Getting Horny

[Ogg Vorbis]

I am working on an orch. score and I have to say that french horn writing is just a bit odd. Okay I can do the transpositions for an instrument in F and I can even handle that it shares a clef (treble) with trumpets.

I can ALMOST get my head around the idea that it sits above the trumpets in the score order, and when when writing for 4 horns, the highest to lowest is out of order in some scores (sort of like a brass ukulele).

But what I cannot understand is why the convention is to write sans key signature and just write accidentals per each note.

Who knows the history of this odd convention? If someone would say, "well back in the day before valves..." okay, so now we've HAD valves for about 130 years or so. Can we get past it? I got past the whole "my ancestors were slave owners" thing...why can't we forget the crooky past of brass instruments?

And what is the current accepted way of writing for horns? Key signatures or no key signatures?

[jancivil]

I hated this kind of thing in music skool.

MY GUESS: the reason for no sig for key in 'horn' parts is that at some point in the development of the thing, some of your personnel came to the gig with a horn pitched 'in F' and some had another kind, say 'in D'. A transposition as given in a key sig isn't going to work for both.

WIKI says: Many older pieces for horn were written for a horn not keyed in F as is standard today. As a result, a requirement for modern horn players is to be able to read music in other keys.

I knew, like one horn player well at all. He was a conducting candidate and could transpose anything at sight, pretty much. He related to me that to go from french horn major to conducting major was probably the smoothest transition in terms of being already prepared for heavy score reading, coming from a thorough horn player perspective, because of his experience with a lot of variants. Say if you played a good deal of baroque and earlier, there's bound to be some variance.

I think a PRO hornist will be able to negotiate whatever, even today.
When I came up in 'concert music', keys were kind of out of fashion altogether for 'serious' composers. I can tell you as a symphony orchestra ROADIE, that most scores I saw used no key sig. for 'horn' parts per se.

[Ogg Vorbis]

I hated this kind of thing in music skool.

MY GUESS: the reason for no sig for key in 'horn' parts is that at some point in the development of the thing, some of your personnel came to the gig with a horn pitched 'in F' and some had another kind, say 'in D'. A transposition as given in a key sig isn't going to work for both.

Ha! Ha! I forgot I posted this! I'm like, WTF am I posting this on a techno forum for??

Anyway, you are prob. right. Most players can think "x" steps up or down but might be confused if they had to figure out it the note were in the key signature or not...

I went ahead and left the key signatures out of the horn parts. NOTION is smart enough to put them back in later if I need to.

It just makes me sigh when there is no discernable consensus on how to write for instruments.

Now I've got my hands full learning how to write properly for harp. Every harp source I read is different. Some harpists say that pedals MUST be indicated (although there are various ways of doing that), other people say that you just write the pitches that you want and NOT the pedals, while other harpists consider it rather condescending if you spoonfeed them pitches OR pedals. Scores I've studied use all different methods.

I guess composers are doomed to piss SOMEONE off no matter what you do.

[Download SOphist]

i came here looking for pics, but...

[Ogg Vorbis]

i came here looking for pics, but...

Oh, right! Here ya go...

[Download SOphist]

hmmm... the hulk woman meets miss dipesto, i feel brassy!!!

[Musicologo]

Ogg, how about writing for the people who are going to read it?
I mean, who is going to play your piece? Write using the conventions of those people.

If it is general, and you don't know who is going to play, then write the way you want anyway, and then the maestro will have to sort it out. Some dudes nowadays just write real notes anytime, anywhere.

I, myself, just write everything in trebles and bass clefs and in the main tonality of the piece, and then ask finale to transpose back to where the maestro wants. I have no time to write violas in Tenor clefs of write a bunch of transpository instruments. Let the program do that math for you after.

If for some reason the maestro asks "oh that flugelhorn after all is in Eb, not F!", well, then let the program do it automatically and print it after, nowadays we don't have to worry with those nickpicks...

[Ogg Vorbis]

If for some reason the maestro asks "oh that flugelhorn after all is in Eb, not F!", well, then let the program do it automatically and print it after, nowadays we don't have to worry with those nickpicks...

Thanks for your reply. Yeah, the temptation is to lean on the technology and let it handle the cleffs, transpositions, etc., but that can be a bad deal if you are rehearsing and you hear an error and you can't figure out what note it should be, etc. It is inevitable that there will come many times where I just have to know the shit cold.

When a wind player asks something, there's just no time to boot up the ol' macbook pro, load the notation program, load the file, select the part, transpose it or put it into a different clef and answer her question.

[jancivil]

It just makes me sigh when there is no discernable consensus on how to write for instruments.

Now I've got my hands full learning how to write properly for harp. Every harp source I read is different. Some harpists say that pedals MUST be indicated (although there are various ways of doing that), other people say that you just write the pitches that you want and NOT the pedals, while other harpists consider it rather condescending if you spoonfeed them pitches OR pedals. Scores I've studied use all different methods.

I guess composers are doomed to piss SOMEONE off no matter what you do.

There is a general SOCIETAL consensus on how to be a composer which is readily available to you: "You shouldn't bother, as you have no value to us".

Harps, the thing about harps IS pedals. There are things you may wanna hear which are not available to harpists owning to the configuration of pedals, which is designed after tonal music principles.

The generic sort of things which came to be your normal harp parts in the romantic lit are easily doable pedals configs. Some things are so obvious to an orchestral harpist they're a no-brainer, as they've seen it before.

If it's at all tricky, it may behoove you to indicate pedals; first of all this is how you find out the part is playable, if it is indeed unusual or tricky. If it's dodecaphonic or the like, it probably is, for instance.

If it's just a diminished seventh or wholetone scale arpeggio and you've gone and indicated all the pedals, ze harpist she will say: 'isn't that PRECIOUS! the composer found out about the pedals' or some such, no worries.

Here we do get to the idea behind what you are writing or going to write: is it for a group of people who are going to actually play it? Then ask what they, particularly want to see on the page. Is it for posterity, as if people in the future are even going to care about it, so you have to have a score for all people everywhere?; indicate everything.