10-21-2022, 11:59 PM
(10-19-2022, 11:23 PM)Samulis Wrote: My old hack for this, which would be very effective in this case, is doubling the violins down an octave with horns or trumpets (and maybe also violas or celli). The violins can also be directly doubled with flute or oboe too to thicken up things.
Sometimes doing something silly like dropping an instrument an octave suddenly brings a completely different and better musical context as well. Try the low end of the violins or even switching to violas just to see what happens.
I would also consider more texture in the midrange. The piece overall is lacking a lot of middle voices, with just the violins, it feels quite vacant. I usually would compose a lot of divisi chugga chugga ostinato lines in cellos and violas in this type of context just to add texture there, but at the very least, you can add some simple brass harmonies. Tenor trombone or horn chords always thicken stuff up extremely effectively (they don't have to be loud, just richly voiced), as do divisi celli and violas, 3-4 bassoons playing harmony together, and to a lesser extent oboes and clarinets in harmony (which is a rather old sound, more classical).
I did a lot of thick heavy harmonies in this track during the brassy bits, which filled in a lot while the strings soared above:
https://samulis.bandcamp.com/track/main-menu-2
Thanks, Sam! I always appreciate the suggestions. I'll check out your example soon, too. I spent some time updating my theme, and I've edited the original post to include it. I dropped the second violins down an octave, added a flute over the oboe that was doubling those violins before, but left them in the original octave, so maybe the melody is thicker now. Still not sure how I feel about the B theme where the cellos, violas, oboe 2 and clarinet all do a little "light chug"; it seems buried. I also changed the basses to pizzi instead of stac. I ALSO darkened the tail reverb, but that was more an experiment to see if it helps with clarity. I'll balance frequencies after I get the arrangement right.
There IS a horn pad going in the B section, but maybe it's buried. I'm thinking of trying a second treatment of this with an emphasis on separation of parts instead of trying to jam a bunch of stuff into it, just to see if the perception of "bigness" isn't in something else entirely for an idea like this.
