opposite side. If you do that however, you absolutely need to swap the stereo
channels rst. By swapping the stereo channels, you will also be inverting the “haas effect”
within the stereo recording. Compared to just forcing it with the pan knob until it sounds like it’s
coming from the other side, rst swapping the channels and then adjusting the panning knob will
sound a lot more accurate and easier to pinpoint as there won’t be any con icting information for
your brain. It will be exactly as if the recording setup was perfectly inverted.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I guess the next question is “how hard should you pan?”
When it comes to orchestral instruments, you can only pan them so far apart. If you go too far,
the sound will start to become incoherent and disjointed and the “big hall” effect will be
destroyed.
We all want a huge sound, and panning can de nitely help with that, but when panning to
extremes, there’s a point where we will really lose too much realism and the “Big Hall feel” will
be broken. The instrument will feel too isolated on one side and the realistic enveloping feeling of
room will be gone
That sweet spot, the point where we can pan the instruments to make them as separated as
possible without feeling disjointed, is not static. It will vary depending on a couple factors:
1. The default panning of the library (how hard it is panned out of the box).
2. How much reverb you are using.
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Chapter 1
Point number one is quite self-explanatory but to understand point number two, you have to
understand how reverb works, stereo reverb in particular. Reverb is the tail of the sound bouncing
from wall to wall. What that means is that it will be a lot less directional than the dry sound,
which is what you are panning. Basically, the wetter an instrument is, the more centered it feels
(because of your hall reverb), so you can generally pan wetter instruments harder.
Panning also isn’t an exact science as every source is different. I like to talk about ‘’width’’ VS
‘’Directionality. Width is the perceived ‘’slice of space’’ that your instrument occupies, for
example you could feel like the violins are very spread from maximum left to the center sort of a
‘’quarter’’ slice of cake if that makes sense. But you could have
Reverb
Reverb can often feel overwhelming as there are many options that all sound different. The way
you approach reverb also really depends on the source. In general, I recommend not using reverb
as a tool to x problems but only as an enhancer of the orchestral samples (or even live
recordings).
Sometimes that means adding a lot of it, but oftentimes, xing the samples at the source, by
tweaking mic positions for example in order to get the best possible sound out of the box gives
you the best sound.
With that said, a nice hall reverb can really add an overall polish and sheen to an orchestral mix,
or save a room that sounds way to small. It’s all about treating it like an additive effect (for the
most part) and not using it to mask problems (like abusing the sustain pedal on a piano to mask
untight playing!)
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Chapter 1
For orchestral mixes, halls tend to sound best as they are spaces designed for orchestras. Not too
big, not too small, usually around 1.8 to 2.3 seconds of tail, they help the instruments bloom
without sounding too messy. Creating a reverb send, cutting the sub lows from it in order to
minimize reverb sub bass to avoid clutter and sending the whole orchestra to it usually does the
trick. Depending on how ‘’wet’’ the signals that you feed through it are, you will want to send
more or less of it.
In practice, this seems quite simple but sometimes that’s not enough. For example, if you try to
blend a very dry recording of a solo instrument that is very ‘’close mic’d’’ within wet samples that
are recorded in a big room, you might nd that even if you use a ton of reverb on that solo
instrument, you won’t quite get the depth you are looking for. That’s why there are other
techniques like daisy chaining two reverbs that can really save you. In this particular example,
putting a shorter room reverb in order to simulate depth and then sending that into a bigger hall
tends to sound a lot more realistic than just using the hall. In that situation we could consider the
rst reverb as a ‘’mic position simulator’’ without a long tail, just to push the sound back in the
room and create a rst layer of depth that is very much needed.
To Conclude
Mixing orchestral music isn’t about using crazy processing. For the most part, a good sounding
track will be a combination of good orchestration and relatively basic processing. Understanding
how tonal balance affects your mix and choosing your mic positions wisely will also massively
affect the overall tone.
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Chapter 1
A beautifully recorded orchestra within a great room should pretty much just need EQ, a bit of
dynamic EQ, a bit of reverb and a bit of compression if you have drums. The dif cult comes from
ne tuning that processing and training your ears, which takes time.
