The Secret to a Tight Horn Section

Bands that feature a horn section made up of brass or woodwind instruments come in all shapes, sizes and genres. Big bands will often include around four trumpets, four trombones and five saxophones, while some cover bands make do with one trumpet, a tenor sax and maybe an alto saxophone and trombone. But the more horns you have, the harder it is to get everything perfectly aligned. So, what’s the secret to building a tight-sounding horn section? Following up on our first blog covering the brass section, we take a deeper dive into the finer details.

Making a list of what goes into making a brass section sound super-tight is not that difficult: every note needs to sit perfectly in the groove; the musicians need to start and stop every note at precisely the same point; they also need to play every note with the same dynamics. Easy right? Unfortunately, no – it’s far easier said than done because here, the devil really does lie in every single detail and there are far more details to it all than you might think.

Playing with the Same Attitude

“Playing in a pop band asks for a really specific attitude,” reveals trumpet player and arranger, Martin Hiddink. “One horn section will sound better than the other, not because they’re necessarily better musicians, but because all of the musicians involved share the same attitude and approach. Basically, to be a good horn section, you need to be playing as a unit and thinking as a unit. This is the starting point for making absolutely sure that every note starts and, just as importantly, every note ends at the same moment. Every member also needs to perform the articulation and the placement in exactly the same way.” This is the base ingredient for a spectacular brass section but as we’ve already mentioned, that’s easier said than done. What do you need to do to build that single unit?

Feel the Notes

Being able to play tightly demands a lot of concentration. You need the necessary focus in order to play perfectly in time. The easiest note to play tight to the beat is the note that falls on the first count of a bar, because it’s by far the easiest to find and the easiest to feel. “Hitting a note on the first count always works out,” Martin says. “But in reality, most of the notes that the horn section will be playing don’t land on the count but halfway between counts. This makes it a bit harder to time your playing well. You can’t just count or approach it mathematically. In a genre like funk, you can count to find the precise moment where you need to come in, because funk is pretty straight-forward, but if you’re playing numbers with more swing to them, then the count gets less clear. Everyone needs to feel the swing and play with the same attitude to make sure that those notes land in exactly the same place.”

Horn sections tend to ‘hang’ in the tempo when it comes to the timing. So the timing is more ‘lazy’ or laid back; pulling rather than pushing. “Whether or not laid back timing will work depends on the style of music,” Martin explains. “It very often works for jazz, but it definitely doesn’t work for disco, funk or a lot of pop. Also, the risk of having a ‘laid back’ or pulling horn section is that the rhythm section, so the bass and drums, start matching their timing, making the whole band pull back and slow down.” So it’s also important for the entire horn section to listen closely to the rhythm section and avoid adopting laid back timing when it doesn’t work with the music.

Dynamics

By dynamics, we mean more than just playing loud or less loud – like you would when the sheet music instructs you to play the piano mezzoforte or forte. The creativity of dynamics lies in the small crescendos; in maybe just three or four notes; a bold and impacting accent; highlighting the corners of a phrase; and so on. The dynamics should also reflect the function of the played line in response to the vocals. A little three note run played between the vocal lines might sound impressive, but if the vocals and horns are in sync in this way, you need to be careful not to overwhelm the melody and lyrics.

Follow the Leader

“When it comes to timing, it’s also important that every horn section has a designated lead and that everyone follows them,” Martin continues. “The lead is the chief of the timings and is also the kind of section leader, so the point of contact for the entire horn section. Usually, the lead will be the first trumpet, which takes care of the highest notes and registers. The lead role can be taken on by another member of the horn section, but it always needs to be an instrument that sits in the higher registers. This is simply because higher notes are easier to pick out and hear clearly than lower notes.”

