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Hello,
knowing that many of you compose I would like to ask you about your recommendations of texbooks on composition and orchestration.
Thank you
JacekI’m going to college so I have fieldwork and that’s infanitely more fulfilling. I do read though and was issued my freshman year, if you want to get started, Roger Kamien’s An Appreciation of Music. That’s the basic stuff, history and whatnot. It will give you an understanding of the history of music (it comes with 4 CDs) and also teach you a great deal of terminology. You can eventually raise your sights to Music Theory. That’s where the brainwork begins.
For orchestration I bought Cecyl Forsyth’s book titled, duh, Orchestration. It’s technical but puts the subject into a prose that you can remember. I believe it’s the highest recommended book on orchestration out there (although I may be wrong).
I’ve seen the Forsyth book, as well as the Rimsky-Korsakoff and Berlioz/Revel book, and even “The Technique of Orchestration” written by Kent Wheeler Kennan (the first one I ever came across) but my favorite textbook on Orchestration is “Instrumentation/Orchestration” by Alfred Blatter. I have the 1st Edition but I know there has been at least a second updated edition printed. It might all be a matter of taste but I devoured any book on instrumentation and orchestration I could find, even ones on Jazz – David Baker’s “Arranging & Composing” for small ensemble: Jazz, R&B, Jazz-Rock. My suggestion is that you go to your local library and find what they have read it and take notes, as well as making photocopies of the important pages and keep an orchestration journal. I did that and when I went to college the library there was even better and I steadily put together an impressive resource for myself, no matter what project I was working on (whether it was for the concert hall of for the various bands I’ve been in). Ultimately it is up to you – how do you want to approach it and how much time are you willing to devote to it out of classes (because they don’t really even scratch the surface as to what it possible in orchestration in an academic setting).
I hope that helped and didn’t confuse.
Nat
Nat do you where i can find in the Internet this Book.Because i live in Kazakhstan and we dont have this book.
Here are the listings for it at FetchBook.info:
http://www.fetchbook.info/compare.do?search=0534251870&sort=productPrice
But I also saw it used for under $30 at Amazons used section:
I hope that helps. If you need any more info on that book, let me know.
Nat
The best orchestration book there is, to my knowledge, is the Blater orchestration book. It is the most comprehensive, in my opinion.
you should use orchestration books and composition instruction in correlation with music theory. In most great instrumental music there is an underlying counterpoint that exists. it is good to know four voice counterpoint and its rules well before jumping in to full-blown orchestral composition. When you know the rules you can break them in intelligent ways and your music will become interesting on a completely different level.
If you are into a jazz type sound both Henry Mancini and Nelson Riddle wrote great books on orchestrating and arranging –
Thank you all for your answers.
I am not a music student so I don’t have good access to
decent resources. What I can really do is to order recommended books and
try to get from them as much as I can.I will try to get something about counterpoin and basics of music theory.
Are there particular titles you could recommend ?Maybe you could recommend me good forum where I could ask about music in general ?
If you reply please send a copy of this message to my adres domusmundi@op.pl
Cheers
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