Instrumentation

Instruments play a huge role in how your music sounds. Don't believe me? Find someone who likes MIDI compared to live instruments. If you actually did, send them to the hospital to get their hearing checked. That's not even something that you can have a preference on. Before you electronic lovers get on my back, there is a stark difference between GEN-MIDI and electronica instruments. Now, you have two main choices these days. You can have a classical orchestral sort of pit crew or you can have a more modern "rock" crew like Rent had.

Oh sorry. Did I say you have a choice?

DON'T DO ROCK PIT. DON'T DO ROCK PIT. DON'T DO ROCK PIT. Turn on your radio. Flip through all of the channels. What do most of them have on them? Guitar/Bass/Drums with maybe some keyboard and some junky percussion. Do you want your audience to be comparing your music to Van Halen, Dream Theater, or *shudder* Paramore? The trap set was the stupidest part of seeing Phantom live. Musicals aren't movies (But adapt musicals to movies, please). The music has to be a richer, deeper sound. Which is where your classical orchestra comes in.

Consider the setting of your musical. Or don't if you don't want to. Plenty of composers managed to invoke other countries in their pieces without changing their orchestration.

The typical orchestra consists of a lot of strings, that is, violins, violas, cellos, and basses. Next you have the woodwinds. Instruments that may have been spare in your band in school are more prominent here. Brass are more of fanfare players in musical theatre, besides the French Horn who will have a lot of your melodies. The important percussion is all of the auxiliary and timpani. But please, no snares.

Instrumentation plays a very important part in giving subtle hints to the audience. If you are like me, you will like assigning certain instruments to motifs and characters. Is your cello in hiding? Give a short little hint of the cello character motif in the interlude music. Not everyone will pick up on it, but some people will, and most people will subconsciously. Or in a work that I'm not going to spoil for anyone, after a certain character died, they played the reoccurring theme with the main instrument missing. It really changed the whole sound of the song and showed the audience the loss everyone was going through. Now remember that you can get completely different sounds out of instruments through altered techniques or even just different ranges. A trumpet playing low sounds a lot different than a trombone playing high. Is your character drunk? Let their instrument show it.

A lot of people also forget about instrumentation when trying to establish a certain mood. If your song doesn't sound sad enough, don't scrap it. If you reorchestrate it, you may find that your music is fine when played in the low brass instead of the clarinets, or something similar.

You should consider all of these things when you are writing for orchestra. Because you aren't writing for a rock pit, remember?