The fellowship of the BRASS - ranges, registers and arranging!
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- Опубліковано 14 чер 2024
- The return of the Virtual Orchestration king: Alex Lamy is back from the Shire, bringing everything we need to know about trumpets, trombones, horns, and tubas. Alex provides amazing examples of how to write for these instruments. And as an extra special treat, we get a bit of music history examining why various brass instruments actually sound so different and how the modern brass section was forged and formed by the three kingdoms of brass!
Virtual Orchestration is a collaboration between Berklee College of Music (Boston, USA) and Orchestral Tools (Berlin, Germany).
▬▬ Table of content ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Start
0:08 - EPIC LORD OF THE BRASS INTRO
0:39 - Introduction to the brass section
1:29 - Ranges of the brass section
4:39 - Tuba Registers
6:08 - Trombones Registers
8:01 - Trumpet Registers
9:12 - Horn Registers
11:08 - Registers at different dynamics
13:07 - THE 3 KINGDOMS OF BRASS
Assets used in the video :
SFX :
The following sounds provided by: mixkit.co/
Air Whoosh
__________________________________________________
Video creation credits:
Script / video concept 📜 : Alex Lamy, Eduard Flemmer
Music 🎶 : Alex Lamy
Camera 🎥 and Editing ✂️ : Fabián Barba Hallal
Motion graphics 🎨 : Michael Logar
One Horn to rule them all,
one Horn to lead them,
One Horn to bring them all
and in the orchestration bind them.
One does not simply walk into a brass band practice. Its black gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep.
In the Land of Brass where the Shadows lie
I am so unbelievably grateful that you continue to put out such high-quality content. Thank you!
Thank you, Henry! 🙏
The quality of this content is off the charts. Thank you so much!
🙏 thank you!
I got shivers when you did French Horns around 9:50. Im a horn player and they are just the most majestic instrument to listen to, but quite a monster to play well.
Definitely, but all the hard work is worth it, they're proper magic!
I love the trombone for the same reason :)
This content is unbelievable. For instance, not just the usual presentation of the brass ranges, but also the extended ranges AND short presentations of the actual instruments in the various registers--very useful as it sticks in the mind.. Alex's examples using OT's sample libraries had me running over to my studio to try my hand using the same libraries Superb content.
Thank you for the feedback! Good to hear that the info sticks with you - there's a lot there and we really hope these videos will become good long term resources for people on this subject :)
Great and neatly visualised!
however, I've never heard before about brass used in church music in 16-17th c. I was under the impression that brass instruments had mostly utilitarian role - in war, signalling and such, until composers started to use them for special effects in secular operas. Like Monteverdy used trombones in Orpheus to depict hell and monstrous furies living there.
3:40 modern bass trombones have the same fundamental note as tenor trombone, however because the bass trombone has thicker tubing, bigger mouthpiece, and bigger bells bass trombonists have an easier time in the gutters than tenor trombonists but a harder time playing as high as a tenor.
I’m absolutely shocked to watch this episode on brass without hearing Alex play the trumpet once!
Given the tone of rest of the comments I'm actually glad we didn't do this! 😂
Rest assured, the trumpet gag will be back, and I definitely won't have practiced 🤣
That was amazing. Do more like this!!!
I absolutely have to congratulate everyone involved in this video! It's incredibly well made, interesting and funny at the same time! Thank you for realizing and sharing such fantastic lessons! ☺
Thank you very much! 🙏
So wonderfully informative and a delight to watch and learn! Loved the Three Kingdoms of Brass.
Gianni♥
Once again a great video ! Little sound problem between 2:40 and 2:54 but otherwise great job ! The little history of brass at the end was quick, clear and well illustrated !
Fantastic episode! One tip I’ve also learned is to be careful writing too high of horn parts, from the top part of the third register up…some players may have trouble playing up there. I ran into that on a recording session where they couldn’t play what I wrote. I’m sure that wouldn’t happen with the excellent Berlin players of course. 😊
I think something often overlooked as well is how much we ask a horn player to do within one recording session.
If all of our music is fff then it doesn’t matter where the notes are, the players will be knackered after half an hour, and their lips will be gone, meaning even easy stuff later in the session won’t come out well. Similarly with high register stuff, getting it at the right point in a session, when they’re nicely warmed up but not tiring out can be the difference between getting it down or not getting it at all.
