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In a Noteshell

How to Choose Instruments

Questions to ask yourself first

  1. What is your budget?
    • How many instruments CAN you write for?
    • What is your final project going to look like? Will you record musicians or use samples?
  2. What range do you wish to cover?
    • SOPRANO
    • ALTO
    • TENOR
    • BASS
  3. What roles do yo wish to cover?
    • MELODIC
    • HARMONIC
    • RHYTHMIC

Instrumentation Roles

Ideally, each instrument we chose should both have a specific role that they play, and cover for a specific voice range.  It’s possible to write for a smaller amount of different voices, but the SOPRANO voice and the BASS should always minimally be there to have a sense of harmony going on.

Instruments can have more than one role, but more often than not, instruments have a roles they are most specifically designed to accomplish.

Examples:

  • The drums are best suited to the rhythmic role
  • The flute is best suited to play melodies
  • The electric bass is best suited for playing bass lines and support the harmony

Though, instruments like the piano, guitar and harp are also very well suited to both play a melodic & harmonic rule in music.  In very small ensembles or on a low budget, they are very well paired with a melodic instrument such as the voice.  That’s why they are instruments of choice for songwriters.

Duo Example

Voice & Piano

  • The voice will play the MELODIC ROLE and will sing the SOPRANO range.
  • The piano will cover for the HARMONY and will play the 3 other missing voices

Trio Example

Flute, Guitar, Cello

  • The flute will play the MELODIC role and play the SOPRANO voice
  • The Guitar will have mainly an HARMONIC role in the ensemble and cover up for the inner missing harmony parts such as the ALTO and TENOR voice. As a second role, it can nicely add RHYTHMIC elements to the music.
  • The Cello will play the HARMONIC role and the BASS voice.

Quartet Example

2 violins, alto & cello

Violin I        MELODIC/SOPRANO

Violin II        HARMONIC/ALTO

Alto            HARMONIC/TENOR

Cello            HARMONIC/BASS

Conclusion

So basically, with our instruments we try to cover as wide as a range as possible, and we try to AT LEAST cover the SOPRANO & BASS voices.   They constitute the very core elements of music creation.  The rhythms come right after, they add a very nice touch to any ensembles either it is added in the form of a guitar strumming pattern or a dedicated percussion section.