Homogenous (String) Voicings

Homogenous (String) Voicings When you want to create a homogenous sound for example in the string section, take care that adjacent voices don’t exceed an octave. This is just a rule of thumb and sometimes, voice leading etc. justifies for larger gaps but in general,...

Writing for Mallets

Writing for Mallets When writing parts for mallet instruments that need the player to hold two mallets per hand (like marimba/vibraphone chords) it is very tricky for the players to rapidly play passages that include constant switching between “black and white” and...

Exotic Scale Runs

Exotic Scale Runs When writing runs for any instrument that is capable of playing runs, you should stick to plausible scales. Instrumentalists practice their whole life to play scale runs in any form – upwards, downwards, starting on different scale degrees etc....

Trombone Glissando

Trombone Glissando Seamless glissandi are one of the things that due to the unique construction of the Trombones can be executed very easily on them. However, their maximum span can only be a tritone (the range the slide covers between all in and all out (or rather...

Dynamics in Score Sheets

Dynamics in Score Sheets When studying score sheets of classical works, you will often notice how ambiguous dynamic markings are notated. There might be hairpins leading to or from nowhere and other markings that don’t clearly indicate what the desired dynamic...