Can We Start Calling Indie Rock Groups An Orchestra?

[Seil]

So I was thinking about this a bit - I'm a fan of the classics. By that I mean people like Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn. Also, having a mum who works musically - with an orchestra - and growing up with musical theater, I always envision an orchestra as a large collection of different musicians and their instruments following the lead of someone having a seizure.

However, I think that as generations go on, the idea of an orchestra might change. I don't know if these would qualify, but would you consider Ra Ra Riot an orchestral piece? They're not lead by a conducter, but neither are Broken Social Scene, and... oh, they're roughly the same thing.

Ra Ra Riot is an American indie rock band from Syracuse, New York, consisting of vocalist Wes Miles, bassist Mathieu Santos, guitarist Milo Bonacci, cellist Alexandra Lawn, violinist Rebecca Zeller, and drummer Gabriel Duquette.

Broken Social Scene are a Juno Award-winning Canadian indie rock band, a musical collective currently including nineteen members, formed in 1999 by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. All of its members currently play in various other groups and solo projects, mainly based around the city of Toronto. The band refuses the label "supergroup," based on size or the ubiquity of their members, claiming that in the indie scene everyone is involved in more than one project. The group's sound could be considered a combination of all of its members' respective musical projects, and is occasionally considered baroque pop.[citation needed] It is characterized by a very large number of sounds, grand orchestrations featuring guitars, horns, woodwinds, and violins, unusual song structures, and an experimental, and sometimes chaotic production style from David Newfeld, who produced the second and third albums.

So are these guys orchestral already, or what?

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Most people seem to think that orchestral music is music that utilizes classical instruments.

I personally think that an orchestra can have any combination instruments imaginable, and even be backed up by synths (OH BLASPHEMY). And may or may not have one conductor.
To me an orchestra is just a huge pile of instrumentalists. That's just my personal definition, though.
Example: If you follow my definition the second band you mentioned would be orchestral, but the first one not.
Six people just aren't a pile

[McTahr]

Purely by definition:

a. A large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including strings, woodwinds, brass instruments, and percussion instruments.

Other definitions specified sections, but this was what google-fu got me.

BSS fits the bill, definitely, I would say.

I think the thing is that orchestra in and of itself implies "Sections" to its group members, which is to say that a single drummer does not necessarily a percussion section make via connotation.

Like, RRR lacks a woodwind section, and has a small-ish percussion section. This in itself doesn't exclude them from being considered an orchestra, but particularly I would say the assumption of folks based on the connotations of the word itself does tend to do the excluding.

I mean, strictly speaking there's not a hell of a lot of semantics in the difference between a band an an orchestra to begin with.

Re: InsaneGenius,
That's one thing that does make it interesting. When I was playing in a jam band of nearly seven people, I wondered at what point we weren't just "a band" anymore. So to speak, is there seriously an upper limit, a numerical value that states this or that?

[Magus]

In reference to a band we were all talking about last fall, the footage of the Protomen live shows I've seen show something like nine people playing different instruments as well as at least three vocalists and maybe a backup choir. Don't know if it counts as an orchestra but it seemed like a lot of people for just a "band".