I have been on many rants about the abuse of tenuto in current notion practice. I see scores needlessly littered with them. They can be of use, but in my experience 98.254% of them I see out in the wild are redundant.

In my film orchestrating and arranging I rarely use them. I can go an entire 100-minute score and count the number of tenutos on my fingers. I have been trying to work out what they mean in all contexts, and they could mean so many different things depending on the musical context, who you ask, what position Jupiter is in, or any other number of factors, so that I think tenuto actually means nothing in most cases, and accomplishes nothing but making the player think and wonder what you mean in this context and then go on to ignore the marking or realize it is redundant!  

I recently asked a horn player at work what he does when he sees a tenuto and he said he has no idea until he hears what else is going on. That is kind of how they play with no tenuto, so it begs the question, what is the tenuto doing? All is not lost, though, this articulation does have some uses. I use it on soft dynamics in the strings when I need a proper start and not a mushy one. Of course it does mean things for string bowing and it makes a note that was going to be short for whatever reason become ‘full duration,’ that is the textbook meaning. It can be used in the middle of a phrase to get an emphasis on a note, but people have a habit of putting it in places that would naturally get that anyway, making it often redundant. But as for how it affects the articulation of a note, the attack, it is more often than not going to be exactly the same as it would with nothing. One place where it is common is on repeated notes under a slur in a woodwind or brass part to indicated legato tonguing. I hate to break it to everyone, but they do the same thing with no tenuto. Unless you have lost their trust on what your slurs mean, they must articulate repeated notes and with nothing, say, to accent them or make them short they will – and I know this is hard to believe – legato tongue them.

Even when I have asked a player and they say it will affect the attack, when I have secretly tested similar phrases with and without a tenuto, it is not different in most contexts. When I have questioned some orchestrators as to why every second note has a redundant tenuto on it they have said that they were told or heard that every note needs an articulation or indication of some sort. I could not disagree more. It is this thinking that has led to its overuse and thus lack of actual effect!

Here is a little example I put together based on something I recently saw posted to facebook. This is an example of some redundant tenutos. As it came from quite an experienced person, I changed it enough to make it not recognizable, but the point will be the same.

Let’s go instrument by instrument.

Flute – A tenuto would imply to play full duration. The slur over the tenutos would be saying to legato tongue the notes. What are they going to do if you just left it naked? It is a flute, they need to articulate the notes, it is pp and with no slur they would legato tongue them as there is no information telling them to do anything else. They would never accent them. If it was just a slur, that would be different, but having having both of these they kind of cancel each other out!

Harp – The tenuto and slur mean nothing. A harp will play the same with this or nothing: they pluck the string softly. There is nothing else they can physically do. The notes will also ring, which is just how harps play; you have to tell them NOT to ring.

Celeste – It is pp, not much room for interpretation. I guess the slur is saying to play legato, connect the notes. But having no slur and saying nothing would get that. Absent any other information, the default is to play the notes full duration and connected. You have to tell people to detach notes, especially at pianissimo. For louder dynamics, one could argue a player might detach in order to get a more obvious attack on the next note. That happens with all instruments.

Violins – This is tenuto that should be here. As all of the other instruments have to play right on beat one since their physics don’t allow them fade or ease it in, you want the violins to do that as well, starting right on with the rest of the ensemble. Without a tenuto, I guarantee on the first take and then possibly forever after the strings will start on an up bow and slightly fade it in, since that is their default on a single long note like this. Yay, one out of thirteen tenutos is doing something.

I know some people will say they have some physiological effect or affect the attack, but in this example I can tell you they won’t. There is only one way to play this. I think there are a few things at play here that explain why we live in world were scores are dripping in tenutos like my vegemite toast drips butter:

• There is just a school of thought out there that says that each note needs an instruction/articulation. If the note is long, a tenuto is the logical thing to add.
• It will affect the attack (it can, but not in these example, at least twelve of them)
• If you are being paid as an orchestrator you might feel the need to justify your money and make the page look full, pretty, and like you have put time and effort into it. Leaving things naked can look like you just did not bother.
• They don’t know or trust what happens with nothing.
• People are overthinking it.

Just think before you tenuto and never drink and tenuto.

The post Tenuto Uh-Oh appeared first on - deBreved - Tim Davies Website.

This is the second half of my discussion of the piece I recorded with Hollywood Scoring, where we look at the melodic section of the piece from bar 32 onward. Be sure to check out Part 1 so everything here makes sense.

Main Theme

I recently bought a new piano and walk past it on every trip to the kitchen. I remember as soon as I got confirmation that this session was happening, I was on my way to make some vegemite on toast when I stopped at the piano, put my hands down, and the first two bars of this theme came out right away. This is about the limit of my piano skills too. The next time I came by to make a coffee and grab a bikkie I worked out the consequent phrase. The harmony alternates between A minor and Ab Major, with C being the common tone.  The tune follows that harmony. I like harmonic surprises, whether that is a note in a chord you were not expecting, or a whole chord change, and I think I managed to get lots of both into this theme. 

Instead of two four-bar phrases which were probably going to be the same, at the seventh bar (38) I go to a different place. I use a first inversion chord here, which I find is harmonically neutral in this instance, and use a kind of sequence to get to the F major chord at 41. I leave in the Bb from the previous chord, making it an F with an added fourth, a sound I had set up in bar two of the theme (33), with the melodic C over G major harmony. I can hear my harmony teacher telling me that the fourth always replaces the third, but I love the sound and rules are made to be broken, just not the one that vegemite needs butter, leave that out at your own peril. 

To add interest I add notes and lines that provide slight dissonance and resolutions, which is also something I set up in the first two bars. The first tension note is the Bb on beat 3, but you don’t even notice it, so I will give it a two out of ten. My scale is from one to ten, where one is consonance and ten is just plain wrong. You should start to get interested when you hear a three. A five makes you smile. The C in the G chord in the second bar of the theme is a five. A six, you start to get a little worried but so long as you resolve you are OK. A little vinegar face may start to appear at seven (four to seven is firmly in Prokofiev territory). Once you get to eight you have to wonder if the composer is deaf, does not know what they are doing, or is just taking the mickey. A ten is like eating vegemite off a spoon with no butter on toast, it just should not be done.

An interesting thing about this tune is that if you just play it by itself, it is pretty basic and a little strange thanks to the half step relationships between the first three notes. They do not exist in any western key. But as soon as you add the harmony, it sounds warm and more like it is meant to be, at least to my ears.

Bar 43 is like a pre-chorus, building towards bar 50. We could call this the chorus, or if we want to get totally geeky we could look on the form as a rondo and this was the B section heading into the repeat of the A, but with a variation. Instead of starting on the A minor and going to the Ab major, I start on an F major, which is close enough. I then have Ab minor going to major but if you look and listen carefully to the flute and clarinet you will hear both thirds going. These notes are B and C which are common enough to the surrounding harmony that they can pedal through it. This time I do make it a traditional eight-bar phrase, but I change the harmony up in the fifth bar.

Bar 58 serves as another transition, or a C section to get us to the final A. If you look at the chord shape from second violin down, you see the familiar voicing with root, fifth, and major seventh that I used in the intro and first transition. In bar 61 the main motif is in the horns. The harmony is built off the descending bass line. I wanted something nice and dark. Gm, Gb, Dm, Db, C, Gb/Bb, Am, Ab all with a Bb pedal. Somehow we end up in G minor, guess I screwed up somewhere, we should be modulating up not down! This is the same melody and harmony as the first A section, just orchestrated in a much bigger way. The coda is like a third sequence of the material in bar 71, but much softer and wrapping us up to get ready for a final resolution in Ab major (Oops, not sure how that happened!)

Orchestration

I start off simple, with lush string voicings and we still have the mutes on from the previous section. That lushness is all from the lower parts. If you look at the cello, we have the root then the fifth, then we have the third in the viola. This gives us the range of a tenth and is the key to this sound. The basses are an octave bellow the cello, giving us a solid foundation. One could fill in the root again in the viola part, but it is not needed at all as we have plenty of that already. I keep first violin all in unison and freely divide violin two, viola, and cello when notes are needed based on voice leading and the sweet spots of their ranges. This is standard operating procedure in this type of voicing and range. A lot of the impression of the ensemble size comes from the top part, so keeping the firsts undivided can allow you to divide other parts and the ear will not notice the balance changing. Only when it gets really high would I go the other way and have the firsts divide.

