An orchestra is a group of musicians playing instruments together. They make music. A large orchestra is sometimes called a "symphony orchestra" and a small orchestra is called a "chamber orchestra". A symphony orchestra may have about 100 players, while a chamber orchestra may have 30 or 40 players.
While chamber music is basically played on strings, symphonies have an array of instruments besides the string section - percussion, brass and woodwinds. The third major difference is the presence of a man in black tailcoat, holding a piece of stick and making feverish gestures. That's the conductor.
Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts.
In fact, even with salaried, full-time employment, many British orchestral musicians are struggling to pay their bills. On Wednesday, the Musicians' Union (MU) in the U. K. published research showing that orchestral players — including those holding full-time jobs as ensemble musicians — on average earn under $30,000.
Fundamentally, orchestration is the art of realising musical forms and ideas using instruments and voices. ... Orchestration is closely related to (and an important part of) arranging, the practice of taking music for one instrument or set of instruments and re-writing it for another.
A baton is a stick that is used by conductors primarily to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians.
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Here you can learn more about the 4 families of the orchestra: string, woodwind, brass, and percussion!
The Electric Light Orchestra
Xylophone - Sound combinations Because of its ability to play bright and incisive notes, the xylophone in the classical-modern orchestra has beengiven the task either of accentuating the top notes of a melody line or of doubling the melody line of another instrument an octave above it.
Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). ... Because of its intimate nature, chamber music has been described as "the music of friends".
Anyway, the guitar section would hardly blend into the orchestra. ... That's because guitars have strong attack. The sound of the guitar section would be too sharp to blend it with the other sections. That's why you can only see a solo guitar playing in some orchestral pieces.
The average annual salary for Orchestrators is approximately $62,400. The salary range for Orchestrators runs from $13,000 to $175,000.
The percussion family is the largest in the orchestra. ... The most common percussion instruments in the orchestra include the timpani, xylophone, cymbals, triangle, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, maracas, gongs, chimes, celesta, and piano.
Often a symphony orchestra is called a “symphony” for short, but the primary meaning is based on a large-scale composition for orchestra called a symphony.
Orchestras always tune to concert pitch (usually A=440 Hertz, 440 vibrations per second). Conveniently, every string instrument has an A string.
The orchestra began with only twelve members, but now there are 50, sometimes even 60 on very large stages.
In an orchestra, the most common string family instruments are the violin, viola, cello, bass, and harp.
The primary responsibilities of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble, and to control the interpretation and pacing of the music. ... Typically, orchestral conductors use a baton more often than choral conductors.