Of course, advanced techniques are nice but without mastering these fundamentals, they really
don’t matter that much. Organizing your session and optimizing your work ow will also be very
helpful in making sure that you don’t get overwhelmed and lost.
I hope you enjoyed these few tips about how to achieve clarity in an orchestral mix. Obviously,
there is a lot more to say about reverb and every other topic, so I hope to see you in my course.
“Mixing Cinematic Music”
https://www.masterthescore.com/course/mixing-cinematic-music
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Chapter 2
Chapter 2
About the Author:
Mattia Chiappa
Mattia Chiappa is a composer, orchestrator, musician based in London, UK. His expertise lies in
the production of dense symphonic arrangements and rich orchestral scores that embody the
spirit of classic lm scores. Alongside being a composer, he is also a working musician, having
performed as guitarist and bassist on many stages across the UK. Originally from Italy, Mattia
moved to London in 2013 after winning a national competition with price a scholarship for the
guitar performance course at University of West London. His lifelong interest for orchestral
composition would lead him to transitioning into production music and seeing his work licensed
for Net ix shows, BBC and Discovery documentaries among many other types of media.
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Chapter 2
How To Achieve Clarity Within The Orchestration
Mattia Chiappa
Clarity is such a dif cult yet important topic to tackle when it comes to orchestration. There are
several different ways to achieve clarity but lets rst de ne why this is such a fundamental step
and what to look out for.
Good orchestration is not only music that is written idiomatically for the instruments meant to
play it but also the interaction of all the different parts to create a cohesive sound. That together
with the skill of effectively being able to draw and take away attention from speci c elements in
the arrangement, are the most rudimentary aspects of what I would consider a successful
orchestration.
Arranging for the orchestra can be quite a daunting task because of the many different
instruments available and all their ranges and timbres, characteristic of each of them. While
modern tools such as DAWs and sample libraries can make this task a little easier and certainly
much more accessible than it used it be before the digital age, something that it is still highly
misunderstood is how virtual orchestration should not be approached any differently from an
arranging perspective. That is assuming the end goal is creating a piece meant to emulate a real
ensemble of instruments.
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Chapter 2
Of course, having such a big array of sounds at our ngertips can be very exciting and lead to
wonderful results in the good hands of a master orchestrator but the reality is that without at
least some degree of experience arranging music (of any genre that doesn’t necessarily have to
be orchestral), an arrangement can quickly turn from great to murky or unde ned and dif cult to
follow. Often times something as simple as adding an extra part, or a wrong octave doubling can
do the trick and without even realizing it, what was once a perfectly good arrangement is now
being ruined in just a matter of seconds. This issue precisely represents how the strength of these
modern tools that allow us to experiment with numerous combinations of different sounds, can
also be the weak link in the work ow of any composer because of how easy it is to go
overboard with it and how few limitations we have during this process.
In this short document we will talk about taking some simple steps to make sure this does not
happen. They all aim to achieve clarity within the orchestration and ideally should be something
you will be able to tick off yourselves while listening back to any piece of music with a
critical/analytical mind set:
1. Clarity within the parts
2. Idiomatic instrument writing
3. Use of voicing
Clarity Within the Parts
These may be the most overused words you heard from any music educator in any sector of the
industry but in fact when it comes to clarity within the orchestration, nothing can express it
better than the simple sentence “less is more”.
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Chapter 2
It may a be counterintuitive argument considering how big of an ensemble a full symphonic
orchestra is. Of course we all enjoy a big climax with a tutti moment where everybody plays
fortissimo but the more we dive in deeper into these examples from the music we love, the
sooner we realise how often there is very little going on, other than what is immediately
apparent.
You can break down any kind of commercial music into these four basic element:
1. Melody
2. Harmony
3. Bass
4. Texture
You do not have to have all of them happening together at the same time nor the music needs to
have these presented in any particular order. You can actually get quite creative by simply
combining these elements in different ways throughout an arrangement to keep it fresh and
engaging at all times.
While melody, harmony and bass will work most times no matter how you combine them
(assuming you are making a correct use of voicing and idiomatic instrument writing as listed
above), background textures need an extra degree of caution for them to work without creating
a distraction from the lead part (melody).