Excellent suggestions. Already agreed with others about the quality of this video.
Particularly liked the charts which I screen captured. You & your colleagues are tops!
Great recording! Thank you!
Great episode - loved the animated history lesson at the end!
Glad you liked it! 🙏
Cool! What a content you guys are making!
This was another great episode. You're doing fabulous work and I really appreciate the care and detail that's being put into it. Thank you!
Thank you, Kenneth!
fantastic presentation and great animation at the end !!
Amazing!
Great once again, unbelievable and high quality episode fantastic , thank you. Greetings from holland
Tuba gets a solo in corridos. :) they do a SERIOUSLY good job on those tuba solos!!
thank you
Great tutorials!
But how about putting space for breathing in your midi orchestra. How long can we hold a note for different instruments before it sounds electronic? Maybe an idea for a new video?
Good idea. I generally try to do this anyway, and I think I have in these examples. It's a good topic with the brass though because at comfortable parts of the range, and soft to medium dynamics, they can all play a very long note. But the extremes of the range, and the louder dynamics shorten the length pretty drastically. I'd be thinking of a breath every few bars at the minimum, and I always try to think in phrases anyway, which helps nip a bit of a MIDI note off, or not connect things up to become legato.
I also like patches, especially low brass patches, that are un-looped. And even when they are, sometimes you can hear the loop because a note can't naturally be very long - and that's also a good reminder to not have it go on!
great explanation bro
Nice history in the end, I really like these LOTR graphics 😅
They're so good, right!?
@@alexlamymusic Yeah, exactly!)
The first horns were made of (trom)bones, hehe. BTW, great content, Alex and congrats to your video editors. Exquisitly produced.
Great
love the intro and history videos! What tool did you use to make them?
Hahaha, I really heard you say 'back from midi earth'! Great intro!!!
I don't think I'll ever escape MIDI Earth 🤣
It's like 'preciousssssss', it keeps pulling and pulling :-)@@alexlamymusic
Well, as a trombonist I met a lot of tuba players and nearly all of them had valves, like horns, instead of keys like trumpets. By the way as a composer I had my share of music written for brasses, like these for example: ua-cam.com/video/88nkXf508I8/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/5S971A2ylOk/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/DhCkP41dzWY/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/e0YGT2TZAyo/v-deo.html. A great example of trombone choir in the orchestra is in the Schumann's Rhenishe Symphony, where there should be the Alto trombone, not mentioned here and that is quite used around in orchestras, but that's often played with the tenor trombone despite being very high.
Спасибо! Жалко, что про слайд тромбона не сказали и сочетания валторн с тромбонами. Интересно ваше мнение.
Teach us the intro theme of all the episodes..... Please....
Hi guys.
Thanks again, for another awesome class!
It was very informative: both theory and history.
Could you create a lesson that covers the topic of panning all the instruments in the orchestra ?
The American arrangement and the German arrangement.
I mean, if we take a clear middle ground (0%), without relying on library differences, how many per cent to the left, or to the right will a particular instrument, or groups of instruments, engage.
I realise that different orchestras perform in multiple halls and therefore have different variations of player seating.
But I would like to understand the basic principle of this arrangement, exactly in a digital environment, for a more accurate balance between the groups of the orchestra.
Perhaps you can share your experience, or a common practice.
Thank you !
Regards, Yaroslav.
Hey Yaroslav! It’s a good topic but it’s also one that’s a bit of a red herring in my opinion. The history behind German vs. American is interesting, but I think unless you design music to have that extreme separation between the violins, then the American makes much more sense, and 20th century orchestral music has basically all be arranged like that. I think the more interesting idea is the transition of Basses moving backwards and more central, which makes a lot of sense from a recording perspective, as you don’t have the majority of low frequencies panned to one side.
As for samples, most libraries are recorded “in situ”, in the positions that an orchestra would be sat in, and so most libraries require no panning. The stereo image is weighted correctly, and as it’s pretty similar throughout the world, so even different libraries tend to work together without the need for panning.
You do get some libraries that are more specialised, or all recorded centrally and may then need panning, but then you can just try out what you think works. I’d rarely go to any extreme, I don’t think I ever pan things beyond about 30%. More often I think in terms of stereo width - some things may have extreme sounding panning already, and some may be too central and without the feeling of good stereo. So taming or opening the stereo width a little, maybe 10-20%, can get things to sit a bit better, especially with strings at least.