If the lead plays a crescendo, then all of the other horns need to follow. Even if the lead runs out of air partway through a note, none of the lower pitched horns should carry the note through, even if that’s how the phrase is written on paper. Next to timing, it’s also essential to balance the volume of the entire section which is also something that the lead musician sets. If the lead notices that no one else in the section is playing with as much power as they are, it’s actually better musically for the lead to ease off a bit to match the energy of the rest of the horn section. Naturally, the instruments that lie in the mid pitch range also need to keep their ears open for any imbalances. A horn section without a lead musician is actually unthinkable, insists Martin: “While you might still catch some horn sections on the amateur circuit trying to pull it off without a lead musician, the fact remains that, the timing of pop music basically demands that you have a lead simply because the rest of the brass section needs someone to follow. Trying to follow the drums and bass won’t be enough, the section needs a focal point: a guide. That’s the job of the lead.” All of the other members of the horn section therefore need to understand and accept that the moment they step on stage, the lead is the ‘boss’. “It’s only ever during rehearsals that you have time to discuss any details. Next to that, the lead musician needs to find a way of playing that suits the rest of the horn section and be good enough to play really consistently.”

Give the Soloist Plenty of Room

The quality of a horn section isn’t exactly determined by the quality of every individual musician, but by how well they play with each other. This means that the whole section needs a really disciplined and task-focussed attitude. It also means that a good soloist doesn’t necessarily need to be a good section musician. Pretty much any horn section will include one or more members that have the chops to deliver a good solo, so as a member of the horn section, it’s also important to learn to step back and allow space for whoever’s delivering their solo. And we’re not just talking about a full blown sixteen-bar solo, but also the short licks and improvisations that happen here and there.

A Strong Finish

We’re not even close to explaining how a tight horn section operates because, besides following the lead musician to make sure that everyone is hitting the start of the notes at the same time, every horn player needs to play every note for precisely the same amount of time. “In a lot of horn sections, there’s actually not enough thought going into ending notes as one unit,” Martin comments. “The truth is that a strong finish is just as important as a strong start. This is something that you can definitely learn. It just takes practice. For example, try playing a three-beat note in 4/4, starting on the one. The note needs to be held for the full three counts before ending precisely on the four, so no sooner and no later. This is a great exercise for any horn section if they want to learn to play as a complete unit. It’s worth experimenting and drilling different note-lengths as well.”

As a horn player, you can also end a note in a variety of ways. So you can give a note a blunt end by blocking it with your tongue (something you learn if you play in a big bang), or you can give it a soft ending by stopping the flow of air. “This can be varied in a single song. But the rule is that every member of the horn section needs to end every note the same way,” Martin continues. “It almost goes without saying that every member of the horn section needs to concentrate on their timing – all the time, so they always need to be counting.”

Tuning & Blending

A good horn section isn’t just about tightness and precision, but also perfect intonation and a blend of the total sound, so every player needs to have a good grip on their tone and be able to keep every note as pure as possible, without any noise. The graphs in the image below makes it clear what happens if the sound isn’t well intonated and blended. In the first graph, you can see a representation of an instrument that isn’t played well, so you can see that the peaks of the higher overtones quickly die away and that a lot of energy is wasted on noise, indicated by the more muddy area between the peaks of the sound wave. In the second graph the note is far more pure, the overtones remain strong and are actually even stronger than in the first graph. When playing as a unit, you’re trying to get those peaks as close together as possible. If even one of the instruments in the horn section has a muddy and undefined sound this creates clashing frequencies and the total sound won’t blend well. Trying to intonate with players with a weaker tonal core and a lot of noise, therefore, just doesn’t make any sense. With smaller brass instruments, the intonation tends to creep up a little bit in the higher registers so you need to have an extremely good technique to avoid this. Even for professional orchestral trumpeters, it can be quite a struggle to remain intonated with the string section in certain pieces.

Figure 1: The difference between a badly blown note and a well played note is clear in this spectrum analysis. In the graph on the left, the note is dead and noisy and, in the graph on the right, the note is far clearer and will blend better with other instruments.

The Art of Blowing

Besides the musical aspect, there’s a distinct art to playing a brass or wind instrument. Any horn player needs to put in the hours of practice and do it regularly even just to produce a pure note. This applies to any brass instrument, including trumpets and trombones. In the first place, it can take a long time to perfect your embouchure and then learn to continuously maintain it. Playing a brass instrument is also more physically demanding than an instrument like the saxophone.

The Look is Also Important

Sometimes, when a horn section is standing on stage with a full band, it can feel like they’re out on their own island. Some horn sections even start discussing passages that could have gone better right there and then, in front of the audience. This only disrupts your focus – not just the horn section but the entire band – so always save any post-show evaluations for later, and instead, concentrate on what you have to play next.

