Film Orchestration - Part 5: String Section 1 - Line-Up and Seating

Historically speaking, the strings have always been the fundament of the orchestra. They formed the basis of the ensemble. At first occasional brass/woodwinds/timpani were added and there was a quite extensive period of time where the instruments that were added to the orchestra besides the strings were quite flexible before they settled into the more standardized orchestral line-up that we know nowadays.

Additionally, the string instruments were technically matured quite early. While there are still new developments and advancements regarding the construction of woodwind and brass instruments today that target to overcome technical difficulties of certain notes or registers, the instruments by the great luthiers of the 17th century like Stradivari, Guarneri etc. are still considered the best instruments ever made.

So in that way, the string section was technically and sonically already "as good as it gets" quite early on. Over the centuries, section size and playing/performance defaults have changed as well as some techniques like bow hold and some minor construction details (replacing the gut strings by nylon/steel strings that project more) but the instruments more or less have remained the same.

In film music but also more modern orchestral music, the dominance of the string section has decreased a bit towards a more "democratic" usage between the orchestral sections but the very definiton of "What is a symphony orchestra?" in every case requires strings to be present and while we might get the occasional score without woodwinds or brass, we will hardly get a score without strings.

When we talk about strings, we have to strictly separate between the solo string sound and the section string sound. In no other instrument section does the sound between a solo and a section differ so drastically as it does with the strings. The properties of the section sound results in the fact that string instruments don't have frets like guitars that allow for a precise intonation but every string player of the same section will intonate a pitch slightly differently. The sum of these differences in a larger section result in a sort of chorus effect which creates this typical lush string section sound.

Consequentially, this also means that two identical string instruments playing the same note with the small intonation differences between them will in many cases sound very problematic as the difference between the pitch will become very obvious. Adding a third instrument to this evens this out and the more you add the less problematic this issue will become. Particualarly two violins playing the same note is considered a "no go" in most cases. Many orchestration texts mention to never use that at all, however in my experience it is highly depending on the quality of the players. If you have really good players they will intonate well enough between each other that there is no audible difference in the pitches. Still it's not the prettiest sound.

The sound of solo strings has become increasingly popular in the media music world in recent years, not only as specific solo (like the countless solo celli we know from many scores) but also as a textural colour. The technical possibility to bring out a solo string in the mix on top of an orchestra has created a sound that is almost exclusive to film and media scores and not possible to replicate in the concert world.

A quite early example of this would be the score for Signs by James Newton Howard, specifically the main titles that feature two solo violins together with the orchestra at quite stong dynamic values. This would be impossible to create at the same balancing levels in a concert setting as the solos would simply drown under the orchestra, but with recording technology of course we can mix them in more prominently.

The use of solo strings here is quite clear and the difference to the section sound is quite striking. It creates a more immediate, rough and direct sound in this context. In other contexts, solo strings or small sections create a more intimate and direct emotional impact than a large section would do. For instance Max Richter's ON THE NATURE OF DAYLIGHT would be a quite clear example for this specific sound quality that would sound and also feel very different if played by a large string section.

There is a relatively clear target of when to use string sections and when to use solo strings. Sections create a lush, cinematic and substantial sound while solos create a more rough, intimate and direct sound.

There is also a middle ground which is "chamber size" which is relatively small string sections that do have some ensemble quality but retain more of the direct and intimate solo quality. The typical "scandi" sound is very much connected with such string line-ups and composers like Johann Johannsson used such string line-ups regularly, for instance in THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. This is not a decision made out of budget constraints but a clear esthetic choice.

Specific problems arise when music is written as if it was to be played by a big section but the actual section is too small to convincingly create that section sound. In media music, we struggle with this particularly with smaller budgets where we need to make cuts in the amount of players that we can hire. So let's talk a bit about section sizes here.

A usual smphonic line-up would have decreasing numbers the larger the instrument gets. So one of the most common configurations would be 12 1st Violins/10 Second Violins/8 Violas/6 Celli/5 or 4 Contrabasses. (or in short 12/10/8/6/5) Usually we try to use lineups that use even numbers of players as generally two players share one music stand. Sometimes in film scores we get differently balanced sections (like for instance more Celli than Violas for that warm bottom end or similarly sized violin sections for specific balance reasons).

