I'm going to show you step by step how to go from this <
to this ->
The orchestral strings only have 5 sections,
but it's possible to turn a four note chord into a huge cinematic texture.
We'll go through one step at a time and by the end
of this video you'll be able to apply this same technique to your own music.
Hey guys, welcome back.
If you're new here, my name is Ryan.
I've written music for projects on Netflix and Disney, and this
is where I talk about the craft of writing music.
We're going to start with a melody and chords, written in four part chorale style.
If you don't know how to write in chorale style yet, don't worry.
To start just think of having your melody on top, your bass line on the bottom,
and then two voices with your chord tones in the middle.
There are other things like parallel octaves to think about,
but that's not what this video is about so we're not going to get into that here.
For the example in this video I'm going to use the
first part of Anakin & Padme's theme from the Star Wars prequels by John Williams.
Every unique line is called a voice, and it will help us know what we're
talking about if we name them from top down soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
The first thing you do is take your four voices and give them
to the first four sections of the strings.
Violin I takes the soprano line, Violin II takes the alto,
violas take the tenor and cellos take the bass.
This is a reliable way to start pretty much any string arrangement,
and everything we do will build off of this.
In the book Project Lessons in Orchestration, Arthur E Heacox emphasizes the importance
of filling in your middle to give your orchestration as much resonance as possible.
So what he recommends we do is add a fifth voice to fill in any gaps in the middle of the chord.
Sometimes there's a space between voices, so that's where you'd put the filler.
And if there is no gap, you just double one of your other voices.
Here the orange line is the filler voice.
Sometimes it's between the alto and tenor, sometimes it's between the tenor and bass,
and in this part I even use it to hold the A between the alto and soprano.
Heacox says not to worry about parallel octaves or fifths between your other lines.
The point here is not to create an independent counterpoint,
but to fill in and add body to the chord.
So what we do is give the soprano to the first violins, the alto and tenor to the
seconds violins in divisi, the filler line to the viola, and the bass line to the cellos.
Splitting the second violins into divisi means that half the players will play the alto line,
and the other half will play the tenor line.
I really doubt you'll hear much difference between this five voice
version and the previous four voice scoring.
The filler will come into play more as we expand outwards in the next steps.
Next we expand to six voices by doubling our bass line down an octave in the basses.
This is a pretty common technique that you may already know,
although that new filler line adds a bit of weight and support in the middle
that keeps it from getting dragged down too much to the low end.
Heacox scores this with Violin I on the soprano, violin II divisi on the alto and filler line,
violas divisi on the alto and tenor, cellos on the bass line,
and the basses on that bass line down an octave.
It's worth mentioning that every step of this process
is its own legitimate way to score for strings.
So for times when you don't need the full epic sound that we're building towards,
any one of these middle steps can be a good scoring as well.
Now for 7 voices we do the opposite of the last step and expand upwards.
We split the first violins into divisi
and give them the soprano line plus the soprano line up an octave.
Now we're really starting to get that cinematic sound.
By the way, if you've found any of this useful or interesting so far,
please give the video a thumbs up.
It really does help support the channel.
To expand into eight voices, we do something similar to the last step.
But instead of just doubling our soprano up an octave,
we're gonna double the top three voices of the chord up an octave.
So the alto and tenor are coming up with us.
Keep both of your soprano lines in the first violins so that the
whole section is consistently playing the melody.
Then give your alto and tenor up an octave to your violin II in
divisi, and your alto and tenor at their regular pitch to the violas in divisi.
Cello and bass still take the bass line in octaves.
We're near the home stretch. For 9 voices there are two options.
The first is to take that 8 voice version and add back in our filler line to beef up the middle.
Here we break the cellos into divisi, splitting the sections into the tenor and bass lines.
Then we give the alto and filler to our violas.
Everything else is the same as before.
The second option, and the one that Heacox calls "the fullest and most effective of
our entire series", is to give the soprano line down an octave to the first half of the cellos.
So now we have our melody line in three different octaves, which gives it a really powerful sound.
The lower melody takes over for our filler,
and you might wonder why we didn't just use that as our filler in the first place.
I think the reason, and you'll hear it when you listen to it, is that it really stands out,
and in all of the previous versions the point of that filler was support in the harmony.
If it was just the melody down an octave, we hear it as the melody.
So here is our final scoring in all it's cinematic glory.
Another great technique to get a big and full sound in your orchestration
is to write resonance parts in other sections.
Check out this video here where I talk about what resonance is and how to use it.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.