02-17-2017, 05:32 PM
(02-17-2017, 03:41 PM)kneedeep Wrote: I'm still learning the ins and outs of the orchestra. I only figured out what do do with things like the viola recently. My current WIP actually had all the violin work smack dab in the viola range, and I never noticed... I was like, "oh, I guess I should move that over to the viola. Oops."
Unless you mean violins playing stuff that's below their actual physical range, the nice thing about the different string instruments is that they overlap a great deal. I don't know if there are any hard fast rules for this, but I've always treated string instrument ranges more as various colors in my tonal palette rather than "this instrument needs to stay in that specific range, end of story". I mean, cellos have a huge range and their high register (which overlaps the violins by, what, almost two octaves?) can sound glorious. Same thing with contrabasses, you can easily let them move into cello territory if that's the sound you're after. It's just a different timbre. Low string instruments tend to sound more full-bodied in the high range, a sound that violins and violas can't reproduce because of plain instrument size and string gauges.
IOW, strings are more amorphous than other families of orchestral instruments and you shouldn't be afraid of using this either way. I.e. strings can sound like a complete, massive entity or they can sound like completely different instruments, depending on how you arrange them. That's a big part of their appeal IMO.