Roger Breland has said for years that the horns were the icing on the cake. I gotta be honest...I LOVE ICING! My creative process for a song in Retro Hymns 2: I've picked the song. I've figured a 'general groove' idea. I went to my drummer friend Tom's studio and he created some drum grooves for me to mess around with at home. I sat at the piano and created [...]
So I've got my songs picked out. I've got arrangements figured out. I have a road map created. It gets really, really fun at this point. If you read this blog much, you'll see that I reference Lari Goss quite a bunch. I've said it before a bunch, but if you're new here...I moved to Nashville in January 1996 to intern with Lari Goss. I spent many, many days in the studio [...]
Clinton Roemer, Staedtler Mars Plastic Eraser, Judy Green Sheet Music That's my 'upbringing'. For a pretty large collection of folks, those words probably don't mean anything. But, for a good number of folks (maybe age 40 and older), this is how you began. A yellow legal pad. This idea represents so many things to me musically. For many of my friends here in Nashville, this represents my hero, my mentor [...]
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 my previous update I mentioned playing trumpet on the K-Love Cruise in the 'Double Sea Horns'. As a result of a conversation with one of our neighbors, Chad Mattson (Unspoken), we ended up playing with Unspoken on their brand new song 'Higher' for their concerts on the ship. That night after the concerts (2 sets), my wife Dana and I are walking down to get coffee with Chad and his wife [...]
I talked in a previous post about my experiences arranging music for the Duck Commander Cruise, RamCorps and Lee Greenwood. I 'officially' met a now dear friend, Mark Brannon, who is the CEO of Memphis Based travel company Premier. Mark is a great guy, and best of all...he's a trumpet player. (And a good one to boot!). Before that cruise had even set sail, we talked about horns on the K-Love Cruise. [...]
I wrote a horn arrangement for one of Jeff Slaughter's songs from a VBS collection he did with Brentwood-Benson Publishing. The next Christmas, he had this idea for a children's Christmas musical based around a penguin polar pet park. My friend, Jonathan Crumpton, VP of Brentwood-Benson, called and said, "We're doing this new musical with Jeff Slaughter and it needs to be big band and recorded live. You want to do it?" [...]
What exactly are these Instrumental Resources Routines on the website? Instrumental Resources are play-a-long CD Routines created to improve the playing ability of instrumentalists around the world, whatever their current level. A professional plays the exercise and then you play the exercise back to a click track. By utilizing the top industry professionals, you have the amazing opportunity to hear and emulate some of the greatest musicians in the world on YOUR [...]
