Now that we have Audiobro’s LASS, EastWest’s Hollywood Strings, the Vienna Symphonic Library, and the soon-to-be-released Miroslav Vitous String Ensembles, we’ve arrived at the place in music technology where the composer really must know string bowings and how to plan them. Previously, we really didn’t have this option. At best, we had available a sustained [...]

Today I started scoring the Bourree Fantasque excerpt for strings for the 50th Anniversary re-release of Professional Orchestration: A Practical Handbook by Joseph Wagner. Here’s a screen shot of it: For the first six and a half bars, the melody falls into the range allowing for Vlns 1 + Vlns 2 + Violas + Cellos. [...]