Things you've always wanted to know about orchestral instruments but were too afraid

[Mattias Westlund]

Edit: ...to ask. There's a character limit to the post titles, it seems

OK, now that we've got the clarinets discussion going, let's have a thread about things that you're supposed to know as a VO composer, but you're not 100% sure about.

So, let me start off with brass agility. You don't often hear horns and trombones doing fast or complex things, whereas trumpets are commonly used for pretty technical passages. So what gives? Is this a matter of range and instrument size/construction? Or is it more tradition and convention?

[Nayrb]

I was going to wait for a reply to Mattias' question, so as not to clutter things up; but I'd like to know if there are certain keys it's more difficult for the agile instruments to play agile things in. Violins for instance. Is it easier for them to do wild runs and stuff in certain keys? I imagine playing position has something to do with it.

[Samulis]

For trumpets, it's a matter of having piston valves, which have a short actuation length and can be moved very quickly. In addition, having a shorter air column allows the instrument to speak faster and more easily, aiding in rapid passages.

However, that's not to say that trombones (with slides) and horns (with rotary valves) can't move quickly. In the late Renaissance when composers started writing suggestions of instruments to play certain parts, trombones often featured along with violins and cornetti, both of which were extremely agile instruments. In the Baroque and early Classical, (natural, i.e. valveless) horns were called upon to play quite remarkably intricate lines.

Some examples-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7-4SSxP50 (note that although the music is period, the instruments are using modern chromium-plated slides and the players are of a very high level)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkIvJCEX5Nc (without valves, the players use their embrouchre to choose which partial of the natural horn to use and their hard variably inside the bell to tune. Trills are done with the lips only, no valves)
https://youtu.be/b0rb1IXZI9c?t=126 (Arthur Pryor is generally considered to have been one of the most virtuosic trombone players of all time)
https://youtu.be/MCOMdGgreFM?t=253 (Max Acree is a pretty badass local jazz trombonist)

Edit: Note that, and this goes into the follow up question, these complicated things on the natural horns are only possible because they are intentionally written to be accessible by avoiding notes which would be difficult or impossible to reproduce on the natural horn. Similarly for a trombone, writing something that would require rapidly moving the slide back and forth from full extension to all the way in would probably not go well. For both cases, moving into higher partials where the partials are closer together reduces this difficulty, at the cost of physical strain. For a valved instrument like trumpet or modern horn, there is not much difference between pressing any one of the valves, although very distant keys may require lots of changes in fingerings and tax less competent players mentally.

Regarding agility in keys, this is partially a matter of physical construction and partially of pedagogy.

For one part, all necked strings are played from the concept of 'putting finger down raises pitch', ergo, fundamentally thinking from the perspective of 'raising' or 'sharping', rather than flatting. When a cellist wishes to play the first D on the instrument, they press the C string down onto the fingerboard a certain distance down the length of the fingerboard, thus shortening the string and raising its pitch.

All modern brass and woodwinds (not some historical ones, mind you) function under the opposite assumption- 'putting finger down lowers pitch', thus fundamentally think from the perspective of 'flattening' or 'lowering' pitch. When a trumpet player depresses a valve, the air is sent through an extra bit of tubing corresponding to the desired change (e.g. lower by wholestep, halfstep, or step and a half, combining valves to lower further).

In effect, most instruments either work by accessing a certain overtone/partial or string and altering the length of the instrument or string to change the pitch relative to that partial. When a trombone plays a Bb below middle C or a G below middle C, he/she is still accessing the 4th harmonic of the instrument, just the sounding length is changing via the slide. For a string player, strings have a fixed length and then are made shorter to raise pitch, usually by placing a finger on the string to shorten it (some instruments stretch the string, such as Asian zithers like dan tranh and gayageum, but this is less common).

As a result of both the instruction of players and the construction of instruments, it has evolved that strings are generally written for in sharp keys while brass and woodwinds are written for in flats.

Note that there are some edge cases- the ophicleide (metal precursor to tuba featuring keys) uses an ascending system, where putting the finger down raises the pitch on all but one of the keys. There were also ascending-system horns made in the 19th century but the 'descending' approach won out.

Keyboard instruments are 'agnostic' in this approach, as sharps and flats are conceptually identical. Several DAWs even label their piano rolls with sharps only, leading to quite a few EDM tracks in the key of "A# Major".