Horn Section Arrangements

A vocal line with lyrics is fairly easy to remember. Guitarists can easily memorise a straightforward chord progression without needing any sheet music. However, when it comes to multiphonic brass arrangements, it’s almost impossible to memorise every detail. The arrangement is almost always transcribed on paper by someone who knows what they’re doing, but to do that, you need to know what chords are being played, how the brass is going to move through the harmony, and how best to carve up the underlying notes, taking into account the range of the instruments you have in your horn section. Sometimes, a band will have a decent arranger in its ranks, but you can also buy ready-made arrangements or outsource the job to a skilled arranger.

The Arrangement

“When you have three or more players in the horn section, then you have more options when it comes to the harmonies,” Martin explains. “While that’s great it can also be a pitfall. First of all, the arranger needs to avoid writing everything in three-part or multi-part harmonies. If you’re always playing three-part harmonies, then your horn section will quickly sound bland. You need to dose them. Also, playing three or multi-part harmonies does nothing more than thicken up the chords. This works really well when a part needs to sound really bombastic, like at the end of Music by John Miles, but often playing long chords adds nothing to the music.”

So, there’s definitely nothing wrong with playing in unison. In fact it’s recommended. But the trick is to strike a good balance between playing in unison (so the same notes at the same time) and playing multi-voice harmonies. “When playing in unison, you can also really capitalise on the different timbre of each instrument,” Martin adds. “And if you have a trombonist who can also play the higher registers well, then let them take it on every now and then and get the trumpet to take on the lower register and arrange them in unison, in exactly the same octave. This can sound really energetic. The horn section of Chicago does this a lot. It gives the music a lot of power.” Of course, the horn section can also play some stunning harmonies at the right moments. “It’s not common for the brass section to add extra colour to the chords played by the band,” Martin comments. “So if the band plays a C7 chord, the horn section needs to, for example, add a 9th or a 13th. Or, to get really heavy, they could add a min9 or a min10. In some genres, this really works but in pop music it often won’t fit.”

Not Too Many Sharps and Flats

When writing the arrangement for the horn section, you also need to take into account the fact that not every instrument can reach the higher registers. Next to that, you need to be aware of the limited options you’ll have when transposing, so when you need to shift a song into a different key, for example, when the vocalist can sing a song better in a higher or lower key. Make sure your notes don’t get too high and make sure that you’re not forcing the musicians to play in too difficult a key. Most brass and wind instruments are tuned in Bb and are a note lower than standard notation. If, for example, a song is in E (which is a standard key for guitars), then the horn section needs to play in F♯. If there are six sharp signs on the key symbol then that’s not going to be ideal for them.

Consider the Articulation

It’s worth stating that, for any horn section, it’s really important that the arrangement is good. This isn’t just so that the music and harmonies make sense, but also because it’s worth having the details on paper. Using points, strikes and carets placed above certain notes, the arranger can indicate whether a note needs to be short or long. Using accents, you can also notate a lot about the articulation, so which notes need to be accented. A ‘>’ on a note, for example, indicates a really strong accent, not too short. “Take something like the intro of Disco Inferno by The Trammps,” Martin explains. “It includes multiple eighths. If you just let the horn section do their thing, they’ll all play those notes differently, with different lengths and articulations. This is why it’s important that the arranger indicates how the eighths need to be played. For example: the first long, the second short, the third short, the fourth long and with an accent and so on. The articulation needs to be clear, otherwise everyone will just interpret it their own way. If there’s no articulation notated in the arrangement, then you need to make some agreements on how things will go.”

Articulation symbols are also a tool for keeping the notation simple. For example, it’s better to make four quarter-notes on the beat shorter by adding staccato dots than writing out the eighth notes followed by eighth rests. Tip: listen to as many other horn sections as you can from a range of different genres to see how the different styles use different articulations. “A really great illustration is the Blues Brothers. The horn section plays notes differently than I would myself, but that’s exactly what makes the sound of the Blues Brothers unique. That uniqueness is largely determined by the articulation of the horn player and the long bass notes played by Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn. You can learn so much by listening to the music you love. You really don’t have to reinvent the wheel.” In Figure 3 below, you can see a good example of notation that includes detailed articulation.

