After <many> months of planning, writing, recording, mixing, editing and uploading, I am thrilled to announce that Retro Hymns 2 is now HERE!
The last 6 months have been a fun journey of me playing my horn (trumpet) a whole lot. What began as me doing an arrangement of God Bless the USA for Lee Greenwood to sing with RamCorps morphed into me going on the K-Love Cruise in January and playing in a horn section with a great group of incredibly talented guys. On the cruise, we had the opportunity to play with some dear friends, the band ‘Unspoken’ and also Danny Gokey. In preparing for playing in a ‘horn band’ for the cruise, I listened to over 200 songs with horns and played through 40 of the most popular songs that every horn band knows and plays a whole bunch. I don’t know how to explain this besides saying that in the midst of playing a ton of horn band charts, something seemed to click for me. Listening and playing to so many great classic horn charts really got me inspired to try and create a record for horn and rhythm players in the styles of the horn bands but that could ABSOLUTELY be used in so many different style churches around the world.
One of the great things about Nashville is that there are SO many amazingly talented musicians here in this town. So, like any moderately intelligent person does, I surrounded myself with guys that are WAY more talented than I am. I gave them sketches, ideas, and some musical notes. And then…I got out of the way and let them create some music.
And BOY did they!
When I describe the record, I say it’s an ‘instrumental horn band record of classic hymns in a retro/throwback style’.
My goal was to create music that I would like to listen to and that I would LOVE to play. And now, I put the record out there in hopes that you would enjoy listening to it AND playing it.
You can purchase the record on iTunes by clicking here
You can purchase the sheet music for this series by clicking here
Here are a couple of audio samples if you want to check them out:
Nothing but the Blood Nothing but the Blood
Power in the Blood Power in the Blood
I Surrender All I Surrender All
The music is awesome!! Our core group does not include alto/bari sax & trombone. Some arrangements I’ve seen have their parts substituted by other instruments like tenor sax. Is this the case in your arrangements? looking forward to your reply, steve mcclean