Concert (pedal) harps are an interesting edge case in that while they feature strings, which can only be raised in pitch, they normally operate with the pitch raised on all strings from their sounding length by a halfstep (in effect, with tuning mechanisms completely engaged, a harp would be in diatonic Cb or B Major {it sounds strange, but it's actually kinda easier to think of it as Cb, so just roll with it...}). Thus the harpist conceptually thinks of the instrument as a configurable octotonic instrument, where notes C through B can each be individually flatted or raised by a halfstep each (thus each note name may be flat, natural, or sharp across the range of the instrument)... thus making it not just key agnostic, but to some extent scale agnostic, meaning once configured, there is no difference in how they interact with the strings between C Major, minor, harmonic minor, wholetone, any of the church modes, and even non-standard scales... so long as they can be achieved using all 7 notes in one tuning or another (so a pentatonic glissando, for example, is not conventionally possible).

Lever harps feature only half-step mechanisms may be tuned with B-flats and E-flats, then raise those notes using the sharpening lever, thus allowing notes to be flatted. Sharpening levers only apply to the individual string, so a lever harp could theoretically have different notes tuned to different things in different octaves, such as a scale that doesn't repeat at the octave but, for example, every other octave. Whether or not lever harpists conceive of their relationship with sharps and flats different than pedal/concert harpists, I don't know, but I would suggest that they may be more at home in common neutral keys (Bb, F, C, G, D) due to the relative simplicity of their instruments' construction.

[Mattias Westlund]

Thanks Sam! It seems the trombone is a far more agile instrument than I ever thought.

The thing about stringed instruments adding fingers to raise the pitch and blown instruments removing them to do the same is something I've been long aware of but sometimes you get stuck in your thinking. While guitars and e.g. violins aren't nearly the same thing they share enough similarities that I can easily wrap my mind around how something is played on a violin. When it comes to brass instruments though, it's not quite as straightforward as I have barely any first-hand experience. I tried playing a trumpet once and I couldn't even make it produce sound. So I'm stuck with listening to various scores to figure out what instruments can and can't do, and not all scores utilize instruments in a way that gives you a good idea of their capabilities.

Especially not in this day an age where virutal orchestrations seem to have done away with woodwinds completely and brass has been reduced to horns (for melodies) and trombones playing just blats and braaams in the low register. I'm a victim of this as much as anyone I admit, but at least I have the decency of feeling unhappy with the way some instruments are commonly used

[Mattias Westlund]

Speaking of trombones: I was playing around with the free Carpenter Trombone Kontakt library the other day and that one has a truly immense range! While the highest notes aren't necessarily pretty they're way up there in trumpet territory. Few if any of the sample libraries I have go that far up in the trombones.

[Samulis]

(07-25-2019, 10:10 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Speaking of trombones: I was playing around with the free Carpenter Trombone Kontakt library the other day and that one has a truly immense range! While the highest notes aren't necessarily pretty they're way up there in trumpet territory. Few if any of the sample libraries I have go that far up in the trombones.

The highest (and often to some extent lowest) ranges of most brass and woodwinds are only limited by the ability of the performer, with the design of the instrument to some extent limiting as well (such as many woodwinds where high notes become increasingly out of tune, as there is a compromise that must be made between tuning of each partial in the shaping of tone holes).

Generally, amateur trombonists can be expected to play up to the F or G above middle C, semi-professionals up to the Bb above middle C, and professionals frequently beyond. The only fixed limit on triggerless/'straight' trombones is the low E below bass clef, although many players can play a few of the pedal tones beneath that starting on the Bb below bass clef. With an F trigger, such as is common on almost all orchestral and band trombones today, the range from low E down to Bb is accessible via the F trigger, which basically transposes the instrument down a fourth. 

Interestingly, these are in fact the same sounding-length Bb and F as the Bb and F portions of modern double-horns, which are the form of horn most commonly used professionally. What makes the horn and trombone sound so different is simply down to mouthpieces, bore ratio and shape, and bell size/flare. If you put a horn mouthpiece on a trombone (with an adapter), you can get a tone out of the trombone somewhat closer to that of a horn, albeit with the bell facing forward. This, aside from right-handed vs. left-handedness, is what distinguishes a wagner tuba from a 'kaiser baritone' or saxhorn-family instrument, or a trumpet from a cornet. In a sense, all brass instruments exist somewhere on a spectrum of bore ratio, bell size/flare, and mouthpiece shape. What survives today are simply what managed to win out commercially in a 200-year evolutionary struggle.

