Where have I been? Well, I've been a tad busy. Starting in the summer of '22 I got deep into a project in which I was asked to write horn parts (and perform them) for a pop/funk project. It was a lot of work, but I really wanted to do stuff that stretched the boundaries a tad in that idiom.
Oh! And... no! That's not me! The photo above is of multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter George Hrab who was my client/boss in this particular endeavor. I’ve known George for well over 20 years and occasionally been involved in his projects - they’re always, fun, deeply intelligent and usually somewhat experimental (even though George works in popular forms). If George wants to do something, I am invariably up for it, but this one… had unique challenges.
George explained he didn’t want me to just play on a tune or something, he wanted me to write horn parts for nearly the whole record (it ended up being eight tunes). There was a lot to do, but there was a catch. George wanted to record the album… backwards. He wanted to record all the rhythm section tracks and then my stuff and then add the melodies. It’s something David Byrne did with the Talking Heads many years ago and he wanted to do THAT. It’s a fine idea, but there’s a reason nobody does that and that’s because it’s darn near impossible. How do you write horn parts - an accompaniment to a melody - when there isn’t a melody? Hmmmm… that got me interested. I thought about it for a long time. I finally decided I had a few responsibilities - first off, I had to make sure that nothing I wrote should get in the way of his ability to write said melody. What could I do? Well, it seemed to me that my stuff should be simple but… big. Full of color. The job of the horns should be to thicken the broth of a mighty cauldron of soup. I pictured the horns as a vocal choir and started listening to the introduction to “Road To Nowhere” (Talking Heads) to get some ideas. I decided to channel the harmonies of Jeff Lynne, Steely Dan and occasionally Brad Mehldau. I wrote most of the parts last summer into this past fall.
There was a second challenge however. I was writing for 4-7 instruments and they weren’t all going to be trumpet parts that I could record. Where were the others going to come from? I wasn’t hiring guys to come in and do sax/bone parts, I needed to have all those lower parts realized by me in my studio. How? Well, I made some calls to some producers I know, presented them with the problem and my proposed solution and they said, “Yeah, you can do that!” I decided to use samplers. I have some extraordinary ones, but there is a tendency for them to sound… like samplers. Not human. How to fix that was the conundrum. I decided to record the trumpet parts and write sax and bone parts for the sampler. Then… I needed to EQ me… to sound like a sampler and I needed to work the sampler (and there are a zillion knobs on a sampler) to sound like me. Because the lead lines would be a human, I was pretty sure that the listener (including myself) would hear the end result and be convinced those were horns (which they partially are). They would also be deep in a mix… I figured I could make that work and it seems that I have. I’m really happy with how they came out. I can’t hear where I end and the samplers pick up… I just hear horns.
When I dive into these sorts of things... I really dive in. It becomes an all day/all night sort of thing and that means blogging... is not necessarily on the front burner. So, I have been a delinquent boy, but... a cool project got completed. I finished recording my parts in February and by April... a record was released. When I finally got to hear the completed mixes (and remember part of the experiment was I couldn't know what was going to be done melodically... after I did my parts), it was fun to hear what was utilized and how by George and his producer Slau Halatyn (who was a joy to work with). The name of George's record is Terpsichore (the Greek God of dance, I believe) and although it can be found on virtually every platform, I encourage you to check it out and make a buy at Bandcamp.
Fun project and I definitely learned some things from taking part. What's next? Well, after completing a project for a producer in Switzerland (I was just a hired hand on flugel), I'm now engaged in doing cues for sync licensing, while also working on an electronic project of original material.