I could go div. a3 in the violins but that is silly here as it makes a voicing nightmare for the players switching lines. Save the three way for when it is a longer phrase in three parts or the voice leading makes sense. A good way to test for this is to imagine you are somewhere in the back of the firsts and when there are three parts you play the second one, is it easy to read and follow the line and does it make musical sense? I see a lot of inexperienced orchestrators thinking they are being cool going back and forth into three parts, because they can, with no regard for the poor player jumping about.

In bar 32 I had a few options but chose to divide the cello. Firstly, it is the biggest sound, so dividing it even when there are only six players is going to maintain the best balance. Secondly if I had the viola on the fifths, in bar 35 they would hit their open C, which runs a very real risk of not blending well. Also these particular notes are fuller on the cello than the viola. For the other splits, you can see that voice leading made all of these the most obvious choices. While the string section is quite forgiving when it comes to divisi, you can really put some extra butter on that vegemite toast by thinking about it musically.

Notice there is no text saying ‘div’ or ‘unis’ anywhere on basic two way divisi! Totally unnecessary in any situation, studio or live. The way we were all taught to indicate for strings is backwards, and I go into it more in ‘Divide and Conquer’. The ‘div. ord.’ text above first violin is just canceling the previous section where the back stands had their own part, now they fold back into their regular section.

Most people would write some swells in a section like this, the natural thing would be up one bar and down one bar. I purposely left this blank so I could demonstrate how a section thinks and plays something like this ‘by default.’ Let’s look at the first phrase of the first violin. I have given them two pieces of instruction, and that will lead to two other consequences in their playing. Firstly, it is soft, and secondly I want the phrase done one bow to each bar. Being soft, they will want to start with an up bow. That is because the bow is lightest on the string at the tip and they can easily and musically start a phrase. If they start on an up, then of course the next bar is a down, so they are ending the phrase at the tip again, where they started. The physics of this mean that the phrase has a natural swell to it. As they get to the middle of the bow, the sound becomes a little more intense and louder. In the fifth and sixth bar the line rises, and the players can just tell that they should keep going and not diminuendo. Not only can you hear this in the recording, but you can totally see it in the waveform.

What I wrote:

What I could have written to get the same thing, and what they actually played ‘by default’:

You will note that after all of that banging on about what they do with nothing, I had to go and ruin it with the ugly tie over into bar 42 and the ‘senza dim.’ text. While I knew what they would do in bars 32-40 with no info and it would be perfect, I also knew what they would do in bar 41 would not be what I wanted. If you follow the bowing pattern, we would have ended on a down bow (and even if we had not ended there, there is a good chance they would have switched somewhere to end on a down). They always like to end soft phrases on a down bow, as it’s the easiest way to create a musical end and release to the phrase. Can they end a soft phrase on an up bow? Sure. But it is just not as natural or as easy. And just like in the opening phrase where the end on the down makes a diminuendo, they will do the same here, but as they play nothing in the next bar they will go down even lower in dynamic. Strings ALWAYS release the pressure on the end of a phrase unless you tell them otherwise. One way is to make it a crescendo; they will then aim to end on an up bow as they end up at the frog, the heaviest part of the bow, and can project a more confident sound more easily than at the tip. But musically I don’t want that here, so the only way to do it is to nicely ask them not to do what they were going to do and end without a diminuendo. The other thing string sections always do is end phrases with a final long note early, before the barline. The best way to get them to hold the full bar is to trick them by tying the note onto the downbeat of the next bar. I swear in many cases they still end early!

You will also note in the fully notated version I just wrote poco. As I discuss in my post “Swell Enough,” I find that even if I mark a swell as piano to mezzo piano, they will overshoot it. My solution to control the swell is to use poco. Just a reminder, poco is not a dynamic, it is a description of the hairpin, so it goes with the hairpin, not at the end of it, don’t crescendo to ‘a little’ you do ‘a little’ crescendo. You can actually hear this in bar 43 where I mark pp to p, but it feels louder.

As this section naturally builds, I bring in the flute and clarinet, then the horns and bass clarinet to fill out the harmony.

At bar 43 I originally had the bass in, playing the octave with the lower cello part, but I wanted to feel bar 44 more and a good way to do that was to leave out the bass for the first bar of the phrase. It is amazing how much you can gain by leaving things out. At bar 44 I do a neat trick with the clarinets where they oscillate F and A. I wanted to feel a little motion here. I could have had them repeat the notes, but by trading off, I get the harmony and a cool oscillating effect.

In bar 47 the horns take over the lead. One big difference I often see between how us ‘Hollywood’ types write and how legit composers and orchestrators write is that we love unison horns. There is something special about how multiple horns blend. We have all heard the stories about avoiding unisons in certain sections (I for sure rant about avoiding oboes in unison) but horns are the opposite. Two horns are fine, three work really well, and right up to six you can write just about anything you would write for one and get a lovely result. I think once you get to eight horns, unless it is something epic, you do start to have to think about it as it gets pretty heavy.

In bar 48, I hope you recognize the pitch set in second violins. I use it to build on the subtle motion I set up in the clarinets. This leads rhythmically to what the woodwinds do in bar 50. Notice in bar 49 I have the cello and bass articulate beat 4 to help push us into the next section and draw our ear to the downbeat. I also deliberately have the melody rest on beat one so we feel the rich chord first.

At that point we kick it up a notch, I have the strings at mezzo forte and now playing two bows to the bar, which leads to a fuller, more intense sound than the last time we heard similar material with a single bow for each bar. Even if I had left the dynamic at mp, it would be louder. The issue with leaving it at mp is that some of the players would ignore that I wanted more bows and still keep playing one per bar. It is much easier to play softer, with good control and blend, using less bow – especially in the studio with a small section. (For more on string section sizes, check out this post). In this case, though, they knew it was me who wrote it and that there was a reason for it!

Listen to how the firsts phrase this line with no information. Each phrase tapers off, and ends a little early, they just can’t help themselves! While the strings carry the tune and harmony, I have the horns mostly in unison playing a counter line. I have third horn play with the lower second violin part to bring that rub out a little. The woodwinds are providing some motion. If you look at the example below you can see the top staff is a reduction of the flute and clarinet parts. Many people would just leave that line as is. One issue is that they have to breathe. If I did write this, one could just leave it up to the players to breathe. Please don’t insult them by saying ‘breathe when necessary.’ If the part was in unison many would write ‘stagger breathe.’ If you read this article you will see my thoughts on that. My preferred solution is to use this type of figure as a starting point to get creative and create new textures. Dovetailing is the most common way. But like I mentioned earlier I like to take it to the extreme, E.A.D., Extreme Australian Dovetailing. Instead of trading off, they all play and split the line, letting notes hang over, creating cool blurs and textures. This way it won’t be a problem when they grab a breath as there are still things going on.

You can see in this example I have the flute take the first two notes and hold the second one. The clarinet rests on the first note, plays the second, and then holds the third. Depending on the harmony, it could hold over and have no rest, but in this example it would not work too well to bleed over the harmony changes. We would get some eights and nines on my dissonance scale for sure!

The bass clarinet plays the roots. I could have given them just long notes or no rests, but again they need to breathe and they would have done that at the end of measures, leaving out an eighth or making one really short, not what I wanted. All of the note changes are well-covered in the low strings, so we don’t need them, so we can leave them out and they can breathe in any of the rests. You will also notice there is no articulation on this. I would say 97.765% of people would feel the need to say legato, or put tenutos or slurs and tenutos and write some essay on soft tonguing but maintaining the pulse. But I always start with “what will they do with nothing?” as I am lazy and don’t want to do too much work. And the answer is all of the above. There is nothing telling them to play short and it is mezzo piano repeated notes. They need to be articulated to speak, so just give a dynamic and you will get light articulation and full duration.

I build this section to a forte then drop right back. Notationally, note that I did not say subito pp in the top violin part. From what I see out in the wild, most would, but it is so obvious what is going on as there is the forte at the end of the bar. The other not so obvious trick I pull here is that we go from ten violins on the top line at the forte, to six on the pianissimo. Bar 58 is marked div. a3 which means the violins go into three groups of six players. A few other ways to make this note softer would be to drop out the front stand or two, that pushes the sound back away from the tree and of course reduces the number of players as well. I could have the back stands take it. The voice leading for some of them would not be ideal so they would have to drop out for a bit to shift. If this were coming from a bigger, longer, more intense section I would just stop and start again. It is really hard to get a beautiful controlled soft note with all of the adrenaline and energy built up from playing loudly, so getting a fresh start leads to a guaranteed result and no one in the theater will know the difference. The actors did not shoot the movie or scene in one take, so we don’t have to either.

