[quote=rverne10]On the subject of books taht teach the subject, I can't say it too many times-
Thanks for the referrals on the books. I am not familiar with the Harmony and Voiceleading book you love. I looked it up on Amazon and I'll have to save up a little to get it, but it seems to have a lot of devotees.
Your post (and other posters here) have got me thinking more about the basic problem I am trying to address. I agree that counterpoint and voiceleading is a key component to writing good bass parts. I have studied counterpoint (piston) in college and went throught the Fux Gradus extraction (The Study of Counterpoint by Alfred Mann) on my own. I think that there are times when one can create a nice polyphony with a stimulating bass part when:
- The compositional nature of the music demands a more polyphonic texture, and;
- The harmonic rhythm is relatively swift
The sections in my own composition where I was concerned about the basses rolling their eyes were areas that had a very very slow harmonic rhythm and the texture was quite monophonic. I'll describe the style as being somewhat "cellular" like Part, Gorecki or Adams, etc.
Here, the texture does NOT lend itself to much (or any?) real polyphony a la Bach chorales. I've found rhythmic figures for the inner parts to perform and they make musical sense (I heard them in my imagination, or at least their shadows). But what I heard in my basses in my imagination was long, sustaining harmonic anchors.
Problem is..it's snoozeville for the bass section. I dated a bass player in college and she complained about playing "goose eggs" and that a real orchestrator or composer would not do that. She also hated playing Carmina Burana because of the boring bass parts. I said, "yeah, but when you put it all together with the choir and sit in the audience, it's pretty powerful." She would just look at me and show me her part with all that repetition.
A nice solution was to pretend I was one of the players in the section in my own composition. This focussed my imagination and attention to the bass parts and I think the changes I made helped the overall music too. It's just such a difficult thing...to get all the instruments to make solid contributions to the whole AND make each part interesting and able to stand alone.
I really like the idea of doing MIDI mockups of real scores to get into the music and do some directed study. I am thinking of doing Ravel's Mother Goose suite, or possibly La Tombeau. This might help my harp writing too, which is just awful and embarrasing right now.
Thanks again for everyone's helpful suggestions!