The last point to make is that recordings aren’t “realistic” listening perspectives anyway. You can enhance, or change things as needed to present your music how you want it. There’s not much that doesn’t work or doesn’t sound good, so don’t overthink it and think there’s only one right way to do something. If it sounds good, it is good.
@@alexlamymusic Thank you so much for the detailed reply!
Good luck to you!
12:07 it is actually the opposite. Brass have more homogeneous timbre than woodwind, so can blend better. Woodwind not only have distinct individual timbre, but also differ in dynamic envelope, make it harder to balance and blend.
I think there are arguments for both cases, but you are right about the woodwinds. We’re trying to give general beginner arranging advice here, and as I mentioned in another comment, getting a blend in the brass is a more advanced and subtle element of orchestration and arranging. In this way, I think the winds blend together in a more homogenous way whatever you try, despite being more unique in individual timbre.
I completely agree. I was surprised by Alex's comment. It runs counter to most orchestration texts from Rimsky-Korsakov on.
@@peterschaffter826 it’s not that it’s impossible, or that they can never sound nice together. It’s that you can always tell one instrument from another, and especially in middle-higher registers and higher dynamics they’re very distinct. Is the lower registers and lower dynamics that result in the indistinct “low brass” sound where things are well blended. Somebody else pointed out that to achieve really good, homogenous blends with brass we tend to add other instruments, Flugels, Tenor Horns, Euphoniums, Wagner Tubas etc. All of those already have a character that blends better together than the regular orchestral brass instruments.
flugelhorn isnt from the trumpet family. it has a similar range but is from the saxhorn family.
Im a high school freshman and i can hit an Eb5 on trombone, Is that good or am i like cheating?
It’s good! I’ve seen parts up to the F before, and I’m assuming concertos and loads of jazz trombone parts go above that too.
I have a question, why is the middle C become C3 here instead of C4?
Why is your note system written an below above the standard scientific note notation? eg. C3(Your system) = Middle C = C4(regular system)
It’s standard MIDI, where middle C is C3. We know it’s not the same as the regular system, but as all samples instruments are programmed like this, and when you press a key down you’re seeing C3 as middle C, we’re making resources that go by those numbers.
Also, we got this comment quite a lot on our woodwinds video, but not our strings video. I’m wondering is there something causing any confusion we can avoid in future? We say ‘MIDI D3, MIDI E4” and so on. Is there a way we can make it clearer? Or maybe it’s just one of those things where if you see the note on a staff then it’s difficult to think of a different system? (Which I totally understand, by the way!)
@@alexlamymusic I honestly have never seene any other system. I thought that it was just something to point out. If it works for the majority of people, then it works for me. I was just a little bit confused upon first viewing. I think that any solution to this would be too bulky and unnecessary to put in any video.
@@user-hv4nl9rn8t yeah, its a pain. It’s also such a pain scripting out the ranges because you inherently name the pitches with the regular system, (like every other resource out there!) and have to triple check that you haven’t left one in amongst all the MIDI numbers, meaning a range is an octave too long and so on.
But it was a decision we made right at the start and I still stand by. A lot of people out there will be new to virtual instruments, and orchestration, and not even read music. MIDI note numbers make more sense in the programming world, and it would get far too cumbersome to constantly point out the difference in all the practical examples of the other episodes. For me, there’s just as much discomfort seeing the wrong octave in a sampler (like the Vienna Symphonic Library instruments) as there is having to think of the midi note when looking at a score 🥲
I guess the saxophone is in a class by itself, both woodwind and brass.
It’s a woodwind. But we didn’t include it in our woodwinds videos because it’s use in orchestral works is rarer and much more specialised.
@@alexlamymusic Oh okay. Darn! I was hoping to see the saxophone included because I play alto saxophone. Oh well. I've always been taught that the saxophone was a woodwind instrument, but when I was in my high school marching band, it was always grouped with the brass instruments.
@@j.woodbury412 I’m not from the US so I don’t have a lot of experience with marching bands, but even in ‘pop brass’ sections, we’re really talking about mostly saxophones too. They definitely are a bit of black sheep!
