Good vs. Bad - Orchestration

Nope. How about this, you just recommend me a track with a heroic/action/adventury vibe that has strings, brass and percussion that I should learn from how to handle a sort of "rythmic counterpoint" well, and I'll try to absorb as much as I can from that, and the next time I post a piece of my own you can tell me where I'm still "not getting it"?

 

I don't guess this thread is too dusty for me to comment, and I'm bored.

Violinists don't stop notes like you're doing in the picture, but with the fingertips instead. That said, and depending on the fatness of the player's fingers, they can stop a perfect 5th with one finger on the lower part of the fingerboard before the strings splay out too far. 1st position is safe, and probably 2nd position too for most. But you'd only consider using them for quick, non-sustained notes—say, no longer than about 1/4 of a second at most, on account of probable intonation issues, which are of course easily discerned with perfect 5ths. They are not as secure as regular double-stops, though.

On the subject of multi-stops in general, the key to using them for sectional scoring is to understand their nature. They're not first and foremost used just to get extra notes, but as a deliberate, vertical and non-sustained expressive device. And this applies even more to triple- and quadruple-stops. It's more aggressive—an emphatically down bow gesture, and if done right, it increases the sonority and yields a pronounced effect.

Mozart uses double-stop unisons on D4, the dominant in the 1st movement of Symphony no. 40. Works very well. Rimsky-Korsakov liked scoring multi-stops for large vertical gestures in Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol. You'd ruin the gesture to divide those that are clearly marked non divisi, and no one does.

The main rule of thumb for the most playable and resonant multi-stops is to use the natural hand angle for that instrument to the extent possible. Open strings are of course great. And the lower positions work better. Practical and musically well-justified multi-stops are fine for sectional writing if they are quick, non-sustained, and expressive of a robust, down bow, vertical character.

The curtain rise in Le Sacre is of course a famous example of multi-stops, consecutive down bows, for a thick, pronounced sonority.

At 17:46 of the video you can see/hear nearly 30 seconds of a mixture of double- and triple-stops (and one quad) in Scheherazade. It's obvious they have a very deliberate nature. Whenever they can feasibly be played as consecutive down bows, R-K marks them that way. The passage is also marked ben tenuto and non divisi. You'd only consider doing something like this in a concert piece, though. Not for a session.

 

Thank you for taking the time to write this! This is very helpful.

 

Indeed on all counts.

To the last, there are just three legitimate dynamic levels: loud, louder and loudest, notated as fortississississimo, ballzando, and sempre tinitus.