How to Include and Engage Horn Players in Your School Rock/Popular Ensemble
So you have a small class with mostly horns but a couple of kids play guitar and drums, or a group with lots of rhythm players and a couple of horns. You think “It would be really cool to get a rock group going or some type of horn band or at least try to get these horn players involved in my rock group.” Then you ask yourself, “How do I do that? I don’t have the time to arrange charts, I can’t find them anywhere, and I’m not even a horn player!” Chapter 4 of my book has a small section about horn players in a rock setting but being a horn player in a rock band called The Sidewalks, I have much experience with this. Here is what I know:
If you’ve read my book, Rock Coach, or some of my other posts about rock music learning, or perhaps even my column in the CME Journal you would know that to teach rock music in an authentic way you have to give up some control. This means letting the learners do a lot of the learning by having them compose, arrange, and improvise on their own. It even means letting go of the note-reading or chart safety-blanket. Don’t get me wrong, notation is important but not more important than copying, ear playing, going by feel, composing, and improvising. Reading music can actually get in the way of music making and can be distracting in a performance and quite literally creates a wall between you and the audience. In a real rock setting—especially in an original band—horn players do not have music to read, it is all copied, composed, and arranged with the other band members in a spontaneous and natural way.
How to Include and Engage Horn Players in Your School Rock Groups
Playing a Horn in a Ska-Influenced Alternative Rock Group
We sometimes learn cover tunes that would fit a band with a horn section like “Final Countdown” or “Uptown Funk” and sometimes we don’t but we will add a horn part to make it our own. A fine example of this is our ska-alternative rock arrangement of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” There are no horn lines in the original but we were able to make some that worked! When we learn a cover, we learn everything by ear because—let’s face it—there are no charts for these tunes and the time you wasted looking for charts could have been spent learning it by ear. This will be a very authentic learning experience for your students. In addition, they need to be immersed in the by-ear-learning processes to be successful musicians outside of school. We owe it to our learners to give them this opportunity. This process might take longer but you may also be surprised by how quickly they will learn it. If they are a beginning group, give them the first note if you know it and have them figure out the rest. As long as it doesn’t go too high for your brass players, note names don’t really matter if they can figure it out by ear. I have a section of my book that helps learners figure out parts by ear using a step-by-step process. If they need to write it down to remember it, have them write out a part in short-hand notation. Note-names or fingerings will suffice. We do this in The Sidewalks when needed. The three horn players in the group are perfectly capable sight-readers but have no need to utilize that skill in this group—It hinders our creative process.
Some Ways to Think About Adding Horn Lines Without Using “Charts”
When learning a cover with obvious horn lines already we:
Learn the parts by ear. If there is one part, we all learn it. It can be very cool when different horns learn the same line a play it in unison. For example, a trombone and trumpet playing the same parts are already going to be in octaves which is a neat enough effect that help to beef up each other’s sound. It is also quite stylistically appropriate. There are sometimes counter-melodies that can also be easily picked out with practice. If you have two parts at once (like a melody and a counter melody) and you have three horns, have two of them play the melody in octaves and one of them play the counter-melody. More advanced groups will be able to play in any key quite easily. A beginner group of brass players might have to have the tune transposed for range.
Once we have the parts learned by ear sometimes we will add some parts to make it more interesting. The first part we might add if we are trying to make it our own are horn pads. The term pads refers to a synthesizer term that means, essentially, backing chords. They usually have a very cool effect on them that fade into the background but add a very neat sound to the overall mix. These sounds are the opposites of synth leads. Our horn pads are usually always played in the chorus. When coming up with some pads for the chorus, what the chords are may not even matter if you already have your guitarist playing the chords. I just go with what sounds good at that section. Overthinking what chord you are playing can get in the way of finding a good arrangement. You might get some really thick sounding chords with some suspensions that really add to the music. If it sounds good, keep it–if it doesn’t, don’t.
If we are learning a tune that has no horns to try and make it our own, we:
Have the rhythm section jam it out and figure out each section to the song. While they are doing this, the horns try and find parts that would work well on the horns by listening to the track. Opening melodic material and small shots or backing vocals a-la “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele also work well for horns.
Add horn pads in the chorus. As mentioned earlier, don’t overthink it. Also, it might take a while to establish exactly what it is you or your learners want in this section but that is okay, this is part of the creative process.
Might add a horn solo in the bridge or pre-verse. To really make a song include a horn, give them a solo.
Basically, you need to think about your horn section in a rock group as a keyboard or synthesizer. Anything a synthesizer typically plays, will work well as a horn line.
Write Your Own Music
Songwriting and composition are natural extensions of playing rock or any popular style. Try having your group write their own music. It could be terrible if they are new to it, but that’s okay because composition and songwriting are messy activities. You have to start somewhere. It could be amazing, they and you will never know if they are never given the opportunity. Think about it this way: If you’ve never made a mistake, you will never come u