KNOW THY ORCHESTRA

  There has always been a link between writing music for film, and writing music for orchestra. As some point in any film composer's career, he or she will inevitably bring the colors of the orchestra into a project, whether it be real or electronic, alone or in combination with other sonic elements.   In previous articles, I've looked into methods of orchestral writing and synthetic simulation. In this month's column, I would like to touch on a few random suggestions for improving your use of the orchestra - live or sampled.

  First off, and certainly most important, learn about orchestration. This can be done in one of a few ways, looking at orchestral scores of good composers (Strauss, Prokofiev, Ravel, Vaughn Williams, Stravinsky, Ligeti, etc.), reading one of many current books on orchestration, and even take some lessons from a composer or orchestrator. I used to take classical piano pieces and do my own orchestral versions, adding additional colors and lines in many cases. It's a very enjoyable learning method.

  Most film scores involve a minimum of solo instrumental writing. Solos are good as special color, but the majority of orchestral writing uses sections in order to make for a bigger sound. This is especially true when writing underneath dialog. Solos tend to clutter and distract from dialog.

  When you want the orchestra to sound big and aggressive, such as action or suspense, include lots of low end sounds - basses, timpani, bass drums, gongs, tam tams, low brass and winds. Adding low bass synths to the orchestra adds an even bigger sense of size. Spread the instruments of the orchestra out to include low as well as high sounds, and focus less on the middle registers. The more spread out the parts are, the bigger and better it gets. As you reach those climactic moments in a cue, don't leave anyone just sitting there, use every member of your orchestra.

  It's good to avoid too many different parts, or chord voices. Good orchestral writing focuses on a few musical elements and puts a lot of players on each element. For example, if you can have four french horns for a recording, keep them down to only two parts and have two on each. This sounds so much better than doing four part writing with only a single player on each note. The same hold for each section. Keep the splits and "divisis" to a minimum in order to get the most number of players to each part.

  Percussion is a critical element of cinematic orchestral writing, Use percussion to add color and punch. Swells and rolls on a suspended cymbal is a typical method to punctuate a hit in the action or a change on the music, such as changing keys or moving to a new musical section. Snare drums and toms add drive. Use bass drums or timpani for accents and hits - both are good either struck or rolled. You can create shimmers with bell trees, mark trees, triangles, glockenspiels, cymbals, and other high metallic instruments. Gongs played with very soft mallets can create mystery and suspense. Some players will slowly drag a SuperBall on a stick over a gong or cymbal for a very cool effect. The waterphone can create an array of creepy and striking sounds, and is in the arsenal of must studio percussionists. Another cool effect is the bowing of a vibraphone with a viola or cello bow.

  It's my experience that there are some percussion instruments best left out of most scores. There is, for whatever reason, little call for wood blocks, temple blocks, or latin percussion in mainstream film scores. Xylophone is best saved for comedies.

  Each instrument has a given range of notes it can play. As you move to the extreme high and low of that instrument it often becomes harder for the player to play, especially for winds and brass. You can't expect brass players to play high notes at the top of their range all day, or there is likely to be blood on the floor. Winds in their highest notes become increasingly shrill, which can be a good or not so good thing.

  The harp is a wonderfully versatile part of the orchestra. As a melodic instrument it is very sweet sounding. But it can also be used very effectively to create rhythm lines to push the orchestra along. Many composers use it to double the bass line, or repeating patterns (ostenatos) in it's middle or high range. Harp is used (still) for ascending glisses - a classic! The instrument has some limitations in how chromatically it can play. It does not have a string for every note, like a piano. Instead it has all the "white keys" and a system of seven pedals, one for each note of the C scale. Each pedal has three positions - flat, natural and sharp, and controls one note of the harp's scale in every octave. So the pedal for D makes every D string on the harp either Db, D, or D#. As a result you can not have a D and a Db simultaneously, although you can have a D and an C# at the same time, but then you give up having a C natural. Composer's writing for the harp need to keep this in mind. Harpists can be shifting pedals as they play pretty quickly, but you can not have notes too close together chromatically at any one time.

  Strings are at the center of attention in virtually every orchestral film score, They are used for melody (typically with violins in unison or octaves), sustains, bass lines, chords, counterlines, you name it. They are capable of a huge range of colors. It is important to take advantage of the strings of the orchestra to keep things sounding big and dramatic. As mentioned earlier, it helps to not split any section of the strings (violin, viola, cello or bass) into too many different parts. For example, better to have the first violins play two notes of the chord, rather than split them into four. If your orchestra gets up into the larger size of 60, 80 or more, than you can have the strings split into more parts, but with smaller groups this makes the strings sound too small.

Strings can do a number of bowing techniques for added flavor - plucked (pizzicato), tremolo (moving the bow rapidly back and forth on one note, which is mysterious when done quietly and aggressive when done loudly), ponticello (playing with the bow over the bridge for a harsh, glassy sound), harmonics (for a more pure, whistle-like sound), double stops (to play two notes at once - also to help get a bigger sound), snapping a string so it hits the fingerboard for a scary pitched clicking sound, trills, muted (for a darker sound), and with or without vibrato (the latter creating a more haunting, glassy effect).

  In composing for orchestra, be it for live players or samples, is worth getting to know, and getting to know better. Effective orchestral writing makes you capable of a wider range of styles and genres, and ultimately a more (musically) desirable composer to most film producers and directors. Keep this in mind the next time you watch, and hopefully listen, to a movie score.