BEND with the WOODWINDS! How to write for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon (SOLO + ensemble)

After Claire Wickes’ takeover, Alex Lamy picks up where she left off in her last video, diving deeper into the woodwind section of the orchestra. He offers important details to consider when composing for the flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet, and the bassoon. And after breezing into how to combine the woodwinds with other instruments, Alex arranges his piece “Robin on a Winter Morning” for a wind quintet—viewers of this channel might already be familiar with this melody from our Virtual Orchestration strings competition!


Virtual Orchestration is a collaboration between Berklee College of Music (Boston, USA) and Orchestral Tools (Berlin, Germany).



▬▬ Table of content ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

0:00 - Introduction
0:30 - Principles of good writing
1:46 - Writing for flute
3:28 - Writing for oboe + cor anglais
5:16 - Writing for clarinet
6:56 - Writing for bassoon
8:02 - Arranging for the woodwind section
9:40 - “Mercury” from “The Planets” by G. Holst
13:11 - Example from “Orchestration hacks”
15:19 - Woodwind quintets
16:36 - “Robin on a Winter Night” arr. for wind quintet






Assets used in the video :

Notation of the musical examples :
1. Daphnis et Chloé - II. Pantomime 1912, by Maurice Ravel
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/us...

2. Symphony No. 9 (Op. 95), II. Largo 1893, by Antonín Dvořák
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/us...

3. Symphony No. 2 (Op. 27), III. Adagio 1906/1907, by Sergei Rachmaninoff
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/us...

4. The Firebird Suite, Berceuse (Lullaby) 1910/1919/1945 by Igor Stravinsky
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/us...

5. The Planets (Op. 32), III. Mercury 1914 - 1917 by Gustav Holst
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/us...



Audio Recordings :
Holst, The Planets

Interpretation : National Youth Orchestra of Canada, Michael Francis (conductor)
License : Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
Notes : Jack Singer Hall, Calgary. Recorded 2015 Aug 09

Link to recording : https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP33488...










































Video creation credits:

Script / video concept 📜 : Alex Lamy, Eduard Flemmer
Music 🎶 : Alex Lamy
Camera 🎥 and Editing ✂️ : Fabián Barba Hallal
Motion graphics 🎨 : Michael Logar