To contrast the previous section, I thin this one out. The wire in the top violin part glues it to the previous section. I have the shape from the opening in the rest of the strings. To add some color and interest I have the violas slide their notes. I have learned that while slides are fun, it is easy to overdo them and things can sound cheesy pretty quickly. By just sliding one part you create something that is not expected, nor easy for the listener to work out right away especially if it is on the inside of the voicing. To help this one come through a little more, I have them play sul pont. 

As the woods have been in a supporting role, I finally feature them here. A cascade finishing with the horns joining the bass clarinet on a dark version of our main motif. Notice how beautifully the woods play this line. We could use many words to describe it, but it took none to get this, just the right dynamics, articulation (or lack thereof here as it is all slurred) and orchestration. The bass clarinet continues the line, handing it off to the horns. Having no slurs on the horns here and the mezzo piano gets me the perfect articulation, look mum, no tenutos! Notice how musically they end the phrase at bar 62 and breathe, all together, 100% predictable.

I wanted the strings soft, but intense, so no slurs. I will admit that I originally had this at mezzo piano but it was too loud. So I asked them to play piano, but fight the urge to slur the notes. I fixed this score to match what was played. I always am weary of leaked session scores and people getting too excited, there are so many changes made at sessions, some huge, but the scores are never fixed to show that. The only example is when they are edited for a live to picture performance or published version. But even then they will often don’t match the original recordings. I have conducted many live to picture concerts and found heaps of little things that were not fixed.

We did another pickup at 61 to get the mutes off. I did a similar trick to last time; the bass clarinet finished on its own and did not play on the pickup. In bar 64 I had the clicks go to eighth notes to help set up the people who have sixteenth notes in bar 65. I kept the eighths for bar 66 then back to quarters in bar 67. In general, players do not like eighth note clicks unless they really need them. Even then I find their idea of when they need them is different to mine. Like I mentioned in my conducting article, every player in the band knows when it is out of tune, but since they can all play out of time, together, sometimes they don’t know they are off. At slow tempos subdividing the click helps bring them back onto the grid, but once they are on it, the eighths are often not needed, as was the case here.

The Final A

This is the climax so I pulled out all the orchestration tricks. The violins have the tune in octaves with two bows per bar. The basses hold down the low end while the cellos play an arpeggiated counter line. I use non-chord tones on strong beats to create good dissonance, resolving each one.

But the fun happens in the violas. Just like I did with the woods, I split what would be a cliche and boring line up into something unique and interesting.

Beat 3 of bar 66 looks like a mistake, but the chord in that bar is Fadd4 and when I was working this passage out I heard the rub in my head at the point, which is rare, usually it is just voices. If you want to hear another example, check out this cue from Maya and the Three, you will also hear an epic bass slide.

The horns outline the harmony, playing triads. If this was a large orchestra with full brass I might have the horns all in unison on the top line, or some other nice counter line, and the trombones playing the pad. And in a case where I had this ensemble but four horns, I would have the top line doubled in this case and 99% of others with this texture. Like I already mentioned, horns love unisons and it just makes everything better. Seeing as it is the top line that we hear most, making it better by having the extra player on it just makes sense. I know there are all sorts of other theories about what note of a chord should be doubled. Even if I did subscribe to those theories, which I don’t, it is just not always practical. A part could be skipping all over the place and if you then start to smooth it out to make sense – which is an OK move to make – then there was no point to it in the first place! (Again, more details on the French horn are here.)

By this stage I should not need to explain what is happening in the flute and clarinet. I wanted to control where they breathe, so I have some rests to help them. I have the bass clarinet working with the basses. It is a good idea to have this octave here as the cello are now playing something else.

Check how well it combines with the woods to form a percolating text that provides motion without sounding like a riff or cliche ostinato.

Bar 71 is the biggest moment of the piece. The violins end up in the highest range of the piece. I also took out all of the slurs so every note gets its own bow, leading to an even more intense sound. The viola and cello play sixteenth notes, taking over the motion from the flute and clarinet. The notes they are playing are nothing special, the same as they would have played normally, but by instructing them to play ‘on the string,’ the notes are connected and form a motion texture as opposed to a driving riff if they were to play it ‘off the string.’ 

I go into more detail here, but in a nutshell bowing technique falls into two types: on the string, where the note starts and ends with the bow ‘on’ the string, and off the string where the note starts and ends with the bow above, or ‘off.’ Traditionally the default, with no other indications, is to play on the string. Technically I would not have needed to say anything here, but as this was a session with studio musicians who are used to playing lots of riffs and motor rhythms off the string, I marked ‘on’ to make sure no one played it the wrong way. In many cases these days I use this to my advantage, knowing what they do based on context. I just write the eighths or sixteenths without articulation or indication and the players will play it off the string or ‘off-ish’ if we want more attack. I just finished a day in the studio and I did not indicate anything for the 8th notes and every one came out exactly as I wanted. I also never tell them what actual stroke to play, that is stuff they sort out and don’t even think about, it just happens organically. In fact in the entire day, I did not change or mention anything to do with note length.
It is not in this piece, but one thing to watch out for is you have a rhythmic passage with accents and normal notes, the accents will be longer than the normal notes. This can sometimes lead to rhythmic issues as the bow movement is not balanced. If they are having trouble, I ask them to dial back the accents and it will even the timing out. As with everything bowing, it is all physics.

You will notice that I tie everyone over onto beat one of bar 75 as I did 42. If I did not they would end a little early with a slight release, I really think I am repeating myself now. At this dynamic and intensity, you don’t have to tell them to avoid the diminuendo as you do at softer dynamics as I had to at 42. I also did not need to write anything fancy for the viola and the cello. When strings have a passage of short notes followed by a rest like this, the last note will naturally be longer as they have nothing to get ready for in the next bar. It is very natural, so natural you probably never noticed it before. 

I have the cellos divided, half on the sixteenths and half with the basses. I add some harmonic interest by changing the chord inversion and add a tasty slide in bar 73 as we head to the last big note.

The flute and clarinet are playing the same notes as the viola and top cello sixteenths, and this helps glue it together. The bass clarinet is on its own filling in the gap between the bass part and the cello motion. They have some sixteenths for interest and as a way to blend with the viola and cello sixteenths, but they also work with the bass part.

The horns are in unison until the last chord. Note the slurs are carefully placed. Horns can perfectly legato tongue, sounding similar to a sostenuto bow that just changes direction with no emphasis. This is what you will get articulation wise with no other information from pianissimo to mezzo forte. Once we hit forte they will articulate the notes more to push them out, slight gaps will start to appear in musically appropriate places and be more exaggerated at fortissimo as the tongue must stop the previous note in order to articulate the next one.  This effect gets amplified more in the lower brass as it takes more energy and breath to articulate. It is also observable in all wind and string instruments. The energy to articulate a loud note has to come from somewhere, and that by default is robbed from the end of the previous note.  If you add an accent, the detachment from the previous note will be more pronounced.

When horns slur a second it sounds normal, like any other wind instrument, but when you get to thirds and above with slurs you get this lovely harmonic smush between the notes. Not a gliss where they use their fingers, it is subtle on small intervals, getting more pronounced on larger ones. As the horn is so long, most of the notes they are playing are in the mid to upper register, so what sits on and above the stave when transposed are all high partials. This makes the horn quite difficult to play as many notes close together can be played on the same fingering. All brass instruments share this same issue, but their standard playing range is in a lower set of partials. Of course intonation is better on different fingerings as they are based off different fundamentals. While probably not evident to most listeners or orchestrators, horn players make lots of context based decisions on what fingering and side to play on.

Due to this quality in horn slurs, I really think about what I want them to do and it is then not uncommon for a unison passage I am writing to have different slurs in the strings, horns and woods or anyone else playing along as they all react differently to them. For some more obvious examples, check this new version of the Disney Logo that I orchestrated and conducted featuring Dave Everson on principal horn and seven more of LA’s finest.

At bar 76 we do another pickup to put the mutes back on for the coda. The tune starts in the first violin but then gets picked up by the flute. Note the flute has a repeated note under a slur. They legato tongue the repeat. Unless you have been sloppy in your writing and have a track record of missing ties, this is how they will play it. Most people would feel the need to add a tenuto to the repeated note. For years now I have not been doing that and no one has ever failed to articulate or asked if I missed a tie. I took the clicks out here and the just followed me. A very natural, and unmarked ritard. happens.

