A lot of orchestration is just balancing uniformity and contrast. That’s the whole game. You make things the same, or you make them different – and hopefully on purpose.

Most beginner orchestrators think of colour as something you add: new instruments, more motion, higher dynamics, a counter-line, a pedal, a harp flourish, maybe a triangle, and hey, why not let the clarinets do something for once. But the result is often the opposite of contrast. It’s clutter. It’s a musical desk drawer.

Dynamics shape musical expression, but they only work if musicians can interpret them correctly. No one has X-ray vision—musicians can’t see the surrounding dynamics in real-time, so expecting microscopic shifts to carry musical intent is wishful thinking. Instead, orchestration should ensure that balance and clarity are built into the texture from the start. This post explores practical strategies to achieve that without relying on brute-force volume adjustments.

One of the most common mistakes among both emerging and experienced composers is treating dynamics as a mixing tool. The temptation is understandable: If the second violins dominate a passage, one might instinctively lower their dynamic marking. If the oboe struggles to be heard, a composer may consider increasing its volume. Instead of adjusting dynamics to balance the orchestration, consider how instrument positioning, bowing, articulation, and player allocation can create a more natural and effective balance.

Continuing the thread of the huge ROI of precise notation, let’s talk about one of the simplest but most crucial practices: marking every entrance with the correct player specificity.

I know—it’s not as thrilling as negative harmony, mediant relationships, or polyrhythmic textures. (I’ve been down that rabbit hole too.) But if you don’t mark these things clearly, others will make decisions for you. And that’s rarely ideal. Plus, it forces you to think about the actual musicians in the orchestra—not just blobs of sound on a score.

One of my most formative lessons as a budding orchestrator had nothing to do with voicings, colors, interlocking lines, instrument combinations, or any of the fancy things that books—rightfully—cover and that most of the conversation revolves around. It came when I first had someone else doing the copying. Suddenly, I was getting a boatload of questions…