Why this guy calls C3 middle C??? Isn’t that C4?? Why he shifts everything lower?? Please clarify. Thnxx ❤
Where's the euphonium? Can someone explain to me? Is it kind of "useless" or something?
This video is for orchestration, and euphonium is not a standard member of the orchestra.
@@tristanperciful6609 os there any resources to know more of those non standard members? I'm wondering what else there is to know
@@BacatauMania We haven't gone into detail like this with ranges and registers for auxiliary instruments, but we did make a 'secret video' about orchestrating with them. You can find it fairly easily in the 'Music Writing + Screen Scoring' playlist on the channel 👍🏻
@@alexlamymusic thanks a lot, you're great!!
Am I the only one that doesn't understand why they call the notes lower than they are? Like calling c8 c7?
Euphonium 😢
Not in the standard orchestra, sadly. Beautiful instruments though. They get a good feature in our ‘secret’ orchestration hacks video 😎
always follow the nose... I have had many names, ahahah. Saqueboute
Sackbut-Bagginses? 😅
corrections:
1) Flugelhorn does NOT belong to the trumpet family!!!!! It's part of a seperate family together with the alto/tenor horn in Eb and the baritone horn in Bb: the saxhorns. these were all invented as one giant family (many more members existed but have disappeared) and have NOTHING to do with the trumpet. Same goes for the Cornet, which his part of the HORN family together with the French Horn.
2) As others have said, the sound of brass instruments works VERY well together. It's the reason why British Brass Bands and Dutch Fanfare Orchestras sound so great: It's mostly brass instruments stacking their best-sounding registers on top of eachother, while still being able to take over other registers from other instruments.
Can’t slip a joke past you guys, can we? 😅
We’re also not making a video on brass bands, and all of the lovely instruments in those, where the sound does blend nicely. This is a video for the basics of the brass section in the orchestra and some guidelines for arranging within the orchestra. It’s slightly more nuanced to describe that a soft trumpet, and a soft trombone can all blend nicely with horns IF you play in certain parts of the ranges and at certain dynamics. But we’re not really going into brass choir writing, and the characters of these instruments are quite different in their use in the orchestra.
@@alexlamymusic I didn't say you should make a video about brass band etc, I simply gave some backstory about why your claim that the flugelhorn is a member of the trumpet family is wrong, as well as give some information about the fact that horns, trumpets and trombones blend VERY well together through the fact that other orchestra types do exactly that, and add MORE brass instruments.
Brilliant that you plan a brass band video, bring it on, I am a tenor horn player!!!@@alexlamymusic
12:36 that's it. Your statement now contradicts the previous one about brass don't blend well.
Just a general question, are you watching with subtitles?
If so, I can see why that is confusing, because written out, we say one thing and then say the opposite. But there’s emphasis in the way I say it, that actually the low registers do blend well while the high register don’t (that’s what’s implied anyway).
Why did you use that Piano Roll instead of the 5 line Stave?
At least there you could have shown Concert and Transposed Pitches if you wanted.
A Specialist 4th horn would not play 1st Horn parts... as a 4th trumpeter would not be the Screamer.
You mentioned the Dark Ages what cult could have possible caused that I wonder? Chase them away and the Renaissance..
This is a channel about programming with virtual instruments. Not everyone who works with a DAW reads music, and we don’t we to alienate anyone who may not seek out information like this otherwise.
Also it’s very nice for the range examples to give the true sense of how many octaves something covers, and transposition isn’t important there as we’re dealing with sounding pitch.
Skipped over euphonium 😔 such a great instrument that is sadly marginalized
Indeed. I love it. But this video is focussing on the basic orchestral brass families.
Why does this channel keep putting middle c on c3 it is misleading and irrelevant in this context where composers are using scientific pitch notation and not whatever keys your small midi keyboard is saying.
It’s because of standard MIDI. Middle C in standard MIDI is C3. They channel deals with using virtual instruments. When you press middle C down on a midi keyboard, the note displayed in a DAW and the sampler playing the instrument is C3. So it would be just as confusing to say the other octave and not clarify is for people programming music.
So it’s not misleading or irrelevant. It’s a bit annoying, as I’ve mentioned in a few other comments. But as there are no resources made for composers who may not read music, we decided to go with Standard MIDI numbering 👍🏻