Study Of Orchestration [Hardcover]

I dithered for about eight weeks before deciding to spend the $71 on this book and the $100 on the CD set (which must be purchased separately) -- and the two together have been worth it in every way. It's a wonderful text. You can't learn everything from one book, but this is one hell of a good place to start. The ability to hear various reorchestrations of the different pieces is absolutely invaluable, and no other book can provide you with this kind of instruction.

Initially I was scared off by some of the errors (of fact and of judgment) listed in the reviews below, but I was relieved to see that most of them had been either fixed or altered in the third edition. For examples, the word "blaring" in the Hindemith discussion (Ch.11) and the problematic trombone glissando citation are totally gone in the third edition.

The section on guitar, banjo, and mandolin is indeed inadequate as a discussion of those instruments, and I wouldn't use that part of the book if I wanted to write for those instruments. Actually, I can't think of one orchestration book, except maybe Blatter's, that does/did have an adequate discussion of these instruments, because they're simply not often used in the orchestra; if you need a thorough discussion of the guitar, banjo, mandolin, and all the rest of the guitar family, you'd probably be better off getting a book *devoted* to those instruments rather than an orchestration book. The guitar family is very complicated and has traditions behind it which are far different from those behind the orchestral instruments.

Incidentally, the range given for the classical guitar is not exactly *wrong*, though it is low (open 6th string to the 12th fret on the 1st string) -- but it is the range commonly given in orchestration books. Go figure.

I've read the book by Kent Kennan just about twice, and I recommend it for further reading before delving into the older books by Piston, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Berlioz-Strauss. The Kennan book would also make a fine supplement to Adler, because Kennan has a way of pointing out certain facts that give you a "key" to very complex situations; for instance, he points out that the most successful multiple stops on the violin are made of sixths, fifths, and open strings -- a fact which can free the student to write multiple stops with confidence (so long as s/he checks them out later on a fingerboard chart), and his discussion of the trombone glissando, at least, is better than the one found in Adler.

All in all, if you've got $80 to blow on an orchestration book (or even better, $170 to blow on book plus CD package), this one will be worth the money.

I have no classical training in music at all so I can't give an indepth analysis of the information presented. I can offer my impression on how the information is presented though, from my "non-trained" point of view.

The book is generally straight forward and easy to understand. I find it to be intelligently written and thoughtfully layed out. This book does assume some prior knowledge of music though. I have never actually learned to read music so for some exmaples I had to dig out an old school book on music theory.

The accompanying CD's are professionally produced and have great examples of different playing techniques and the like.

A couple of things that irked me though; No matter what CD you want to look at (there are 6) You first need to load up CD no6 and sit through the intro. From there you are presented with a main menu. If you want to look at strings it will pop up a message saying; "Please insert cd no-1" There is no way around this. This becomes annoying as the cd's are clearly marked with their content. You know that percussion is on disc 4 but you still have to go through the procedure described above, each and every time.

The intro features what looks like a student orchestra playing a short piece. This is interesting enough to watch the first few times but becomes downright annoying after that. There is no option to skip the intro which is a big mistake in my book. I studied multimedia at college and some of the things mentioned above were specifically what we were told NOT to do when producing a CD ROM.

Another interesting point to note; Throughout the book it shows examples of music and different playing techniques. In the book, next to an example it will have wording like; CD1/Track 4

For a while I assumed these were music tracks in the CD Rom production itself. On closer inspection though, there was no track listing of songs at all. I loaded a cd into my computer and browsed it's contents. There was one folder called "videos" and nothing else. I was starting to think that they had made a mistake and not included the audio tracks at all. I then went to folder options under windows and selected "show hidden files and folders" - still nothing.

Finally, as a last resort, I opened up Windows media player and clicked on the cd. Suddenly 97 untitled tracks of audio appeared. I clicked on the first one and a voice said; "Chapter 3, Example 1" (or words to that effect. I'm at work at the moment) Suddenly the book took on a new dimension. Every example I had been reading through had an audio example backing it up. I am now starting back at the beginning of the book to hear exmaples of what I have been reading this whole time.

The other main gripe is that it is almost impossible to tell at Amazon or anywhere else whether or not you get the book when you purchase the cd's. You don't. I bought the cd "package" and after a week received nothing but the cd's themselves. I had to place a second order for the hardcover book.

Hopefully my trials and tribulations will save someone else some time and heartache. I should say, I am really impressed with the book and cd's for the sheer amount of information contained in them. THe ability to hear audio examples of what I am reading really blows me away too. I just think some refinement needs to be done on the integration of the cd's and the book, and the presentation of the information.

Regards, Scott.