Figure 3: This shows the start of the trumpet line of Incognito’s cover version of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Don’t You Worry About a Thing’. It tells you what happens in the empty bars; includes all of the articulation instructions for every note; as well as a single crescendo to smooth everything out.

Foolproof

Of course, there will be shows that not every horn player will be able to make. It’s those moments that make it essential that your arrangements are ‘foolproof’, so every articulation, form, dynamic, page division, tempo notation and so on needs to be clear and easy to understand. This will make sure that anyone filling in for the night will be able to prepare well at home and deliver a good performance. Remember, a good musician is likely to get really frustrated if they make a mistake because the notation is off. Another great argument for working with notation from the start is that it means that no one will have to unlearn anything later. If you’ve already played through the piece a few times and have found your own way through, only to find later on that, on closer inspection, you got it wrong. Removing that original way of playing the piece from your brain will be tough. If it’s possible, it’s also really useful to listen to the original recording a few times before you start playing.

Reading the Music

Once the arrangements are notated they, of course, need to be read. Most horn players will have taken their first steps as children in music classes, or later as part of a marching band or harmonic orchestra, where the culture demands that you’re able to read music. Whoever learns to read music has already given themselves an incredible foundation if they want to play with other musicians. However, it’s worth noting that the material of a cover band or big band will be really different to the material you used to play in the harmonic orchestra or marching band – even if you were in an ensemble that sometimes made a piece swing or drift into funk. One of the things you really need to learn and understand is how to play an offbeat. Offbeats are notated in eighths (creating what’s called the triplet feel, giving the music a ‘hop’), sixteenths and shuffled sixteenths. Every member of the horn section needs to be able to play the offbeats tightly to the beat of a metronome, and do it with ease. If one member of the section can’t pull it off and just bounces along with the others then the horn section will never sound tight.

Covers

Say you’re the arranger of the horn section and you’re working on a cover that includes a horn section. Of course, you want to echo the original parts as closely as possible. This means you need to be able to listen analytically. Start by focusing on the highest note range, which will usually be the lead trumpet. The highest notes of a horn section are usually the ‘hallmark’ of the part and therefore the easiest to pick out. The notes below that region are where you have a little more freedom as an arranger. Of course, it might be that your horn section has a slightly different lineup of instruments than the original, so how does that work? Martin explains: “If you have a three-part horn section with a trombone, a saxophone and a trumpet, you could opt for a root chord like a C-major chord. So the trombone plays the low C, the saxophone plays the E and the trumpet plays the high G. While this is possible, it can also sound a little boring. Also, you’re probably just doubling the bass guitar, because they’re likely to play the root note of the chord as well. Things start sounding more exciting when you flip it around a bit. For example, the trombone could play a low G, the saxophone could play the C and trumpet could play an E.” Try out the chord on a piano first. Play the bass note on the left and play the chord you’re writing for the horn section on the right. This will give you a good impression of what it’s likely to sound like. Can your saxophonist play both tenor and alto? These kinds of opportunities are worth taking advantage of as well. “It can sound better when the saxophone and trumpet aren’t that far apart in pitch,” advises Martin. “If the trumpet is playing lower notes, then a tenor sax will really compliment it.”

With some songs, the more triads the horn section plays, the better the song sounds. But with a lot of pop songs, the chords have maybe four or more notes. This gives you more options as the arranger. “You can do things like write in clusters,” explains Martin. “Then the notes can be placed really close together. For example, a seventh can be placed really close to the root. This adds some extra tension to the brass arrangement. Some styles of music and some specific songs really start blooming when you do things like that. However, it doesn’t work so well in ‘sweeter’ songs.”

Want to hear one of the best examples of a brass section? Then listen to Earth, Wind & Fire, Tower of Power and The Seawind Horns (for example, on the album ‘Off the Wall’ by Michael Jackson)

See also

» Want to Add a Brass Section to the Band? Here’s 8 Tips for the Perfect Collab
» Get to Know the Clarinet
» Brass Wind Instruments From High to Low
» Tips To Keep Your Brass Instrument In Pristine Condition
» How To Enhance The Dynamics Of Your Music
» Want to Play Tight? Then Nail These Exercises
» How to Play Great Solos Over Chord Progressions
» The Breathing Cycle and Breath Support for Singing

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