In this video i'm going to be talking about the monophonic orchestral texture
from George Frederick McKay's book Creative Orchestration.
If you haven't yet seen the video where I introduced
the concept of the eight orchestral textures from his book,
I suggest you go check that out.
I'm doing a separate video for each of the textures,
so this one will focus on the monophonic and to make sure you catch the other
ones when those are ready please remember to subscribe.
So the monophonic texture is one sound, one line. It could mean just a soloist playing a melody,
or it could mean two people in unison or in octaves,
or it could mean your entire orchestra in unison and octaves.
So you can go from a very isolated intimate single sound
to just a massive huge sound all from a single melody.
So I think it's a bit underrated how much mileage you can actually get with a single melody
either in unison or in octaves
and how much focus and intensity and interest you can get.
When you're contrasting a complex texture within a single focused line
it can add a really interesting different section to your piece.
And a lot of pieces will actually start with the monophonic texture at the beginning.
There's a certain kind of opening the curtain idea of
here let's just focus on this one line before we expand out into richer harmonic colors.
So one of the most famous examples of the monophonic texture in an orchestral setting
comes from Scheherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov. The very opening of the piece starts on this huge
octave and unison line which is just full of power.
If I remember correctly I think it's meant to represent the emperor
and it's very domineering and powerful and majestic and big.
I said in the beginning you can really get a lot of power out of one pitch, surprisingly.
I think a lot of people think you need complexity to get power
but really simplicity can give it to you as well. So there's a couple of things that he's doing
here that are interesting besides just straight up
doubling things in octaves. If we notice right at the beginning here the
horns and trumpets only speak on that first note and then they rest for the rest of the time.
So there's this subtle oomph and push of emphasis on beat one on the introduction.
Those beginning and ending points are really great opportunities to use kind of subtle
moments to just push distinction and help us feel the form and help us feel the
significance of beginning and ending your phrases. So he does that here by giving these instruments
a chance to speak on that first note so you really feel it
and then they stay out of the way.
The next thing I want to point out is that the top main line has this trill,
but on the much lower instruments on the trombones and on the contour base he skips that
trill because that would just be kind of thick and muddy and not really a nice clear balanced sound.
Speaking of balance his main line is on this E here.
That's his top point and he's got 12 voices 12 instruments on that line.
The next octave down he has six voices. He's got the bassoon,
two of the horns, trombones, the cello. Then that final octave on the bottom he just has
that low trombone and the contrabass. So there's a bit of a balance from the medium,
then half as many for the lower octave, and then even less than half as many for the very bottom.
He's able to get a balance that way. So those low instruments really do
fill up a lot of space. If he was just literally doubling the same amount
of instruments at each range, I think you would get too bottom heavy and thick and muddy a sound.
The violins skip out this last note, and I don't think that's for any sort of balanced textural
intention other than the line is just out of the range of the violins.
You can hear it slightly when I play this back in Sibelius
but when you listen to a real recording I can't really tell the difference.
You can't really tell that the violins have stopped there, it's pretty subtle.
What is less subtle is that the violins
and all of the brass are completely out on this echo of that final statement.
So you can see it's marked mezzo forte as opposed to the fortissimo we started with,
and instead of just telling all your players okay I want you to be quieter, he's intentionally
writing that in to the orchestration. So he's using his orchestration to
achieve what he needs to musically say. What he's trying to say is I want this to
be quieter, so again not just telling everybody to play quieter but also using less instruments.
It seems obvious but you'd be surprised how often sometimes people can overlook
the idea that if you want something to be quieter you just have less people play it.
So let's take a listen to this. Again, focus on just how
big and powerful it sounds and also some of those little subtle moments
where things are emphasized at the very beginning and then de-emphasized at the very end of it.
So now I want to actually apply the monophonic texture to some real orchestration.
So i'm going to take the Breath of the Wild theme here,
just an eight bar melody with chords, and see what we can do with it with the
monophonic texture to get some interest and maybe some color contrast and still
make it an interesting melody to listen to, even though we're only using octaves and unisons.
So I think I am going to make a point of kind of exaggerating some of the contrast you can do here,
so don't take this as a literal idea of how to do this for a single phrase.
It might be a little schizophrenic. But I do want to kind of push some
of the moments of extreme loudness and extreme quietness just to make the point.
So before I even open up the orchestral page I want to look at this
and see if I can make a plan, so i'm thinking.. This is what the melody sounds like.
So that's what I'm working with. What i'm thinking I will do is really push,
like this Scheherezade, really push this huge "da da daa" really big opening and then counter that
with a sudden drop down to very quiet. Maybe we can swell back up and get
huge again and then do the same thing, we'll get super quiet for that last phrase.
So what that means here is I'm gonna want this guy to be in multiple octaves.