At the present moment, my favorite composer in terms of orchestration prowess is Sir Arnold Bax (and with a cool name like that, why not?). Some of his textures and blends are so impressively woven, and he definitely wasn't afraid of any section of the orchestra, unlike many more famous Romantic and Post-Romantic composers who tended to underwrite for those instruments they were less familiar with. I think he really brings out some of the best qualities of many instruments-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9vg1U1ZEDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQsJle7UqvU (I love the writing in this piece so much, I used it as temp music for the VSCO 2 'Seasons' scoring contest)

[Nayrb]

(07-26-2019, 01:20 AM)Samulis Wrote: At the present moment, my favorite composer in terms of orchestration prowess is Sir Arnold Bax (and with a cool name like that, why not?). Some of his textures and blends are so impressively woven, and he definitely wasn't afraid of any section of the orchestra, unlike many more famous Romantic and Post-Romantic composers who tended to underwrite for those instruments they were less familiar with. I think he really brings out some of the best qualities of many instruments-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9vg1U1ZEDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQsJle7UqvU (I love the writing in this piece so much, I used it as temp music for the VSCO 2 'Seasons' scoring contest)

Side note: Thanks for reminding us so often of Bax. I'm glad to be exploring his stuff again. I always enjoyed what I heard in the past.

[Mattias Westlund]

(07-26-2019, 01:20 AM)Samulis Wrote: What makes the horn and trombone sound so different is simply down to mouthpieces, bore ratio and shape, and bell size/flare. If you put a horn mouthpiece on a trombone (with an adapter), you can get a tone out of the trombone somewhat closer to that of a horn, albeit with the bell facing forward. This, aside from right-handed vs. left-handedness, is what distinguishes a wagner tuba from a 'kaiser baritone' or saxhorn-family instrument, or a trumpet from a cornet. In a sense, all brass instruments exist somewhere on a spectrum of bore ratio, bell size/flare, and mouthpiece shape. What survives today are simply what managed to win out commercially in a 200-year evolutionary struggle.

This is a very interesting anecdote. I seem to remember reading that there were at some point also bass trumpets -- or was it piccolo trombones (or maybe both) -- that feel out of fashion due to sounding so similar to their larger/smaller cousins that there was little point in ever using them.

[Samulis]

(07-27-2019, 06:07 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote:

(07-26-2019, 01:20 AM)Samulis Wrote: What makes the horn and trombone sound so different is simply down to mouthpieces, bore ratio and shape, and bell size/flare. If you put a horn mouthpiece on a trombone (with an adapter), you can get a tone out of the trombone somewhat closer to that of a horn, albeit with the bell facing forward. This, aside from right-handed vs. left-handedness, is what distinguishes a wagner tuba from a 'kaiser baritone' or saxhorn-family instrument, or a trumpet from a cornet. In a sense, all brass instruments exist somewhere on a spectrum of bore ratio, bell size/flare, and mouthpiece shape. What survives today are simply what managed to win out commercially in a 200-year evolutionary struggle.

This is a very interesting anecdote. I seem to remember reading that there were at some point also bass trumpets -- or was it piccolo trombones (or maybe both) -- that feel out of fashion due to sounding so similar to their larger/smaller cousins that there was little point in ever using them.

Yes, both the soprano trombone and bass trumpet are fairly extinct today for that reason. Occasionally they are used in circuses or by enterprising musicians seeking a differentiating factor for their ensemble. There is also a great deal of questioning as to whether these instruments ever were common at any point in time- there are innumerable scholarly discussions on to what extent the soprano trombone existed historically. On the other hand, there are some brass instruments which were at some point somewhat common but are now very uncommon (e.g. the 'tenor cor' or "original" mellophone, alto horns, alto trombones, metal clarinets, military oboes, ophicleides (in France, at least), just to mention some from only the past 150 years!).

My favorite brass instrument anecdode/trick is using trombone or trumpet samples and pitching them up or down an octave to achieve the sound of the other. Not only is this fun to do with recordings, but it's a great cheat when working with limited samples (e.g. where you only have trombone ensemble samples and need a trumpet ensemble).

Modern large bore 'orchestral' trombones, however, are closer in structure to cornets, so the tone may be a bit warmer than typical trumpets.

In many cases, it seems that the modern orchestral families solidified out of contrasting instruments or 'mixed consorts' (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, for example, all sound quite distinct, while instruments like alto & bass flute, oboe d'amore and bass oboe, contralto and contrabass clarinet, altoon and tenoroon, etc. are all relatively extinct). In the Renaissance and early Baroque, many instruments still could be found in full consorts SATB and beyond, but now that habit is only demonstrated by vestigial traces. Even the strings, which seem moderately homogeneous at first glance, are not all to the same proportions, especially for the contrabass which in some ways bears resemblance to the gamba family.

[Nayrb]

I have another question for our resident brass expert. What's a cimbasso for? I've found it has the range of a tuba but is a bit closer in timbre to a trombone, with a meatier low end. I used it rather often in the past as a sort of bridge between the tuba and the bones, but began to phase it out as my stuff became more "proper." I'd like to bring it back, though. I'm guessing it plays a large role in the "BWAAAAAM" ensemble.