One Day Wonder #97

One Day Wonder #97 – For 2 horns and 3 trumpets.

I wanted to do something funky for today's piece. I was up housesitting for my parents, so as usual, the wilds of the countryside made my brain think up weird things. Here’s what you get: a lot of parallel motion that implies a chord progression and enhances the melody. To spice things up and to cap phrases, I had the third trumpet pull some funny stuff. OK, so you hear “trumpet, trumpet, trumpet, trumpet, muted trumpet, muted trumpet, muted trumpet” and so on. What you’re really supposed to hear is what they call in the business an “ooh-wah.” That’s when you stuff your hand in the bell of the horn and then release it. It’s a common jazz practice, but not so much in funk and almost never in classical. Since Finale (as I’ve mention a lot in the past) doesn’t distinguish types of muting, you get nothing of the effect. For brass, this is important, as there are many, many muting options. Our method tonight is the human hand. Nothing can convey the real thing like the real thing, so use your imagination. Since we've got ourselves a funk number here, there is a fair amount of repetition. To counteract that, I let the third trumpet loose in the piece's latter stages. This turned out actually better than I expected.

Click on the title to listen.