If there is one thing I would do differently next time it would be the cello in bar 77. My voicing is good, I am heading towards the last chord, a low tenth voicing, almost as low as you would go with this shape including the low fifth to not get too muddy. But the slide in the bass has no sonic room. I would give the bar a 7/10 on my dissonance scale thanks to the minor 9th. A few solutions I can think of would be to have the bottom cello play in octave unison with the bass, but then that is not the best voice leading to the last chord. Alternatively, I could just have the cellos in unison in that bar. I could also move the violas up a bit; the minor 9th and the slide are a bit much together, so maybe one of them has to go.

Take a close listen to the ensemble as they end the last note, they all do a little dim and end. The strings all end up on a down bow, finishing at the tip. The woods hear what the strings are doing and follow. This is not in the score, but it is just how an ensemble plays. Just like I knew at the beginning that there would be a light start and a little swell on the first long note, I also knew at the end here they would do this little diminuendo. Having no click at the end also makes them listen to each other a little more.

One Last Thought, keep it clean.

In this whole piece there is not one tenuto for anyone, but especially take notice of the horns and woods where I know many would feel the need. In my film orchestrating and arranging I rarely use them to control the attack of a note in the woods and brass. In general I see composers and orchestrators using tenutos way too much. The topic is too deep to go into here, but please read my post on this topic so you can tenuto responsibly!

I hope everyone notices and remembers is that there is no descriptive or emotional text anywhere in this cue or any of my work, the page is always clean and uncluttered with the only information being what is absolutely required. I have found text is just not needed in 99.537% of situations. We can use many words to describe what we think or feel when we hear the music, but I do not need to put them on the page for the players in order to inspire that result. I just need good notes, orchestration, the right dynamic, slurs and articulation, if needed of course. I am not leaving it ‘clean’ for the players to do their own thing, I know exactly what they will do using my concept of the “orchestral default.” Unsurprisingly when I see a score with an over abundance of descriptions there are also a lot of – drumroll please – tenutos!

I know in some earlier modern music, especially when people wrote by hand, the score and its calligraphy are as much a part of the art as the music itself. But that is not the case in the scoring and pops world. It is a goal for me to get the results I and the composer hiring me want with minimal information on the page. I know I am extreme with this, but after hundreds of hours of recordings and performances I have proved my point. Unfortunately, this means my scores just don’t look as cool on Insta.

And finally, I know I do say ‘context’ a lot and it is a big subject, but all I can say is that once you have done this long enough and had the opportunity to do the experiments I have, you can predict the contexts with great accuracy. I hope to have more time to write blog posts about my findings. It could be the vegemite gives me a special sixth orchestration sense, you should all try it.

Thanks to Noah, Adam, Michael, Ed, and the whole Hollywood Scoring team for giving me the time to record this. To the amazing players led by Ben Jacobson who pulled off this recording in 25 minutes, To Max Karmazyn for bowing demos, to Thanh Tran for the score and part printing, and to Adam Michalak for fixing my dodgy edits and doing a fantastic mix. And as always, to Ryan for editing this and making me sound almost intelligent.

The post Error Code 7 – A Deep Dive: Part 2 appeared first on - deBreved - Tim Davies Website.

My friends at Hollywood Scoring wanted to test out bringing their own recording gear into the iconic United Recording Studio A, which has been ‘closed’ since the beginning of 2023. They invited myself and a few others to write for a small orchestra. I was also on hand all day to conduct or help in the booth for other composers who conducted themselves. I consulted with contractor Noah Gladstone and engineer Adam Michalak on what ensemble would be best for the day. We came up with flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, three horns, and strings (18/6/6/3). This is a great ensemble as you have a decent string count, making a full sound; three woodwinds that can be used for solos, lines, or chords; and three horns that also can play a chord for a pad, unison lines, or a solo. Some people wrote for just this group, others used it to beef up samples or play along with synths. We had every possible combination covered.

I decided to take the opportunity to write something that would demonstrate some of my favorite orchestration techniques. In this two-part post I’m going to go deep into my process, show you the scores, and let you hear the result. Some of what I discuss here is also covered in more detail in other dedicated posts on the blog, so there will be plenty of links to follow. For other parts I’m going to go into more detail for this specific context, and maybe on some tangents. Some new stuff I’m just going to make up on the spot and as always I will talk about the notation just as much as the orchestration as you as their connection is something I feel is not talked about enough in other resources. So grab a glass (or bottle) of wine and some vegemite on toast – we are going to break this apart and plunge deeper than a drop bear’s free fall from a eucalyptus tree. (That was ChatGPT’s suggestion, my editor overruled what I originally wanted to say.)

Why Error Code 7 I hear you ask? If you are a finale user you will understand. If not, lucky you.

Getting Started

Before reading on, check out this score video so you know what I am talking about.

• PDF of the score used in the video.
• PDF of the score used at the session.
• Video to download, easier to refer to as you go along. (Click the 3 dots bottom right to download if it does not automatically.)

The piece starts with what we call a ‘wire’ in the scoring world, a long held note that often in demos will come in from nothing and swell. As you can see I just have them start at pp. They will start at the tip of the bow and you will naturally get a swell as they move the bow. 99% of people would write it from niente or ppp and have a swell, but I think this is redundant as the physics of the bow and the mental game of chicken the musicians play about their soft entrances will lead to that effect with no notation needed. In fact, when I have written an actual swell, they often go too far and then I have to waste time telling them not to. It is important to note that the larger the number of players on it, the more the natural building effect is present.

I have also been on many sessions where the engineer prefers not to have them all attempt to come in from a true niente, this can waste a bar before making a proper sound. Instead, with a clearer start, the engineer can use volume automation to achieve the effect, and with better control, if that is what is needed. What is harder to do is go the other way and make something out of nothing. So as you can see, for several reasons, writing from niente or instruction to ‘come from nothing’ are best saved for instagram posts, not the real world. One other thing I have noticed over there years is that the larger the section, the more exaggerated the start will be, no matter you write. With many people, a game of orchestral chicken can happen where people wait for someone else, like they slowly start to fall forward, gaining momentum, thus you get the niente start. With a small group, they know they can’t do this and will start properly more often but with such a tentative sound it can be problematic and we ask them to just ‘start’. I have not seen this mentioned elsewhere, and perhaps people will disagree or have other theories, but from my experience, this is what I have found and worked out.

A favorite trick of mine to keep these wires subtle and under control is to have it played by players at the back of the section. These players are further from the Decca Tree so the sound that’s picked up is less direct. There will be microphones near the players should we need to bring it out more.

For every project I do I define three or four stands as ‘Back Stands’ and they can play anything like this. I will make sure that it is an even number of players from both firsts and seconds so that the rest of the parts can still function and balance as usual. In this particular section I had  eighteen violins (ten firsts and eight seconds) so I had four from the firsts and two from the seconds peel off, leaving me with six players on each part. To get them back into the section, my short hand is ‘div. ord.’ I use it to cancel any fancy divisi I might have specified and return to standard firsts and seconds. Sometimes I might use an arrow pointing them back to their old staves as well. I find I do not have to do any fancy orchestrating to get them out or back into the section, if a part is coming up for ‘Back Stands’ they will just tastefully end whatever they were doing and be ready for their new parts. Once done, they do the opposite.

For the very opening, I instructed the violins to use ‘circular bowing’. Instead of the bow staying in one position in relation to the bridge and moving from side to side (whether normal, sul pont, or sul tasto), it circles, covering all of those spots. A section will not sync this up by default, so you get a whispy sound with subtle random color changes. This is the opposite of the technique I use in the other parts of this introduction where they all move at the same time to pont and back. In this piece it is only played by six players so each color change is more pronounced. The more players you have on it, the more the sounds blend together and the less obvious the effect will be, though it is still a cool sound.

The first chord is Fma7, followed by an Ebma7. The wire starts on an A, but then at the chord change I have half of the players slowly side up to a Bb while the rest maintain the A wire as a pedal point. Then the chord changes to a Cma7; the Bb slides to a B, notated as a Cb here so they can see the portamento line. (I know that will drive some purists nuts, notating B as a Cb or visa versa, it works just fine!) The default for players when they see a portamento line is to wait until the last minute before they slide. In this case I want them to move right away, so I had to add the text to adjust their behavior. Unfortunately, this goes against all of their training and I often find that even with the text I have to ask them to not hold the note before they slide.

