The book "TANGO COURSE" by Horacio Salgán is the first written from a technical-musical perspective where the Maestro delivers all his knowledge in the construction of Tango and reveals his working methods of his 85 years of career. The purpose of this work is fundamentally to train the student in the execution of Tango. It is a study of Tango; piano, orchestral, rhythmic and harmonic details. It is intended for musicians and the teaching is facilitated with examples in small scores and with audio examples. In the website that is described in the chapter "Contents of the CD" you will find the audio examples that you can download as many times as you want and also listen online. 🎹 "Music is a great Tradition and that the creators receive from their predecessors and leave for their followers. Aníbal Troilo, Alfredo Gobbi, Carlos Di Sarli, Osvaldo Fresedo, Enrique Mario Francini, and others, contributed and enriched with their talent and their personal style to the elevation of Tango. Let's not forget them. " - HORACIO SALGAN 🎹
THE STRING INSTRUMENTS
CHAPTER 8
THE STRING INSTRUMENTS
When dealing with the strings in an orchestration or arrangement for a typical tango orchestra, we will be referring to the formation comprised of four violins, viola, and cello. The double bass will be treated independently, given the particular roles it plays in the orchestra. The indications that fol- low in this chapter have to do with this formation; a larger string section falls into a different cate- gory, and requires a distinct approach.
The practical upper range limits for the string instruments of a tango orchestra are indicated below:
The double bass sounds one octave lower than the pitch that is written because it is a transposing instrument.
This tessitura is the one most frequently used. However, these limits are set according to cus- tom and we will see that in practice they are exceeded when the phrase requires it. We will see exam- ples of this further on.
THE MELODY
When the four violins are used together and in unison, they add more body and sonority to the orchestra than one solo violin, yet they retain the general timbre of the violin.
The low register of the violins is not used very much, unless it has the support of the cello. Conversely, the high and extremely high registers are used more frequently because of their increased sound.
Given the sound limitation of this formation, an acceptable sonority may be achieved by having the violins play in octaves, distributing each part to two violins.