In addition to my teaching my wonderfully talented students, I work as a professional orchestrator, and arranger. I worked on Feature film for Lions Gate and below are a selection of works from my folio. This way my students and clients know they are listening to someone with experience of working towards tight deadlines and…
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One great practice for both learning orchestration and learning composition (they are connected you know) is taking an existing piece of music for piano and experimenting with orchestration. For a little fun, I took an original piano composition by my friend Rob Kovacs and did an orchestration.I am posting on here so you can…
The only way you are really going to learn orchestration is by a combination or “stacking” learning approaches. You will need: 1. Work with real musicians: Knock on practice room doors, and throw an excerpt on a players stand. You know all those ads you see around music school about “violin teacher available” (fill in the instrument…
Transposing scores is the most logically consistent in my opinion. One big advantage is you can see the tessitura in a much clearer way, and in my experience glean a little more insight into the mind of the players. However, as others have often stated, concert pitch (C scores) are simpler to read. The reality is…
As someone who loves most (not all) of the of the music of Shostakovich (I am fan of most Russian composers) I can offer a few points for an introduction. 1. One of the sad historical “What would have been” facts is that his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District put him in deep…
In the Preface to RK, he says there are 3 kinds of orchestration: – that which sounds OK at first try – that which sounds OK after much rehearsal – that which never works If you want to attain the FIRST category – a VERY good goal for a beginner – write things which “just…