A common comment I might then get from players when the slide is only a half step or even a whole step but up high is that they have such a small distance to move their finger they need to wait. I will usually say I prefer they move early and arrive early, over waiting. I will also often have to ask them to not slide the last bit rapidly to land it on the beat where it is notated. This gives a comical sound and ruins the effect. I tell them that if they are in that situation, it is ok to be late arriving at the target pitch, as that is better for the effect. In this example I have them all move at the same time, that is their default. Sometimes it is nice to have them move separately, giving a blur to the sound.  The easiest way I have found to do that is to ask the inside stands to move later. If you just ask some to do it, no one knows who is going to do what without having a discussion and you might get all or none!

Seating and session organization – Tangent alert!

Over the years I have developed ways of organizing divisi that are simple for everyone to follow, foolproof and adaptable should the section size change between when you wrote your score and the session. I always avoid specifying exact numbers. Not only can things change, but it gets confusing as to who is going to do what. String players always have a reference for who will do what, I have just built on this.

You start with standard firsts and seconds. By default they will divide on the stand, no special instructions needed (I don’t even use the words ‘div’ or ‘unis’ in this situation). If you need three parts, in most cases I divide the seconds, I will explain why in part two. All strings players share a stand and thus work in pairs. In a simple two part divisi the top voice goes to the player sitting on the outside of the stand, closest to the ‘audience’ and the bottom voice will go to the player on the inside. Check out Divide and Conquer for more information on divisi in strings. If you want three voices, my first choice is usually to keep the firsts all together and divide the seconds.

As all violins read off the one part in the studio, it is super easy to write three lines and have them split into equal groups. I mark this ‘div. a3’ and for clarity I most often use three staves. Players also prefer it copied this way too. I do mark this with text as it is not standard or a default behavior. In order for this to work, they need to know who does what, so I draw a nice picture for each session and give it to the stage beforehand to set up the seats. Then it is very easy for me to show to the concert master and then we can explain it to the players before we start the first cue.

If they are in three sections, and then extra notes appear, the default is to just divide on the stand, as they would in the more usual Violin I and Violin II sections.

This is why I always prefer ‘div. a3’ in ‘groups’. Some leaders will have them ‘number off’: 1,2,3,1,2,3, etc. This can get confusing and is limiting and I am convinced every time it is done there are at least two players who have no idea what part to play. By doing it in groups and keeping each stand/pair on the same ‘part’ you can then divide them further. Thus I can easily get them into six parts with minimal text and discussion. This technique also keeps each ‘line’ in blocks than can easily be pulled out by spot microphones. If you number off, each part is spread out. I don’t mind that sonically, but it is harder to then dig a part out if needed when mixing.

With this system, the same score will work with eighteen or twenty-four violins. Speaking of which, I have always said my perfect number of violins is twenty-four. But you can’t always afford that. In my experience, if you want to keep a full sound and be able to divide into six parts and not get too weak and thin, eighteen is the minimum magic number. This gives you ten on the top which gives a nice full sound and you can divide into three even groups of six, or keep six firsts and six seconds and have six peel off at the back and maintain balance. As you will hear in this piece it works well and does not sound thin. Likewise, I think six viola, six cello, and three basses balance eighteen violins. It’s true that I like more celli than violas in my large sections, but that is partly because you are usually up against more low end brass in a large orchestra. In the case of this session and music, there was no low brass. Check out my post on section sizes and layouts for more information.

In this example from my orchestration of Chris Beck’s arrangement of the Disney logo I have five parts. To be clearer I label each staff with the group name, but if it was just one note in each I would just say div a3 as I do in Error Code 7. I dare anyone to come up with a better way to get a five part divisi! Note that I could have also had the third stave played by the back stands, and then the front firsts and seconds would divide as they do in Error Code 7, but I did not want the Eb to be that distant.

You can see how I switch to standard firsts and seconds on beat three of bar 12, the firsts are divided and the seconds are unison. Here is the score and recording or Click here for further discussion of divisi, including this example.

Returning to Error Code 7…
The initial harmony is a simple Fma7 chord and I use orchestration techniques to make it interesting. Usually that chord has a lush, sweet character, but I decided to orchestrate myself away from anything lush or cute. I have the notes arpeggiated in the strings and woods and held in the horns and some other strings.

I borrowed a gesture I used in A Spell, A Prayer for Corrine Bailey Rae and the Metropole Orkest.

It starts with a simple arpeggiated line, that I then split into four parts, where each part just repeats a single note. This gives a nice blur as each note sustains. It is a trick I use all the time, though not always with every note of the group, and it works really well across all sections of the orchestra. As you will see later in the chart you can get a cool effect just by splitting into two parts and having one or two notes hold in places.

I first worked out this technique when I was coming up with creative ways to split woodwinds on fast passages, usually pasted from the strings. I think I will call it E.A.D., Extreme Australian Dovetailing. You can read more about that in It’s Staggering.

As you can see, It is a tricky one to notate as you need to give breaks so they can articulate the tremolo.  You could just make it continuous and have accents, but each note would be late and lack definition. I made it cleaner by only using the trem articulations on the first time, then I used simile. I will say though that there is no perfect way to notate this. I tested several ways including cleaner looking full durations with commas for the lifts before each articulation. In general I love commas; rather than specifying an exact duration, you let the players use their musical instinct, which results in something that always matches the context. But in this case looking at all the commas after every note looked ridiculous. Like notating modal music and enharmonics, sometimes there is no perfect way that will please everyone.

To add interest, I have them move from sul pont to sul tasto and back with each swell. You can notate it with funky lines, but I just did it with some text as I already have hairpins giving the shape of what I want. Either is fine, just don’t do both, you know how much that would annoy me. I added the word ‘extreme’ to the sul pont as I have found that in the studios players never go as close to the bridge as I would like, often for fear of sliding right over it. In both examples I get extra mileage out of the idea by having it repeat up the octave. In “A Spell, A Prayer” you can also hear a simple but very effective technique I used in the clarinets by having them all play ascending scales at different times, creating a percolating murmur.

In Error Code 7 it is a different kind of murmur in the woods, using the same E.A.D. technique I used with the strings. I put them in triplets this time to create a blur against the sixteenths of the strings. The default for any flute is to play with vibrato. Clarinets do not play with vibrato in legit music, only in jazz, so in order to have the flute blend with them for this texture, I marked it senza vibrato.

I compliment the sound of the sul pont by using stopped horns. As they swell, they sound more metallic, exactly the same effect as going from sul tasto to sul pont. Gluing all of this together I also have some strings holding the chord also moving to pont and back. Notice in the picture the horns are using stopping mutes instead of their hands. The mutes create a more stable and even sound than the hand. The choice of stopping with the hand or the mute is always left to the players. In general if there is a single note or a few in the middle of non stopped ones they will use the hand. If it is a whole phrase, they often use the mute. The mute is on a string that they can put around their wrist to make it easy to get out in a hurry. You can see the string in the photo. I notate the stop with a + above the note, nothing else is needed and it is just magic that if there is no + above a note they won’t stop it! I know the convention is to place a circle above the next open note, but I have never done that and not once has a player kept playing a stop or asked. And don’t get me started on adding text as well.

In order to pull off all of these string parts I had to really think about the divisi as I was already down six players to do the wire. I have the violas and the cellos divided into two (they will divide on the stand by default). Having six people on the wire left me with six firsts and six seconds. If I need four parts then each of them just divides on the stand. In order to not use five staves to pull this off I got creative and labeled the top staff as outside firsts and outside seconds, then used a staff each for the inside firsts and the inside seconds (all violins play off the one part in scoring). While it is still a little complicated, I think it is the best solution to get the parts I need with minimal text, explanations, and trees killed.

I repeat the same figure in Eb then C, totally cheating by just pasting it and transposing. Notice how I made the notation simpler and less complicated on the repeats. No need for all of the obvious information to be repeated. It also makes it simpler should we decide to change the dynamics; it is just the first figure that would need tweaking, then the rest just follow.

