Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [ensemble]

Mostly in classical music groups of two or more players are called "ensembles". Other styles of music tend to use ""band" or "concert band" instead. If the ensemble is big enough, "chamber orchestra" or even "orchestra" is used instead. The term is also use as opposite to "solo".

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What are some common hand signals for communicating within a small ensemble?

Playing in a small group, I already know and use the gesture of pointing to my head to indicate "play the head" or "go back to the beginning". If the ensemble is playing songs containing intro, verse, chorus and bridge sections, is there any widely…
Brian THOMAS
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What musical activities can locked down musicians do via video-conferencing?

The UK Brass Band I play with has already hosted one on-line meeting for our locked down brass players (via Zoom). It was immediately apparent that timing latency makes it impossible for us all to perform together as though we were all in the same…
Brian THOMAS
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Ensembles at home - how to do it?

I have seen two quite different examples of ensembles from home recently. Sadly, the obvious solution of a web conference is unlikely to work as even good internet connections will probably have too much lag and feedback could be an issue. One…
badjohn
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Jazz piano: Keeping base tone for soloing but not for ensemble

As a pianist I want to excel at playing solo as well as in a jazz ensemble. When playing solo one has to play the base tone oneself, while in an ensemble the bass player covers that. How does one approach these two diametrically different ways of…
Frans
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Name for ensemble of the same instrument

When arranging music, is there a commonly accepted or easy to understand name for an ensemble (be it a trio, duet, quartet, etc.) which contains all of the same instrument? For example, how could you generalize a tuba trio or a clarinet duet?
CC Inc
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Tempo conservation with Time Signature Change, How to notate this for Classical Musicians?

So, I am writing a Scherzo in the key of Eb major for a string quartet. And I was just thinking about what to do for the B section of my Scherzo, both in key and time signature. I was thinking that for the time signature, I should maybe do a change…
Caters
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What is the difference between Ensemble and Orchestra?

Both the definitions imply a group of musicians playing a piece together. If i am inferring it wrong, kindly clarify the difference.
NEWTONINSPIRED
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What are the steps involved in organizing a new band?

I would like to create a band. This seems to me a non-trivial question to implement, as it involves a lot of management, which is not particularly tied to music theory. But it has musical specifics, and some of you may be successful bandleaders. So…
xakepp35
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Why are most string quartets in a key with few sharps or flats?

At most, in a string quartet, I've seen 4 flats or sharps. Now I have been told that this is because C major, G major, D major and A major are the easiest keys on a string instrument because they have the most open strings and the next easiest would…
Caters
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What technique was most likely used when demonstrating how a mariachi group played rapidly?

Sometime when I was around nine years old, my music teacher brought in an audio-visual aid into our classroom and showed us a half-hour film documentary about what made up a mariachi band. I=The narrator introduced several members of the band and…
HeavenlyHarmony
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Is this a reasonable start to my string quartet?

This is what I have of my string quartet so far. I am using Musescore for composing this, so I put in 100 measures because I didn't know how long the first movement of the string quartet would be. If there are no dynamics in the piece, Musescore…
Caters
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