An orchestral texture at its core basics is a multi-layered sound achieved by combining different
instruments and/or articulations to create a particular effect. The thicker a texture is (how many
layers you use) the more dif cult is going to be picking out each single part that creates it. This
sometimes can be the desired effect, like for example creating some sort of unde ned blur
underneath the melody and the bass by using two arpeggios moving in contrary motion.
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Chapter 2
While the example above is not meant to have a well de ned sound, with intelligible parts, the
two con icting rhythms ( triplets against sixteenths) are not necessarily distracting either.
Imagine this part in the context of an orchestration: cellos taking the low arpeggio, violas on the
higher part and maybe some trombones or low woodwinds highlighting the harmony in the same
register, playing chords pianissimo in a pad like fashion. This texture can simulate the sound of a
sustain pedal and create subtle momentum of what would otherwise be a more static
arrangement. Once you layer a melody on top, possibly in a higher register (that does not ght
with the accompaniment), you will ensure yourself a place in golden era style of Hollywood
orchestration, together with the all the greats that have used this particular device before you.
This is just an example of how you can effectively combine two or more parts ( arpeggios and
chords) to create a multi-layered sound than serves the music well. Simplicity is key here.
Changing the brass or woodwind part into something entirely different like a staccato pattern
that goes against the arpeggios, will very quickly and suddenly break the arrangement by now
making use of con icting parts that sound obtrusive because they are too different from each
other.
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Chapter 2
So we can safely say that the better option in most cases will be picking parts that complement
each other well and have similar qualities. If we wanted to expand on this texture with yet again
more layers, we could easily write more arpeggios in a higher register or even entirely different
parts that make use of an articulation that is by nature more similar to the legato we are using in
the lower arpeggio.
eg.1)
eg.2)
eg.3)
The rst and second example will work because even if they are in theory a different part, in
more practical terms they are really not. The higher arpeggio is just really an expansion of the
lower one, making it sound to our ears like “one”, and the pulse in the second example is once
again an expansion of we before identi ed as a pad.
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Chapter 2
The third example is indeed a different part but is by design very similar to both the arpeggios
and the chord pad, by being a somewhat hybrid version of the two.
Keeping similar parts within the same section, when possible, will ensure that these orchestral
blends will work most effectively. For instance, spreading this big arpeggio we have now created
together with example 1, within the whole string section, will result in a much more uni ed,
cohesive sound than using low strings paired with high woodwinds instead. This is something to
be taken into consideration as you will be arranging for orchestra but what is much more
important than any general guidance, is your degree of control of the knowledge you have and
how you decide to use it creatively to express the meaning of your music through the use of
orchestration, even if that means you will sometimes intentionally go against some of these
rules.
You might be starting to see how everything we have talked about so far, should not take place
in a vacuum. Of course orchestration itself will play a very important role in this as well. We
mentioned earlier in the document how melody, harmony and bass, in theory, should always
work with each other, no matter how you combine them. This will not be necessarily true when
you use orchestration to obfuscate either one of these elements. For example using harmony
and melody in the same register can have disastrous effects when coupled with picking the
wrong instrument for the job. Pairing a low ute with some high chords on trombones,
respectively in their weak and strong registers, will always result in the ute being utterly
overpowered and buried by brass and this particular phenomenon brings my to my next point.
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Chapter 2
Idiomatic Instrument Writing
This is such a fundamental step of writing music for a big ensemble of instruments, and
unfortunately something that is easy to overlook when composing in a sequencer. Once again
there are little to no limitations of what you can achieve orchestrating in you DAW and while that
can sometimes lead to some very happy accidents and wonderfully creative results, having at
least a basic knowledge of the mechanics of these instruments and knowing their “sweet spots”,
can indeed help a great deal if the nal goal is achieving clarity and realism within your mockup.
Writing for a real orchestra can be quite unforgiving, not just in the very obvious sense that if
something is not physically possible to play on an instrument, it will likely sound rather
un attering in real life, but also in the more subtle way of how parts that can technically can
work individually, do not quite translate as well once put together.
