Precautionary Measures When Writing For Strings
Since it is widely recognized that the string section is the backbone of the orchestra, it is therefore fundamental that composers of all breeds understand how to write effectively for them.
Putting all theoretical knowledge of composition aside, I am mainly concerned with addressing the physical and sonic limitations of these instruments in terms of writing coherent music that will sound good and keep your players happy.
I was once asked to write a cue for a short section of film where the director had specifically asked the music to sound very tense, starting small and growing into a finale where dissonance should be at its highest. It was not a full orchestral piece since I only decided to use six Violins, three Violas and one Cello.
Now since I knew that I would be using live players for this cue I was careful to pair up the instruments so that I would have more than two players on one part. The reason I chose six violins was not to make the section louder (because contrary to popular belief, five violins is not fives times louder than one violin) but it was to avoid uncontrolled dissonance. What I mean by this is that if you were to have two violins reading the same part you will realize that the combined intonation of the players will be completely off and sound terrible. One violin on its own (assuming of course he/she is a good player) can sound beautiful but two is always a bad idea.
Because the violin is a fretless instrument no two players can play perfectly in tune together.
However, add a third violin or more to this equation and the sound is radically transformed into something beautiful. You may think to yourself, “well if two violins can’t play in tune together then how can three violins?” Well again, the answer is they can’t, but the combined sound of all three or more Violins playing together starts to create a very rich and lush sound that is desirable in string writing. It becomes harder for our ears to differentiate between the individual pitches of each separate Violin and what we now hear is a homogenized sound that is round, colorful and expels all these wonderful overtones.
My next point is more of a psychological one, but was none the less a very interesting lesson for me. As I said earlier I had written some dissonant music where I had a G being played by three Violins and an Ab played by the other three. Because of the closeness of these two notes I noticed that the players started to ‘lean’ into each other’s notes. The G was starting to sound like Ab and vice versa. The players where hearing each other and because of the dissonance they were starting to question their intonation which in turn led to an unconvincing performance. However, all I had to do was stop that take and reassure the players that no matter what they were hearing, they had to stay strong to their pitch and not second-guess themselves and their intonation and to play their pitch with conviction and clarity. So if you know that you will be writing music that is dissonant or even complex, it is always nice to mention it to the players before hand, to give them confidence and make them feel relaxed (unless of course you have tip-top session musicians in which case that would not likely be an issue).
My final thought or perhaps warning is that in this day and age with all the fantastic sample libraries we have available to us, we are able to create astoundingly realistic scores from the comfort of our home studio. Because of this we have the tendency to write music that may not be playable by real musicians because of either the physical limitation of the player, or the instrument. It is always important to bare this in mind when writing music and constantly ask yourself “would this be playable?” After all, as composers it is our dream that our music be played by real instruments, and it is always good to be ready for that opportunity if it were to arise.
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