Transition

The next part of the piece helps transition us from the textural introduction to the harmonic main theme. You will see the back stands finish their note off while a new idea starts. Note that we are now in mutes. In the concert world you would have to have them all put them on in a rest and risk a lot of noise, or have them stagger them on, leaving it up to them as to when to do it. If you have read anything I have ever written you would know that is not going to be a solution I would choose. Being in the studio, we can cheat and stop recording, put the mutes on, and then start up again with no risk of unwanted noise or players randomly dropping out. I don’t care how many leaders tell me they can do it, it only takes one person’s mute to make a noise and the take is ruined. Same thing with page turns, I always stop and start. No one will know once it is all edited and mixed.

You will see I marked bar 19 as ‘Pickup’ and put a note on the back stands to finish their part on the previous pass. I like to plan how we are going to record and edit as I orchestrate, so I will mark the pickups in the score. We will often break it up even more once recording, but if I know ahead of time we will stop and start it is nice to have it in the score and the parts. This is not standard and I dream of the day when everyone knows what it means. In this case it is for mutes, but sometimes it is because a woodwind or brass player has to change instruments and there is no time, so stopping is the solution. There are many other reasons why we do pickups and I talk about them in Part 2 of my series on conducting.

For some history on the name: I had already started using the ‘S’ on the note as it was not used for anything else and was clean and readable. I was recording in London and asked the orchestra what I should called it. Sonia Slany, a fellow Aussie, yelled out ‘Stremolo’ and it stuck.

The other technique I love is long slides in the low end. You can hear a ton of it in my Trollhunters and Maya scores (examples below). I already discussed the issues around timing and slides in my section about the introduction but another important consideration if you want a smooth and good sound is whether the notes can be played on a single string. The slides in the cello in bar 19 are fine, they can only play the F on the C string and they can slide up to the A. Cellos don’t mind going into upper positions and the sound is fine. The bass is not quite as flexible, as the sound and intonation in upper positions is not as stable. However these notes are fine, the F starts on the E string and they slide to the A. One thing to note is that while every other section avoids open strings, bass players are in general a lazy bunch and will always choose the open string (this is acceptable due to the fact that basses have a softer tone than the other stringed instruments, so open strings don’t poke out like they do on those others). Here that means in bar 23 they need to look ahead and play the D on the A string, and not the open D as they would by default. 

Here are a few more examples of bends in my work as a composer on Trollhunters and Maya and the Three. The Maya cue takes it to the extreme; I also use some samples to beef it up, as is pretty normal these days. The scene is a battle with an Ouroboros, so extra sliding around was called for (note that the long fall at :36 is samples and was never live, nor intended to be)

At bar 27 I bring back the woods and horns with a tip of the hat to our chord shapes from the opening.  This is also a bit of a nod to a technique Chris Beck uses all the time where chords come and go in different families, overlapping. In this case it is strings, then woods, then horns, then back to strings. I use mutes in the horns to take the edge off and help them blend, the exact opposite of how I use the stopped notes in the introduction. (You can find more information about muting and stopping horns in my post about the instrument, including a video of studio legend Jim Thatcher demonstrating.)

Looking at it now I wonder if I meant to have a C in the violas in bar 30 and forgot, or maybe I just liked the sound of the minor second in the violins, we will never know as I have manipulated so many more crotchets since writing this and can’t remember. I know theorists for generations to come will come up with ideas about what is going on.

Continue reading more about this project in Part 2!

The post Error Code 7 – A Deep Dive: Part 1 appeared first on - deBreved - Tim Davies Website.

Make sure you check out Part I and Part II of Endre’s interview and Guide to a Good Bow Job and It’s the Pizz.

The post Endre Granat Part 3 appeared first on - deBreved - Tim Davies Website.

When discussing bow technique it is important to note that several terms players use to describe a stroke are also terms used in notation; however, they have a slightly different meaning in this case. The two main ones to watch out for are staccato and legato, which will be discussed in this section.

The default for bowing is to play on the string and change direction with each note.

Long Notes
Long notes are played on the string, or shorthand on, meaning that between notes the bow does not leave the string, but rather maintains contact. The bow will change direction for each new note. If you want more than one note per stroke, use a slur to designate how many notes should fall under each bow.

How many notes you can write per bow depends on several variables. Some are non-negotiable; for example, at loud dynamics the bow must move faster to maintain a full tone, so fewer notes are possible. When the dynamic is soft, many more notes can be played and the number of changes and the speed of the bow can make some nice colors. Watch a section bow; the speed changes all the time and this is what gives the phrase life. There is a third variable: placement. Players will put the bow in slightly different positions on the string to produce different sounds. The extremes are sul ponticello and sul tasto, but there are many little variations in the middle that when combined with speed and pressure give every note a unique sound. They can also use different parts of the bow and take advantage of physics. for example it is much easier to play softer at or towards the tip as the bow is lighter there. I talk about this sort of thing in Swell Enough and Tremolo and the Abstract Truth.

The reason why string samples have no ‘life’ is that every note is recorded at similar speeds and pressures, so there is no relationship between technique and musical context.

The ‘L’ word
I avoid using the word ‘legato’ when writing for or talking to string sections. Some people use it to mean smooth and connected, sometimes mixing it with slurs. The problem is that in some countries, the term ‘legato’ literally means to slur. So, don’t use it as a descriptive word in the score, part, or when talking, unless you are in one of the countries where it means to slur and you are making a change and telling them to slur!
Additionally, the word is not needed if you get everything else correct. Remember, the default is to connect and play legato, so unless you have told them to play it another way, or there is some other context that would lead them not to play that way, the word is unnecessary.

Short Notes
The default is still to play on the string. However, context and physics start to affect what is going to happen and if you learn these things you can use them to your advantage by predicting what will happen and then notating accordingly. 

The alternative to bowing on the string is, of course, bowing off the string. This is where the bow leaves the string between notes. The most common example of an off-the-string bowing style is spiccato. One common misconception is that spiccato itself is the way you label a passage as off the string. It is not. It is just one particular style of off-the-string bowing. However, if you do use that word and it is perhaps not the correct stroke for the phrase, players will do what they do best and adapt their bow stroke to the current musical context and ignore your indications. But, in general, I don’t tell them what stroke to use, give them the correct notation and they will do the correct stroke.

I believe the misunderstanding and misuse of the terms marcato and spiccato is due to certain string libraries using these names for their short note patches. In the real world, it is impossible to play spiccato as loud and heavy as it sounds in these patches, and as mentioned above, historically marcato in general is a type of attack, not duration.

‘Off-ish’
Spiccato is a very useful and common bow stroke, but if you look at the physics of it, it is not useful for heavier attacks and louder dynamics. For these we need more contact with the string and bouncing the bow off does not allow this. But we still want the bow to come off between notes, even if it is very slight. This is a stroke that is between a spiccato and a marcato. It is not discussed often but if you watch a section, you will see it is what naturally happens when they have to play short but loud notes. I have also noticed that even when asked to play on the string, when the music gets fast and loud, the same thing happens and they gravitate to this same stroke, the bow will lift a little as it changes direction. A combination of physics and performance practice are at play. They also often do this for clarity. In cello and bass, playing fast on the string does not project or come through as well as it does on the violin. Note that this is not really an official term!

What really happens?
Ever wondered why a repeated note figure played by a section sounds so much better than one played by samples? Considering you can have lots of round robins and no issues with connections or legato transitions, one would think it would sound pretty similar. I think I have figured it out, or at least identified one of the big reasons why.

If you watch a section playing these sorts of short note figures, common in film scores, they are all playing it slightly differently. This variation leads to a blend that is unique to that passage of music, giving it a life that samples never achieve. We can predict how it will sound and what sorts of strokes will be used, but when 12 players do it and blend based on their ears, rather than following strict instructions in a sampling session, you get subtle variations in the stroke used, which is a good thing!

When they make samples, the musicians all play the same bow stroke and produce a bunch of identical recordings that are edited to create a predictable and programmable sample library. This results in a very homogeneous and sterile sound.

Under Pressure: Looking at the Bow(ie)

Notice how I have bowed the above phrase. Even though I have not marked a crescendo, there will be a slight one as the bow speed and emphasis change and the sound gets more intense. If I did mark this as a crescendo I would also want the same bowing. The louder the sound, the faster the bow has to travel to maintain a quality tone. If it were a big crescendo and I had not marked it like this they would automatically go to at least two bows per bar as the music gets louder.

There are so many subtle differences to the sound you can make when you think about the bowing.

Here is Endre Granate demonstrating these strokes.

Bowing does not always follow the phrase, but how you bow makes the phrase.

