Do orchestras tend to have too many instruments?

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a console organ such as a hammond [with 32 note bass pedals] is always a good thing to have around.

You can't hear the Tuba because you need quality studio grade headphones or monitors with good bass (and otherwise) frequency responses. Most people either use cheap earplugs , or built in speakers on their phones/laptops or a small mobile bluetooth speaker none of which gives you BASS.

and the're a good reason why classical orchestras have so many players. Sure, smaller bands exist in plenty but the extra players are not redundant and here is why: even, say, you go to a concert hall - and you tell all the players who double the parts on an occasion (which happens frequently) to go home and instead take one of each part and give him an amplifier to compensate for the volume difference... that won't sound the same (and not due to the amp). The secret here is when two players happen to play the same part, e.g two violins, they are not 100% in tune with each other. They are not 100% matching the exact volume and articulation at any given moment in real time. Which what makes music so much more pleasing - those slight imperfections.... the pulses created by the detune, the slight differences in expression. Had you just duplicated an audio track on Cubase it would sound meh. But if you played or sung the same part twice, NOW we're talking

You've now got me speculating that the invention of the orchestra was caused by the switch from viols to violins.

The violin family (violin, viola, 'cello, double bass) all have fretless necks. Frets are a device for getting an exact pitch easily- without them, your pitch is only as good as your ears and fine motor control can make it. So the exact pitch each violin-type instrument plays will vary a lot. And they usually play vibrato, a deliberate slight wavering in pitch. No way is everyone's vibrato going to sound exactly the same. Result- a fantastic natural "chorus" effect!

Viols were the main bowed string instruments in Europe before the violins took over. They came in several different sizes, and most had six strings. They all have frets. So, less subtle variation in the pitch, and no way to play vibrato. Viols were always played with just one to a part- no-one wrote for massed orchestras of viols.

"You've now got me speculating that the invention of the orchestra was caused by the switch from viols to violins."
This is not true actually, as orchestras were also present at the time when viola de gamba was primarily used and plenty concertos and operas were written in the Baroque as well but it's true that orchestras gradually became larger throughout the Reinassance period onwards.

Back in the those days, instruments were generally much quieter than modern ones made today (even pianos in Mozart's era were not only much quieter but less vibrant and 'big' sounding) so with the lack of better building knowledge and no way to amplify electronically they had to use doubling regardless which is why composers wrote for large orchestras as they were needed to fill large halls = make money.

The thing is regarding fretted/non-fretted instruments, while you are correct in what you say about pitch control, the human factor is actually the most important one here. Even on a guitar you'll achieve a good result in sound variation as opposed to duplicating despite being fretted. Say you tune two guitars of the exact same kind (same model, year, strings, wood, perfectly tuned) and exact same audio path. you give one to Eddie Van Halen (in heaven) and one to Jimmy Hendrix (also in heaven, how else would they play together?) hand them the same sheet and they will still provide an interesting variation when layering their parts together due to their unique style and approach to guitar.

Back when I used to record backing vocals I'd always repeat the part several times to create a "choir" effect rather than duplicating the first take over again (no money to get another person) . The result was so much better!

yes, Chummy is onto something here, the "bigness" of an orchestra's sound is one of those "greater than the sum of the parts" things precisely due to the chorusing effect. just like on a pipe organ.

Also, I think we aspie musicians tend to overestimate our ability to analyse music by ear. There was another thread a while back in which a musician complained that they could "hear" the music they were writing in their head in great detail, but couldn't make it work in reality. Over the years, my ability to pick out details of harmony, counterpoint and instrumentation by ear has improved a lot with practice. But it's still nowhere near as perfect as I thought it was 20 years ago...

Oh okay, that's interesting. Another thing is, when I watch orchestras in videos, they have every type of viol and every type of brass horn playing. Is there a reason to include every different kind? Is there any reason to omit one or two, especially if you didn't like the particular sound of that instrument? Or the more variety of sounds, the better?

compare the orchestra with its mechanical cousin, the theatrical or concert organ. just like an orchestra, organs must come with a panoply of different sounds from high to low, sharp to dull, harmonious to discordant, to be used in mixtures. if one category of sound is missing, it will reveal itself with its absence.

Oh okay. Well how many different types of instruments need to be in an orchestra for it to not reveal itself then? Like for example do I need a viola, or a double bass, if I already get samples of a violin and cello? If I already get samples for a Tuba and French horn, won't that fill the mids and lows of a viola and double bass, or no?

strings are a different tone family than horns. you need a full range of strings just as you do a full range of horns. in acoustic 78 rpm days in the 20s they often omitted the low strings in favor of just violins as they were the loudest, and just used low brasses. but that was immediately audible even on those scratchy old 78s. what you could do is go the pops route and omit the first chair players [i think 12 for an orchestra]. then limit each part of the harmony to one instrument in each family. think of a "pit" orchestra for a musical play, that is what they do.

Oh okay, but why do you need a full range of both though? For example let's say you are doing a piece of music where you start at high at violins and want it to work it's way down low, but instead of using double basses for the low range, you use tubas instead? Why does it have to be double basses for the low range?

because a stringed bowed instrument has a totally different "feel" than a tuba.

But why do you need that different feel though? What different feel would that be?

music approximates feelings, and it is like "pregnant" versus "almost pregnant," or as mark twain said, between lightning and lightning bug. there is no "almost right" IOW, you have the right sound or you don't, for a particular scene.

Oh okay, but I didn't think I needed a double bass necessarily to create the right sound for any of the scenes I have in the project, unless I am wrong?

there is a reason jazz bands long ago replaced the tuba with the string bass or electric bass.