#5 in Music composition books
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Reddit mentions of Instrumentation and Orchestration
Sentiment score: 5
Reddit mentions: 7
We found 7 Reddit mentions of Instrumentation and Orchestration. Here are the top ones.
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As a long-time user and refuge of Sibelius, I begrudgingly recommend Finale. It's actually pretty decent. The most important thing is that when you make your choice to learn everything you can about the software itself. If you can master all of the shortcuts and hotkeys it will make your life much easier.
Also, I recommend buying a book on instrumentation and orchestration. Alfred Blatter's book (link below) in particular was the one I used throughout college and even now. Good luck!
http://www.amazon.com/Instrumentation-Orchestration-Alfred-Blatter/dp/0534251870
Blatter's 'Instrumentation and Orchestration'.
http://www.amazon.com/Instrumentation-Orchestration-Alfred-Blatter/dp/0534251870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278516600&sr=8-1
This book is one of my favorite sources for orchestration and just getting ideas about how different timbres interplay with one another.
As far as composing better, the best thing that you can do is make a bunch of pieces. Sure, some of the pieces aren't going to be that great, but you're going to eventually find bits that you really like. When you do that, you can requote those portions in other works and really start honing in on getting the piece to work together within itself.
Try writing three pieces in one day (similar to the as-many-songs-as-possible songwriting challenge). If that seems too easy, bump the number up. The more and more that you compose without overthinking what you are doing, the more likely that you will let your unbridled creativity flow. When the juice starts to flow, then you will be amazed at what you didn't know you knew.
The Adler book is definitely a standard, but I've heard a few complaints about inaccuracies. Haven't read it, so I'm not sure. I think the other major go-to is this book by Alfred Blatter. I used it in my undergrad and felt pretty good about what I learned.
If you're talking about orchestral composition at all, you'll need to know quite a bit about instrumentation and orchestration as well. Alfred Blatter has an excellent book on that. As for composition in general, you'll need to read up a bit on music theory, if you're not already familiar with it. This is the book I used in college; it has a variety of composition exercises with various restrictions, and is a great place to start.
Here's some other stuff for people interested:
Joe Straus' Introduction to Post Tonal Theory
Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music by Barry Schrader
Samuel Solomon's How to Write for Percussion
Rothenberg and Ulvaeus' Book of Music and Nature
Cope's Techniques of the Contemporary Composer is okay.
My favorite orchestration book is actually the Blatter
Composing Electronic Music by Curtis Roads is a very good new electronic book
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
On Sonic Art by Trevor Wishart
Well the first issue you talk about-- the assignment of notes in your chords to instruments of the orchestra-- is orchestration. Here are a couple of good textbooks that cover that:
The other issues are covered by some of the topics in "voice leading." It sounds like you have an understanding of chord progression, but things like harmonic rhythm or how fast chords change is also covered in voice leading. Many of those decisions are yours to make and that's what makes it fun! Some composers will create a harmonic rhythm that they will use to create a structure throughout the piece. I am a professional composer and would be happy to answer any other questions. Good luck!