Orchestrating for Large Orchestra

Orchestrating for Large Orchestra

Let me guess. You’ve done the orchestration course that was actually a glorified instrumentation course: telling you the data surrounding instruments. “This instrument has this range, this instrument can do this but can’t do that. This register sounds like a warm summer’s meadow, while this register sounds like Satan’s farts.” There is no doubt that this is fundamental information. It’s like knowing that red is red as an artist. Or, that an onion is not a potato as a chef. Yet, when you go to use your red that is red–or slice your onion that is in fact an onion–you’re not sure what to do with them. The instrument knowledge is there, but you don’t know how to put it into practice: combining and mixing all this knowledge in action. Well, I’m glad to tell you that you’ve come to the right place as Orchestrating for Large Orchestra is an orchestration course, not an instrumentation one.

Being able to organise your ideas effectively, using the instrumentation you have available to you is a fundamental skill as a composer, orchestrator or an arranger. Like a writer who knows grammar and syntax, a good orchestrator is able to turn grammar and syntax into powerful metaphor. A good orchestrator is the writer with the rich vocabulary, able to put the right words together to turn something that was OK, into something that is really, like really, amazeballs (I’m an orchestrator, not a writer; OK!?). This course wants to help you pick the right words at the right moment. It wants to help you

How will this course turn you into a better orchestrator?

The course utilises two deep, larger scale processes, along with many smaller-scale ones–such as sketching–to help you improve as an orchestrator. These are:

1. Analysis and experimentation;

2. Synthesising and creating;

Part 1: Analysis and experimentation

Each of these processes is the focus of each part of the course. In the first part, which spans from course section 2 - Overview Analysis, to course section 6, you will focus on the analysis and experimentation processes. Taking an orchestral excerpt from Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers opera we will break down her orchestral treatment of the same melodic ideas, in three different ways. After each lesson, where we break down the layers of Smyth’s orchestration, you will be invited to play with these layers in your notation software. Playing around with doublings and combinations, at the octave or unison, you will be able to see how various mixtures of instruments can alter the music.

Part 2: Synthesising and creating

In the second part of the course, you will take the analysis and breakdowns we created and attempt to replicate the orchestral and textural designs of Smyth’s three orchestrations. Synthesising three of your own orchestrations, you will get a deep feeling for what it is like and what it takes to write music for orchestra. What better way to learn how to orchestrate, than from a grand orchestration master such as Ethel Smyth and her Romantic, grand operatic composition The Wreckers?

What will you have at the end of the course?

At the end of the course you will have three orchestrations. However, more importantly, you will possess the knowledge, skills and experience that creating those three orchestrations synthesised in your brain. New neural pathways, forged by practice, you will better understand how different instruments can create different effects and timbres, how different instruments can be combined to make different textures and, most importantly, how to turn instrumentation knowledge into creative orchestral work.

What have you got to lose?

Try the free previews, review the requirements and enrol in the course. Udemy has a refund guarantee, if you decide that the course is not for you before 30-days after purchase, get a refund. I’m sure, albeit a challenging course, the challenge will be worth it. If it’s not challenging, what’s the point?

Create a sophisticated set of large orchestrations on a sea shanty, folk melody and/or an original melody

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What you will learn

• How to identify roles and functions within an orchestration, and how these change across an arrangement and the effect this has;
• How to experiment with and critique various doublings at the unison and octave, appreciating the changes in timbre;
• How to analyse an orchestral excerpt;

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Level: Expert Level

Duration: 1 hour

Instructor: George Marshall