1. There is a school of thought that says you should use a long slur as a phrase mark and the section will sort it out. Yes, they can work something out, but you will get the result YOU want if you take the time to bow the passage yourself. In this case, the principal will decide how to bow it. But they do not know the music or how intense I would like each note.
2. This is how they would probably play it, starting on an up-bow of course. They may also slur C to Ab. Each bar uses the same amount of bow, and the sound will be consistent.
3. How I might do it. This will give the phrase much more life than the even bowing of #2. The more notes, the slower the bow but more pressure is applied. Fewer notes or single ones lead the bow to move faster with less pressure, giving a different intensity and some nice phrasing. So while the section will use a whole bow to cover the six beats of the Ab and G, they will use half to three quarters just for the Eb. This is what makes the music magical, and why samples have a hard time replacing the emotion of a real section.

Keep in mind that even though the notes may be slurred, there are often places where the players will have to change strings. These notes will not have the ‘slurred’ sound as the new string will not be vibrating before the next note starts. Players can work around this in many cases by playing the line in a position that avoids the string change, but if the interval is wide, this may not be possible. It is a very subtle effect, and good players will almost be able to mask it, but it is still something to think about.

In reality, a good section can change bow direction without you knowing. This is very easy on the violin, but gets harder on the larger instruments. On the violin, the string is not moving very far as it vibrates, but on the bass it is moving a lot, so stopping and starting the string as the bow changes is more perceptible. On long notes the players will automatically stagger the bowing and you won’t hear any changes. No special notation or instructions are needed for this, just write the duration. I always have a bit of a chuckle when I see a score and on the long sustained notes the orchestrator has written something like ‘add lib bow changes’ or ‘stagger bow changes’!

Sometimes you will not want to hear any bow changes as the notes change on a line, just a completely smooth and even line. In order to get this effect you will need the section to change bow at different times. This can be dictated by writing two overlapping bowing patterns, one set of slurs above and one below. This will mask the changes and is sometimes referred to as ‘divisi bowing.’ In the studios we often mark the phrase with a long slur and ask the section to ‘free bow’. They will then change bow at different times, not as a group. Unfortunately ‘free bow’ is not a universal term. I have not found a common way to describe this practice, so some clarification is often needed to keep the section from bowing the line all together. If you just write a phrase mark with no other indication, the players will follow the principal.

As previously mentioned, there are many things that effect how many notes can (physically) or should (musically) go under each bow, and even the most experienced orchestrator cannot get it right all the time. Lucky for us, we are writing for humans, not computers. They can make judgement calls and adapt the bowing to suit the musical situation. So if you do screw it up, don’t worry, you are still giving the section invaluable clues as to what you are looking for.

Check out my Error Code 7 article for some great score and audio examples of how slurs work and effect the intensity of the music.

Watching and listening is the best way to learn how to bow.

Useful articulations

a. No emphasis, no space between notes.
b. Slight emphasis, very small space due to the bow recharging for the emphasis.
c. Detached, bow stops between strokes.
d. Heavy attack with a drop-off to a little space as the bow recharges for the next attack. You can add a tenuto to limit the space, but the accent will be less.
e. Louré, all notes under one bow. The bow pulses the notes by slowing, releasing the pressure then applying and speeding up again.
f. As above but the bow pauses between notes.

If you want an extra smooth bow change, mark it sostenuto. This is the string equivalent to legato tonguing on a wind instrument.

Notation
As stated, the default is to play on the string, so no special notation is required if that is what you want. But now we get into territory where the string terms start to mean one thing to the players, but another in notation. Staccato, when used in the score, refers to the length of the note and it does not necessarily mean to play the staccato bow stroke.

In my scores, if I want off the string I mark it staccato (with dots or the word stacc.). I prefer to use the word not the dots. It is cleaner, easier to change if we want to play it differently, and it keeps the notes clear for when you want to add accents. See how much less cluttered b. looks and how it could be changed to ‘on the string’ by just taking out the word stacc.

If strings are playing eighth notes at light dynamics they will play spiccato and as the dynamic gets higher or more intensity is required they will go into the ‘off-ish’ style I described above. The players adapt the bow style to the dynamic and intensity of the music, and I do not need to micro-manage them.

If I want it heavy I label it stacc. e marc. If you accent every note you have no way of getting an accent when you really want one. This is the notational equivalent to ‘crying wolf.’

[2024 Update]
While I wrote like the above for many years, I realized a few years ago that the ‘stacc’ part is redundant. To achieve the marcato effect, there will naturally be a separation of the notes, making them short. So these days, I would just write ‘marc.’

Another realization is that, in many cases, you don’t even need the staccato text or dots. This somewhat contradicts my original statement that the default with no other information is to play ‘on’ the string. When a section sees a bunch of quavers or semiquavers, they will play them short and thus ‘off’ the string. The faster the tempo, the more obvious and understandable this becomes. However, if I have a passage that is slower and could be played either way, it will still be played ‘off,’ so I need to do something to break that default. You could use tenutos, but I usually just add the text ‘on.’

Here are some examples from recent projects, both studio and live, where I did not feel the need to add any info. In all cases they came out short. There are a few other things worth noting in these examples too.

Let’s look at the alternatives for this rhythm.

1. How most people would do it. The staccatos are redundant on the quavers and double redundant on the semiquavers as they are already short.
2. At least they know the semi’s will be short, an improvement!
3. I see this often, breaking it all down to the shortest duration. Some people think it will make sure every note will come out the same length, it won’t! It just makes it harder to read. And of course the dots are redundant.
4. A slight improvement but still harder to read.
5. What I did, the cleanest and easiest to read.

As I mentioned before, some people think all the notes will be the same length, but they won’t be, and it has nothing to do with the notation. The reason the quavers will be a tiny bit longer, and the note on beat 4 a little longer still, is that when there is space after the note, the players will give it more bow. This is really obvious if you have a stream of quavers or semiquavers that just stop; the last note will be longer. It is natural, and we are so used to hearing it that most people will not even notice it. Of course, I do, and I often get blank ‘what are you talking about?’ looks from the players who don’t even notice they do it when I bring it up. It is similar to how they will taper off a long note at the end of a phrase; that is just what happens when they get towards the tip of the bow and there is nothing after it. Another time string players do something and do not notice or think it is weird is they will leave a slight gap when playing a descending fifth up high. This is because they need to shift and it is easier with a sligh break. When I point it out I get the stare, I will offer to play it back to them if they don’t believe me. The next take will be fine, as they will push through it even though it is harder, but they got busted taking the easy route.

Accents
Accents are performed by adding pressure, speed, and duration to the contact of the bow and string. In the example below, the accented notes will be a little longer than the unaccented ones.

This sounds very natural and is easy to play at slow and medium tempos, up to 130 bpm or so. But when it gets faster, or if this were sixteenth notes, the effort needed to make the accents can make it difficult to keep the unaccented notes smooth and metric. When I hear this problem in the studio, I have the players only think about the accents. But it is always good to think ahead and orchestrate around this problem.

One would not think that a pattern like this would cause any trouble, and maybe to some it does not, but being a drummer, I want everything as even and metric as possible, and when I hear the violins play this the time will slightly push and pull around the accents. There are several solutions to this problem. In this case, as the accented notes are a different pitch, they will stick out anyway, so recently when this came up at a session, I just had them ignore the accents. But let’s imagine that everything is the same pitch, or the composer really wants big accents. Here is what you do –

I have taken the accents out of the first part and the seconds are just playing the accented notes. You will not miss the seconds on all the notes, and the firsts will actually be able to play more heavily now as they do not have to allow for the accents. Finally, the timing will also be perfect. The finished product will sound much better and be easier to play. If there are more than strings in the orchestra one could also add some woodwinds, perhaps an oboe with the seconds. Percussion can also help. In fact if you have percussion and brass hitting the accents, you do not need them in the strings at all, as the overall result will sound accented.

I talk more about timing issues here in my conducting article.

Labeling Bow Direction and Bow Position
99% of the the time this is not needed. String players have been bowing since they were four years old, and choosing to start with an up- or down-bow is second nature. In general if a melodic phrase starts on a weak beat (a pickup, for example) that will be an up-bow. If it starts on a strong beat, that will be down, simple as that. Long notes at soft dynamics start on an up-bow as that is the easiest way to start softly. The one time it is common to label is when you want a series of heavy attacks, in which case you mark all down-bows. In reality, players are pretty good at a heavy attack in either direction, but what a series of down-bows does is ensures that there is a gap between notes as the player has to retake between each one. They will also play at the frog. Many times I have seen a series of down-bows written and it has been ignored by the players though so only do it if it really makes musical and technical sense.

