Wednesday 6 September 2017

Song#4 Reaching (out for you) waltz - Composing and Arranging Stage

Yosh, next part here!
  1. Idea Stage
  2. Composing and Arranging Stage
  3. Recording & Mastering Stage
  4. Final Product

Arranging

In line with the classics, I tried sticking to a rigid format of:

  1. Minor Motif
  2. Major part B
  3. Minor Motif with variation
  4. Major part C
  5. Minor Motif again
  6. Outro
The instrumentation (ie choice of instruments) were lifted from Shosta-K's waltz. Due to me being a beginner in composing orchestral classics, I opted to copy and learn. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The instruments in entirety are:
  1. Piccolo
  2. Flute
  3. Oboe
  4. Bb Clarinet
  5. Bassoon
  6. Contrabassoon
  7. Horn in F
  8. Trumpet in C
  9. Trombone
  10. Tuba
  11. Timpani
  12. Glockenspiel
  13. Tubular Bells
  14. Percussion (ie drumkit)
  15. Harp
  16. Violin section
  17. Viola section
  18. Cello section
  19. Contrabass section
In writing the waltz, I first started composing with the Piano, my natural instrument of choice. From there, I can test out complex chords and melody flow before expanding it into orchestral format. Drawing lessons from Shosta-K's waltz, I learned that each instrument families work together as a unit (ie four note chord distributed between the each instruments in the family) and sometimes playing off one family against another works well (like brass and woodwind). Other than that, scoring for full orchestra is very much a repetitive work - dividing the piano LH chords into individual instruments per family.

Piano score
Some difficulties I ran into while scoring it in Finale 2014 was keeping in mind the range limits of each instruments. Fortunately, the program was smart enough to shade the notehead yellow if it reaches beyond the instrument range (though not the theoretical range as the range depends on the playing level toggle - Beginner, Intermediate or Expert).

I've put up the link for the music score below for your download purposes. Enjoy!
PS It's not in concert pitch

DOWNLOAD MUSIC SCORE PDF

Stay tuned for Part III of  IV for this song!

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