Writing and arranging brass parts

[Little Fat Bloke]

When creating brass parts in Logic's Studio Horns do you get each single instrument to play the same notes. For example: if you have a song in Am and you want say three trumpets, would you get the first trumpet to play an A, the second to play a C and a third to play an E? Of course you'd change the notes depending on the chords to the song, but is this how most people do it?

The reason I ask is because I'm a guitarist first and foremost, I'm certainly no keyboard player so my songs all basically have the same instrumentation: acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums and vocals, and that's pretty much it. But I'd like to embellish the basic premise of my songs with trumpets, trombones and so on, but I'm pretty much at a loss as to where to start.

I know most of you seasoned Logic users can make your brass instruments sound so professional you'd think it was genuine session players, but has anybody any tips and tricks for us old codgers who wouldn't know a saxophone from a combine harvester?

[des99]

It starts with the arrangement. I really recommend listening to brass parts for whatever genre you're interested in, deconstructing them, and looking at what's going on - you'll learn a lot.

For more contemporary pop brass sections, you'll find a range of things - times when the three instruments are playing in unison, other times where they will be playing interconnecting lines, or playing off each other, other times when they'll be playing intervals in harmony. You have a lot of arrangement tools, so they shouldn't always be doing one thing, generally speaking, otherwise it's a bit boring.

Generally, what you won't find a huge amount of is three brass instruments playing a simple root triad between them - they will often be playing further apart, with inversions and more interesting lines for colour.

And don't forget playing characteristics, like dynamics, swells, glissandos - dynamics play a big part in contemporary brass arrangements.

But like I say, this stuff is quite genre dependent - I'm typically doing pop-style brass section arrangements when I do them, but big band, brass band, orchestral or cinematic stuff all have somewhat different stylistic approaches.

[Little Fat Bloke]

17 hours ago, des99 said:

It starts with the arrangement. I really recommend listening to brass parts for whatever genre you're interested in, deconstructing them, and looking at what's going on - you'll learn a lot.

For more contemporary pop brass sections, you'll find a range of things - times when the three instruments are playing in unison, other times where they will be playing interconnecting lines, or playing off each other, other times when they'll be playing intervals in harmony. You have a lot of arrangement tools, so they shouldn't always be doing one thing, generally speaking, otherwise it's a bit boring.

Generally, what you won't find a huge amount of is three brass instruments playing a simple root triad between them - they will often be playing further apart, with inversions and more interesting lines for colour.

And don't forget playing characteristics, like dynamics, swells, glissandos - dynamics play a big part in contemporary brass arrangements.

But like I say, this stuff is quite genre dependent - I'm typically doing pop-style brass section arrangements when I do them, but big band, brass band, orchestral or cinematic stuff all have somewhat different stylistic approaches.

Yes, this is where my thinking was going. Embellishing the root notes and 3rd's and 5th's. Basically giving each instrument a bit of freedom as opposed to confining it?

In Studio Horns I'm using 3 trumpets, and with a bit of stereo panning, expression and avoiding over-quantising, the results are not too bad - for my purposes, anyway.

[Sunset]

Whatever sounds good on piano or guitar in the intended instruments range will sound proper for the particular sound, too.

You might give drop 2 - chords a try. It´s a good etude on guitar, as typical guitar block chords are organized in a drop 2 note distribution. If you find some nice progressions on the fretboard you arrange the individual notes of a 4 part chord into the particular horn voices. I took an example loosely around 5. to 17. fret upper note on high e-String assuming a convenient range for the first trumpet, not too low at least.

If you have a improvised single line on guitar, you might record it and transcribe it later on for the first trumpet. It´s okay running melodies in unison or octaves for the lower instruments in the section by several horns. It´s okay too, if not any instrument is playing the whole time. You can add on a second line underneath the main line later on. Your ear will tell you, what works when writing in parallel motion (mainly 3rds or 4ths below the particular main melody notes)

Listening to your favoured style helps a lot on that, getting scores and diving into musical analysis is not a bad idea either...

 

 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Byhxx