One of the most novice mistakes a beginning composer can make is thinking that some of the
more questionable orchestration choices he/she might have made, could be xed later during
mixing by pulling some faders or clearing space with equalisers. Unfortunately that is almost
never the case and most times you would be left feeling that there is something off or not quite
the way you might have originally intended it.
Just like most things in life the simpler solution is often times the right one.
Any issue with the orchestration should be addressed right away by considering how the part you
have written affects the tone of the instrument. This is particularly true for brass and woodwind
instruments where so much of their characteristic timbre is dependent on dynamics in relation to
pitch.
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Chapter 2
If we take a closer look at the above example, even without a lot of experience with instruments
in real life, we can easily predict that the solo ute will be buried by the trombones. That is
because they are respectively a tenor and soprano member of their sections.
The general rule for brass and woodwinds is that the higher the pitch it is, the more effort it
requires from the player to produce a sound and vice versa (with the only exception of the oboe,
working exactly opposite ways). While it may seem like the most obvious solution may be simply
lowering the trombones in volume, this is not necessarily going to lead to the most realistic
results and there are in fact many other more ef cient solutions. If we do not want to assign
these parts to other instruments something as simple as changing octaves is going to go a very
long way. Trombones can a have much higher degree of control at lower octave and utes will be
able to project much more at a higher octave as well, making the interaction of these two
instruments feel much more natural (see below example).
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Chapter 2
If we now want to bridge the gap between the two parts with a clarinet to go in the middle,
(where the ute used to be in the above example), giving to the melody presence, we now have
the best of both worlds with the orchestration retaining a lot its original avour but without
losing clarity, even here with a slightly unusual combination of instruments.
Let’s say we decide that we want go another direction and prioritise register above
instrumentation. Just like before we have a lot of different alternatives available to us. If we
identify the trombones as the problematic link in the chain, we can assign the same part to a less
intrusive, easier to control instrument, like strings for example. Violins and violas in this register
are perfectly capable of giving room to utes, by playing pianissimo or con sordino or both, even
when the two parts are arranged within the same octave. If we now contemplate doubling the
ute in unison with any other instrument, we are likely going to divert a little too far from our
original orchestration but once again the simplest solution is often times very close to us. By
replacing, or even better doubling the melody with an alto ute we are going to give it that extra
kick it may need in order to come across as the leading part.
As you orchestrate you will nd countless similar scenarios but any of these little puzzles can be
solved with very simple logic, if you keep in mind how register and dynamic affects the
instruments’ tone and if you are open to explore different options like demonstrated above.
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Use Of Voicing
My last point was using voicing to achieve clarity and fortunately I feel like this is a much a
simpler step than the previously mentioned, as it involves less creativity and more technical
knowledge.
All voicing related issues are very much linked with high but most importantly low registers.
Anything else in between is most likely related to the other two categories we discussed
throughout the document, with the only exception to be made for doubling chord tones that are
not a root or a fth. This will often result in creating tension, or making the voicing “less stable”
but not necessarily unclear or muddy. This knowledge can in fact be used as a powerful device
for drama purposes and I would not consider it a mistake but rather something to take in mind as
you orchestrate.
The further away we get from middle C, the less de ned the sound tends to be, because of
different reasons. A lower pitch tends to have much more harmonic complexity than a higher
pitch and harmonising any note into a chord will sound either make it sound muddy or thin, the
lower and higher we step away from the mid register.
Fortunately we can easily reference this low interval limit chart (https://www.robinhoffmann.com/dfsb/low-interval-limits/) at any time and the problem will hopefully take care of
itself. See the next page
(Excluded from the chart are unisons and octaves, possible at all ranges.)
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There is not an equivalent chart for high intervals, because a more collapsed high register voicing
does not produce the same murky effect as a low voicing does. As a general rule of thumb
though, if the goal is achieving clarity, my personal advice would be to not harmonise chords
altogether, when higher than F7 on the piano, or when you do, to use this particular device as an
effect. Of course octaves and unisons will be possible at all ranges as well.
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Chapter 2
If you want to know learn more about composition and orchestration, check out Mattia’s course
on Master The Score which covers advanced orchestral composition in the style of the great
Hollywood masters.
“20th Century Orchestral Writing”
https://www.masterthescore.com/course/20th-century-orchestral-writing.
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