This is my first time in a week where I felt I could breathe a little. Since I’m finishing up Professional Orchestration 2B, I decided to compare what I’ve learned so far from Lange to Rimsky’s range chart where Rimsky breaks the registers into low, medium, high and very high, and then gives some adjectives [...]

It’s 6AM. I’m finally getting up with the sun instead of going to bed with it. I’ve made the coffee and I’m at the kitchen table with the Spectratone chart unfolded and next to it is one of those Professional Orchestration Sketchbooks we sell. And pencils with erasers that actually erase, too.
My objective is to [...]

Composers are always looking for ways to more effective communicate with producers in a language we both can understand. Playing with the Spectratone chart really gives the impression that if you take the time to work out the ranges and see what sounds where, you can play some chords and stuff and say, “Well, if [...]

It’s a big chart with the whole orchestra, including muted brass and the saxes, on the same page. So it’s for any style of music I want to write in.
It’s organized by something like nine colors. The colors span the range of the instrument and indicate intensity. So the higher the musician plays up the [...]

In the process of getting out our 50th Anniversary Edition of Joseph Wagner’s Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook, I ran into Lance Bowling of Cambria Music who had been one of Dr. Wagner’s students. Lance is a fountainhead of information. We’ve already spent several hours on the phone. While we were talking about Dr. Wagner, [...]