The internet is a wide ranging resource, and in some areas can enhance or even replace existing print resources.
One amazingly useful site is The Orchestra: A User’s Manual, developed in conjunction with The Philharmonia Orchestra and its Sound Exchange. It’s chock full of information about instruments of the orchestra including ranges, extended techniques and movies with players talking about what is possible and so forth.
In addition, there are individual samples of particular instrument notes that you are able to use freely. And the Philharmonia Orchestra runs the Composer Resource sessions, which enable anyone to write short excerpts and have them ‘tried out’ by the orchestra for 15 minutes. They’ve put the submitted scores up online as well, which is also instructive from the point of view of demonstrating to students the difference between computer-generated and real-life sounds. This could be a great idea for one of the orchestras here too.
There must have been an incredible amount of work gone into this site. All parties, including its instigator, Andrew Hugill, should rightly be congratulated!
ooh how handy! i’m just starting my hsc core composition, so this could be very useful. thanks!