Orchestra 101: Overscale and Doubling

Today we look at two types of extra payments beyond base pay scale in an orchestra, overscale and doubling.

While any player can try to negotiate a special contract, Principal and Assistant Principal players in the Nashville contracts that I have been referencing in this series were guaranteed a minimum overscale; Principal players 25% and Assistant Principal 15%.

Where this impacted me with the titled position of Third Horn was that on services where I played the titled position of Principal Horn (at least several weeks of work per year) I received 25% overscale and also for educational services with the Nashville Symphony Woodwind Quintet I received 15% overscale. Every little bit helped!

There are other ways to get types of overscale. The most common involves doubling. For horn players the only double that you are likely to get paid for is with Wagner tuba. For example Bruckner 8 and 9 both require doubling. For these works you would receive an additional 20% of scale for the first double. Other instruments might have several doubles (they would receive 15% for each additional double) but on horn you won’t see that money.

You could also get extra for being a soloist but “In the event that the Conductor asks a Musician to perform as a soloist in front of the Orchestra, the additional compensation for this solo performance shall be a matter of negotiation between the individual Musician and Management.”

Finally, “Any Musician required to perform in costume on stage shall receive not less than twenty dollars ($20.00) per performance additional” but in the case of Halloween concerts I played in Nashville they got around this by making costumes optional. Of course, practically every player wore a costume just to break the routine of wearing standard concert attire. I believe this is pretty common in orchestras around the United States.

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