The Study of Orchestration, by Samuel Adler (3rd ed.)

If you're looking for a good orchestration book, this is the one I use. I recommend it.. not highly, but it does the job. You and I know you're not going to learn how to play every single instrument, and for those who are trying, jeez...

My composition teacher recommended this book when dealing with orchestration. My university bookstore was selling those tiny 1o-dollar orchestration booklets, but you really don't want those. You want an advanced book that you can keep for many years. I Amazon'd this thing and although it costed me around 50-70 bucks, I like it. I'm not going to buy the CD booklet, which costs a lot more seperately, because that's a waste. I don't think you necessarily need both.

It gives you the ranges not only of the instruments, but also those that have a particular family (e.g. the oboe). It gives examples along the way. If you reaaally need to listen to these examples, buy the CDs, but I seriously wouldn't. I've used the book in a few of my compositions so far and I'm slowly getting comfortable with it. I'll get into much more detail on a later post.

Apparently, John Lasseter is trying to bring 2-D animation back to Disney. What I'd give to score for them... I might need to 'pretty please??' Alan Menken to step away for a while. :P