The bow is held at the frog, so this is the easiest place for the player to exert the most pressure on the string. The tip is the furthest point from the hand, so consequently it is the easiest place to play with the least pressure, producing the lightest tone. Some orchestrators mark to play at the tip or frog. Just like direction, I have found the players tend to pick the best position with no input other than a dynamic. They will play a quiet tremolo at the tip, and a ff stab at the frog, because it is second nature. But should you wish to break this default, then mark it otherwise.

So while I don’t mark the directions, I have a pretty good idea of what they will do. Another thing to consider when working out what your want, and what they will do is to go backwards. If the phrase ends with crescendo, they will do that, or at least the last part of that on an up-bow, as that is where they can easily make the most sound, at the frog. If that note end with a ‘button’ or hit, then then easily then pull down for the big finish. Conversely, if a phrase ends with a dim, or just normally, they will try to end with a down-bow as that is the easiest way to release musically.

Another reminder to check out part 2 of the Error Code 7 article for lots more information and examples of how the bow works and how to notate what you want.

Styles
Ordinario (ord.) – The default, use ord. to cancel any of the following. The bow is in a neutral position, the ‘sweet spot’ between the fingerboard and the bridge. This is not a set position as it shifts depending on the string length. Some people label this as Normale (norm.)

Sul Tasto – On the fingerboard. The bow plays over the end of the fingerboard, producing a softer tone with a less edgy attack and less high harmonics. See below for more discussion on this technique.

Sul Ponticello (Sul Pont.) – On the bridge. Opposite sound of Sul Tasto. The bow moves closer to the bridge producing a raspy, edgy tone. There is less fundamental and more high harmonics to the sound. If you go extremely close to the bridge you can completely lose the fundamental and will only get harmonics.

Flautando – The bow moves faster than normal with very light pressure, aiming to produce a pure, flute-like tone. Some players describe it this way, but in practice, there are varying interpretations and approaches. Often, a fast bow stroke isn’t practical. I view it more as a mindset or concept rather than a strict technique. Personally, I avoid using the term, similar to how I handle legato or détaché.

Col Legno – ‘With the wood‘. There are two types of col legno. Tratto is where you bow the string with the wooden part of the bow. Battuto is where the wood strikes the string. The default is battuto. Keep in mind, the sound of col legno samples is never replicated in the real world. Players do not like smashing their $10K+ bow into their $200K+ instrument. Sometimes the players might get out their 2nd, not so precious bow or a pencil. I have heard of people asking them to play with rulers or pieces of dowel, just don’t! It does not matter, they will not hit the instrument ‘that’ hard with anything. In scores where the composer wants loud, unrealistic col legno, we usually just use the samples and don’t even try to play it. If the passage is only some isolated notes, you can substitute snap pizz. When it comes to Tratto, it hardly makes any noise, and what noise it does is not very pitched. To make this work, players usually let a little bit of bow hair contact the string. That recording where you thought you heard col legno tratto, maybe not!

Ricochet and jeté are off the string strokes where the bow plays multiple notes in one direction by bouncing. I have found these impractical for studio work unless it is just an effect. Multiple bounces at medium and fast tempi are just not precise enough for what we need in modern recording. I sometimes hear a player suggesting it as a way to play a fast, light figure and will nicely ask them to play it with separate strokes, it takes more effort but it will be much more precise.

Circular Bowing
In recent years this has become a very popular technique in the scoring world. Instead of the bow staying in one position in relation to the bridge and moving from side to side (whether normal, sul pont, or sul tasto), it circles, covering all of those spots. I have found that players tend to do this quite fast but I much prefer the sound of them slowly circling. I use this technique in my piece Error Code 7 and explain it here and there is also a demonstration. The best notation for this is just simple text but I know some of you won’t be able to resist adding some pretty picture of a bow circling!

Circular bowing is great for a ‘wire’ or subtle texture, but there is a lot of randomness in the texture and it is not very ‘dynamic’. If I need something to pop out, I will often have them move from sul tasto to sul ponticello and back as a section. You can combine this with a swell to great effect. I have notated this in various ways. In Error Code 7 I used the instruction “tasto to extreme pont. and back with each swell.” However, I have found that simply saying “to pont. and back w/swell” achieves the same result. Some people feel the need to add extra lines and arrows, but if you consider it carefully, the swell marking already conveys this, making the additional notations unnecessary—except, perhaps, for an Instagram flex.

This effect also works really well with tremolo and trills. A trick I often use to add a bit of life to this kind of voicing, especially where there are minor seconds, is to have the lower note trill. Regarding notation, I only provide detailed instructions on the first swell. The note lengths and swell are the same in the second phrase, so it is obvious that the same instructions apply.

The Left Hand
Apart from the lowest notes on the lowest string, and the highest notes on the highest string, all other notes can be played in more than one position. The higher up the string the position is (within reason), the darker and less edgy the timbre will be. This can be notated: Sul G (‘on the G string’) passages are very common on the violin, but in many other cases this is the sort of judgement call a player will make based on the musical situation. While this has nothing to do with the bow, it affects the sound as higher positions mean shorter strings.

Sul Tasto – Not So Fasto
I have noticed from the podium that when the violins have been asked to play sul tasto, they often do not appear to be playing over the fingerboard. It was not until researching this article that I learned what was really going on. There are some technical and sonic factors to consider when playing over the fingerboard. I have heard different takes on what is happening when performers see this indication, but one thing is for sure: sul tasto is not as cut and dried as any of the books would have you think.

In the case of the violin, the strings are relatively short, so the ‘sweet spot’ where the bow makes the best sound is quite small. It is also constantly shifting depending on the hand position. As the fingers shorten the string, the sweet spot moves closer to the bridge. In fact when playing in the highest range of the violin, in order to maintain the correct ratio and thus the sweet spot, the bow is actually at the bridge. In higher positions if you really play sul tasto, the strings does not vibrate well. You are now bowing too close to the middle of the string and it is impossible to produce a good tone.

But there is more. At the bridge or in the normal position, the strings are in a nice arc that allows the player to play any string without touching the other ones with the bow. If you are playing in anything other than first position and the bow is close to or on the fingerboard, pressing the strings flattens this arc and it becomes much harder (sometimes impossible) to avoid sounding the other strings. On some violins, and the viola too, it is also possible for the bow to hit the body of the instrument when playing on the outer strings. In the normal position, the bow falls right into the cutout of the body, but when you move over the fingerboard, the shape of the instrument no longer works in your favor.

The true sound of sul tasto on the violin is a wispy, almost fuzzy tone. In many cases, what we are really asking for with sul tasto is a softer, less edgy tone. Some would call it muted, but the actual sound of con sordino playing and sul tasto are not that close. There are a number of ways to create this sound. The violinists accomplish the sul tasto effect by using a combination of light bow pressure and slow bow speed. They may indeed move closer to the fingerboard depending on the pitch, but not always. As the instruments get bigger, so too does the sweet spot, and actually playing on the fingerboard becomes no problem at all. Viola has some issues similar to the violin but there are none on the cello or bass. Other techniques players use to make a softer tone include playing in a higher position on a lower string and using less hair on the string.

In the studio, players may make a judgment call in order to create a fuller sound that blends with the other instruments and projects well for the microphones, all while catching the essence of sul tasto and avoiding the technical difficulties.

Talk to players, and you’ll discover a range of opinions about this technique. In the concert hall, violinists will try for a more literal sul tasto than they do in a recording studio. As one player put it, “I would try to play a little bit over the fingerboard, just not as extreme as a conductor may want to see.” The same player also noted that everyone’s instrument is a little different, so their approach may need to be different too. The situation here seems to be similar to that of double stops or divisi, where what actually goes on has not quite filtered back to the authors of the text books.

Based on the musical surroundings, players may play sul tasto (or fake it) without being told. In fact, they are always making little adjustments, as depending on pitch, volume and context, the sweet spot may be in a different place for every note. Remember, the higher the note on the string, the closer to the bridge that sweet spot will be.

Instead of the technique being called ‘on the fingerboard’ a better definition would be ‘toward the fingerboard’. With all of this in mind, you will see that sul tasto is a type of color or effect, and not necessarily just the technique of bowing over the fingerboard.

Here is Endre Granat discussing and demonstrating the ‘sweet spot’, Sul Tasto and Sul Ponticello and Con Sordino.

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