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Light Comedy

Musical

Example

Light Comedy

Secret

Score

Light Comedy

Animated

Score

Orchestration

One of the quickest ways to create a fun orchestral vamp is to use pizzicato strings:

Because pizzicato produces a lighter sound than bowing the strings, it gives the music a lightness that is perfect for fun music. When cellos play a bass line using the pizzicato technique, they add a crisp bottom end to the music without feeling too heavy or weighted down. We have the bassoon double the cello and bass line not so much to give it weight as to add more definition to notes in the pizzicato strings:

Because the bottom end of the vamp consists of crisp staccato notes, bowed violins on the top part of the vamp provide a rich balance:

This makes for a smoother sound than if you had the violins also playing pizzicato. When basses and cellos play pizzicato, the resulting sound is full and round. When we start going higher into the violins, the pizzicato tone becomes more brittle.