That sounds really cool! I love that record! I love those arrangements!
And then sometimes I hear…”I don’t know if my folks can play that.”
I believe in elephants. But I don’t believe they should sit on the sofa in the living room without someone at least saying “Hi. How are you doing? Can I get you some peanuts?” It’s rude otherwise.
So…
“Can I get you some peanuts?”
Yes…your folks CAN play these arrangements. I do truly believe that. And there is one big reason for that:
My trumpet
When I was writing all these arrangements, I had my trumpet next to me. So I’m singing horn riffs, licks and ideas. Every time I come up with something that I think sounds cool and fits the style of the tune, I pick up my horn and play through it. I make sure that what ‘sounds cool’ is actually PLAYABLE when you put the horn to the face. I make sure that the articulations, slurs and phrasing feel natural and not awkward when playing them. And it happened a number of times as I had the licks in my head, wrote them in to Finale, and then picked up the horn…that I found myself tweaking the licks to make them more natural and intuitive. To me, that’s one of the fun things about this instrumental horn band series of worship arrangements. A trumpet player who has played in a horn band (having recently played on stage with both Unspoken and Danny Gokey) wrote the horn charts in a way that the licks pocket REALLY WELL on the horn. And I know that for a fact because I personally have played through EVERY LICK of this record on my trumpet. And I tweaked them when they didn’t feel intuitive.
There are some recordings out there that sound amazing when recorded by top call, professional studio musicians. But that’s because they can play pretty much anything and make it sound good. From inception, the goal of AnderKamp Music has always been to create music for the ‘weekend warrior’…for the guys that aren’t playing in the recording studio 25 hours a day, 8 days a week. 🙂 I always strive to create arrangements that regular folks can attain. Sure, you’ll have to practice some of the licks to play them really well as a group. And I do like to have a couple arrangements in every series that are meant to be challenging to try and raise the bar and push everybody. But I can tell you, these licks do NOT have awkward fingerings. They are not impossible to play. And they feel good on the horn. I know that because, once again, I played them all on MY TRUMPET!
Retro Hymns 2 – THIS IS FOR YOU – Because it’s playable
If you want more information about the arrangements, click here
Retro Hymns 2 is now available on iTunes! Click here to go to iTunes to preview AND purchase (and then post a review) of the record
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