Spectrotone Chart and Orchestration Guide Arthur Lange’s analogy between visual color and tonecolor. The chart portrays a graphic representation of the orchestra and its kaleidoscopic tonecolors. The chromatic scale at the foot of the chart covers the range of the piano keyboard. The Spectrotone Instrumental Tone Color Chart™ (and two training guides) in PDF format that you can print out on either Letter or A4-sized paper (or larger depending on your home or office printer), or 18” x 24” poster size at your local print store; 3. Plus supplemental course PDFs with supporting material. Do you know the Spectrotone chart? I use that one a lot and I think they complement each other well. I much prefer the way you layered the instruments range and tonal characteristics. Maybe in a future revision, you could add colors and a tone/color combinations and balance guide, similar to the Spectrotone.
Spectrotone Chart
The Spectrotone Chart is a digital download item, that can be used as an on-screen reference, or printed out on a variety of different sized papers. On a home printer, the printer will resize so you can print out on 8.5x11, A4, and other papers. The Spectrotone Chart is an exciting tool to use in the classroom where only one semester of orchestration is taught. And really, that course isn’t orchestration, but really instrumentation with a tadpole’s worth of orchestration tossed in for good measure. As a comp major who had such a course, I can tell you by the.
After the string arrangement of a phrase, I will spent some time on questioning if the melody has been placed in registers that will bring it out at its best. To come to a good balance between the character of the melody and the string tessitura (register color) you need to know how the different tessituras on every string sound.
I am not a string player and therefor cannot check this first hand, I have my information from different orchestration books but especially from a source that is called the Spectrotone Chart which can be bought from the same company that publishes the “From piano to strings” book. This chart is only available as a PDF download: The Spectrotone Chart.
Here is a basic overview of the instrument tessituras I mention in this blog:
On the violin, viola and cello, the first octave of every string except the highest string, has the most interesting tessitura (color). Above that, the sound is described as “dull” which means that it is losing character.
– On string number IV (the lowest string), this 1st octave is described as sounding “mellow ”.
– On string number III, this 1st octave is described as sounding “rich”.
– On string number II, this 1st octave is described as sounding “pleasant”.
– On string number I (thehighest string), this 1st octave is described as sounding “bright”, and the range above this 1st octave is described as sounding “brilliant”.
The double bass it is described a little different. Instead of an octave range, the first tessitura has a range of a 4th:
– On string number IV (the low E-string), the lowest range of a 4th is described as sounding “mellow”, the range above that is described as sounding “dull”.
– On string number III (the A-string), the lowest range of a 4th is described as sounding “mellow”, the range above that is described as sounding “warm”.
– On string number II (the D-string), the lowest range of a 4th is described as sounding “rich”, the range above that is described as sounding “mellow”.
– On string number I (the G-string), the lowest range of a 4th is described as sounding “pleasant”, the range above that is described as sounding “rich”.
Of course these are just words, you need to hear these differences to understand the descriptions. But it does explain that there is indeed a different kind of character in these different tessituras and you could keep them in mind while giving your melody to a specific register on a specific string instrument.
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, I asked him about this thing on his web site called The Spectrotone Chart. It looked to me like the kind of thing Caroline and I would use to pick out paint for the living room. Lance couldn’t really describe it to me over the phone, so he sent me a copy.
It arrived today.
When I opened it up and saw what it was, I nearly choked. Here on a single page is much of the information graphically illustrated that I’ve been trying to translate from classical French from Charles Koechlin’s Treatise on Orchestration.
What a find!
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 harmonic overtone series, the more intense the sound and where the intensity changes there’s a new color.
Spectratone Chart
That alone is a great help. But Lange has gone an additional step. Not all the instruments have all the colors. According to the little booklet that comes with it, these colors also symbolize blendability with other instruments. So where you have the range of Purple, for example, you can group all the instruments together to create combinations and doublings. On the other hand. you can write purple for one group then take a contrasting color like yellow and write something with those instruments.
Spectrotone Chart
Composers are always looking for ways to more effectively communicate with producers in a language we both can understand. Playing with the Spectrotone 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 you’re looking for green, these are green colors and sounds.”
I have to try this.
Peter Lawrence Alexander