I won't I won't write them all in i'll do just that much at least to make the point.
And maybe this one we're gonna make way up there.
And I can even put some notes to myself. So orchestral tutti meaning everybody,
which will be the same down here. This guy I'm thinking just the piccolo.
Maybe this guy can be the violins and then on these notes we will reintroduce some of our guys.
So maybe the low lower strings and horns can come back in on that.
So you can see I've got a plan here without having to look at the complexity of a
full orchestral score and just kind of the overwhelmingness that might come from that.
I'm just on this single line looking at it like "okay what what am I going to do here."
And then this is going to become in a lot of ways an exercise of just transferring
the parts to the orchestral score now. Instead of opening up a template which
I might usually do in Sibelius I'm going to add the instruments as I think of them.
I think that might make it a little more clear what I'm doing and also...
Let's let's just do a traditional wind section up here.
Let's plot those guys out first. So of course now I don't want them.
That's our main line and that will fit well.
Get rid of our cords. That will fit well on these ranges.
Let's go here and let's think if we're gonna do
two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, as is traditional then we could
do each single one of those as an octave and we'll put you on that higher octave.
I'm actually going to add up piccolo and put that one on the piccolo there for our second flute.
And I think with the violins I will
copy that line on just the flute and then when we come over here, let's look at it this way.
I'm gonna put that guy on just that piccolo.
This guy is going to get on him again
and we'll do the same thing with the oboes,
clarinet, bassoon.
So this is telling me that notes out of range.
It's in the range of the oboe it's just really squawky.
I don't really care how squawky it's going to be because this is going to be massive big sound.
So I'm not really that worried about it. I'm going to even just say
don't bug me about that right now, that's really not the point.
This is being performed by Sibelius.
I'm not shipping this off to a real orchestra but again that squawkiness is really going to
not stick out in the grand scheme of this massive orchestral tutti.
So I already have my winds laid out. It should be pretty easy for me,
let's see if I want to add maybe just just this guy coming back in to start building up
our sound.
Ah, we'll do that on the oboes too. Start building back into it.
Now let's add some brass, again we'll keep it pretty traditional.
We'll do four horns on two staves, trumpet, trombone and tuba.
Let's grab this for our trumpets.
I think we'll do our horns an octave lower.
I'll just look at a transposing score sometimes. An octave lower.
I'm going to let these guys
build in with that crescendo. Trombones are going to match pretty nicely
with my bassoons, and then here
let's go with that top note because we'll just do that.
You know what I think i'll do is actually to kind of copy that Scheherezade idea,
how about on, let's see who could do it?
Actually maybe on the horns, let's do that. Let's have just the horns
play that first note and the tuba
Same thing here.
I will also note that I want some phrasing here.
Alright now let's add a timpani to copy that. (muttering)
Let's add a timpani. Not two timpanies,
just one would be fine thank you.
Timpani and we'll have him just copy what the tuba is doing.
And now let's add our strings.
And actually I'm going to add harp as well.
So let's add harp,
strings.
Grab our flute as our model here.
And
our bases we'll have just copy our low guys.
Actually I don't want these do I.
Just thinking i'll have the harp maybe play along with this last little phrase.
Maybe an octave lower.
All right, so let's ditch our original.
And there it is let's see what we got.
All right that's a good start.
A couple things I noticed is it would actually be cool if that "oomph" that
we're doing on beat one I think could do the whole first three notes, I think would be nice.
So instead of just the clunk we do the whole (music).
I think would be good so..
Why don't you go down the octaves.
Yeah I like that and then I want everybody to duck down.
I'm gonna leave the bassoon even though he's kind of the only guy in that low end there.
I think we need the lower octave perhaps on these guys. Well let's hear, I wanna hear that again.
Maybe we could sneak into that a little bit. So it was a Db chord... oh yeah I don't want
to violate the idea of the monophonic texture by bringing in anybody who's not part of it!
But what if just he came in?
That could be interesting with those guys.
Let's see.
So now the only other tweak I would make is have those guys also be doing the diminuendo.
All right so there we go. Pretty good for a quick run
through of how the monophonic texture can be applied to an existing melody.
You can see that there's a lot of contrast, there's sections that are loud and intense
and sections that are lighter. And we can even build in some
crescendos and some builds into other moments and really have kind of what on the surface
is kind of a straight ahead melody all of a sudden we're adding bits of
intensity and violence versus lightness and softness at the very end
So to play that through one more time.
And again the point of the monophonic texture is unisons and octaves.
So there are no other chord tones, there's no harmony happening here at any time.
So the next texture after the monophonic is the chordal texture
and that's where we kind of twist the monophonic into 3d or into technicolor
by adding chord tones and harmonic richness to it.
So please subscribe so you catch when that one comes out
and i'll see you there!