The Taxonomy of Orchestral Grouping Effects Applied to Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso for orchestra

This approach to orchestration analysis is based on a taxonomy of orchestral grouping effects derived from principles of auditory scene analysis (McAdams, Goodchild & Soden, 2022). The basic premise is that fundamental processes of auditory grouping tacitly or explicitly underlie many orchestration decisions, structuring music through the selection, combination and juxtaposition of musical qualities to achieve a desired sonic result. The taxonomy has three main classes of effects related to different auditory grouping processes.