The string configuration mentioned above is very common at least here in Europe and could be considered a typical symphonic line-up. With film scores, especially with big budgets, we tend to see larger line-ups. 14/12/10/8/6 is quite common but also 16/14/12/10/8 is not rare with large lineups. Numbers can go even higher. John Williams used 20 First violins on E.T., Hans Zimmer uses even larger line-ups.

It is important to understand that increasing numbers does only have a small impact on the volume of the string section. The much bigger impact is the substance of sound. One of the ground rules of orchestration for strings is that the higher you go with the violins, the more players you need to maintain substance without starting to sound thin. With 14 or even more first violins playing the soaring high top line, you will not run into danger of losing substance. But also soft dynamics benefit greatly from large sections. A super soft tremolo chord played by a large string section can sound absolutely incredible.

Unless you are Hans Zimmer, usually the other direction of "how small can you go" is more interesting considering budget. We can roughly say that a section size of 7/6/5/4/3 is the smallest configuration that still sounds symphonic. Below these numbers we enter the territory of a chamber setup where the properties of the individual players start to become more clear again.

A very strong factor again is the room. And against intuition, smaller studios need larger string sections to sound symphonic, especially in a tutti context. If you have brass playing at the same time in a smaller studio, they will quickly dominate the sound which a larger string section slightly counterbalances. In larger studios the natural reverb and the larger diffusion of the sound in the room helps to make smaller string sections sound quite large. The less reverb in smaller studios makes it also trickier for the individuals player to "dissolve" into the section sound so with smaller sections you can quite often hear individual players in small studios again.

The size of the string section should always inform the strategy of writing when orchestrating. With a large section you can allow yourself things that would become really problematic with small sections, for instance more divisi. I will talk about string divisi in one of the next posts more specifically.

The standard seating of strings in a scoring stage is analog to how they would sit in a concert:

Here we have a line-up of 16/14/12/10/8.  I've marked the sections accordingly:

Red are Violins 1, Blue Violins 2, Yellow Violas, Green Celli and Purple Basses.

On the scoring stage there are a few common diversions from that seating.

1. Stereo Violins: In this configuaration the Violins 2 (blue) move to the position of the Celli (green) and violas move to the old position of Vln 2 and Celli to the old position of Violas. The pro side of this is you get a nicer stereo image for high strings which don't only concentrate on the left side but also sound on the right. The con side is that two groups that are very depending on each other (Vln1 and Vln2) don't sit next to each other anymore and consequentially hear each other not as good which can result in weaker intonation and timing especially in rhyhmical music.

2. Center Basses: It is quite common if space allows to move the contrabasses as much to the center as possible to also center them better in the stereo image. I talked a lot about this already in the previous parts of this series.

3. One Violin Section: In the US it is especially common to only have one big violin section of around 30 players covering the area of the firsts and seconds and also write accordingly in the score sheet and parts. Reasoning for this is to have easier configurations of divisi possible. Splitting two violin sections into 3 voices total is quite a coordinative challenge of who to play which note to balance it evenly. Splitting one big violin section of 30 players into 3 voices is super easy with quickly splitting it into three groups of 5 desks. You can also use different balances between voices more easily. Downside is that all players will always see all violin notes which especially with lot of divisi can become quite tricky to read on complex parts. Personally, I have not worked in this configuration yet and rather prefer to work out things with two sections.

It generally is possible to divert from that standard seating but it is not advisable as players are used to that seating.

With more experimental approaches to recording including more striping (= recording in sections) more adventurous configurations are possible.

Spitfire Audio released  "Hans Zimmer Strings" a while ago which basically shows how Hans records sometimes at Air Studios:

A combination of large section numbers and using the surface area of the studio to its maximum extent with recording sections separately allows for this larger than life sound that we know from Zimmer's scores.

There are some specific limitations to such an approach of striping that much which I will cover in detail when I talk about recording in sections.

In the next part we will look at divisi strategies and fundamental playing techniques.