Segment 3: Master Class

for Trumpet/Cornet (21:25)

For use in Lesson #7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To go to a specific chapter, slide the elapsed time indicator in the video screen to the timing point shown for that chapter below.

Chapters:

1. Clinician introductions: Dan Barrett, Randy Sandke (0:00)

2. Trumpet, Cornet and Flugelhorn (0:29)

3. Trumpet Mutes for Traditional Jazz (1:42)

4. Trumpet Techniques (3:22)

5. Your Role (6:50)

6. Being the “Floor Leader” (8:48)

7. Ensemble Trumpet Playing: Classic New Orleans Style (11:23)

8. Ensemble Trumpet Playing: New Orleans Revival Style (12:03)

9. Ensemble Trumpet Playing: San Francisco Style (13:02)

10. Ensemble Trumpet Playing: Chicago/Swing/Mainstream Styles (14:43)

11. Soloing on Trumpet: Classic New Orleans Style (a la Armstrong) (15:50)

12. Soloing on Trumpet: Chicago Style (16:48)

13. A Message From Randy (17:39)

14. A Message From Dan (18:07)

15. Clip of Louis Armstrong (18:30)

16. Clip of Bix Beiderbecke (19:20)

17. Clip of Bobby Hackett (19:44)

18. Clip of Sidney DeParis (20:26)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A detailed description/transcription of this video segment follows for reference

Clinician Introductions: (left to right) Dan Barrett, Randy Sandke

Dan: [plays improvisation on cornet] Hi, my name’s Dan Barrett, and we’re going to talk a little bit about the cornet and trumpet’s role in traditional jazz.

Randy: [plays a cadenza on trumpet] Hi, I’m Randy Sandke and I’m going to talk about the role of the trumpet and cornet in traditional jazz.

Trumpet, Cornet and Flugelhorn

Randy: This of course is a trumpet, and it has perhaps a little brighter, more penetrating tone than the others that I’ll get to. [demonstrates trumpet]  I’ll play a little cornet. Cornet tends to have a more rounded, mellow tone. [demonstrates cornet] And the last one is a flugelhorn, which is seldom used in traditional jazz, although some have used it, and it’s even darker and more mellow. You notice it’s bigger, the tubing is thicker; and it’s more of a solo kind of instrument. [demonstrates flugelhorn]

Trumpet Mutes for Traditional Jazz

Randy: [demonstrates straight mute]

Randy: [demonstrates plunger]

Randy: [demonstrates pixie mute with plunger]

Randy: [demonstrates cup mute]

Randy: [demonstrates solotone mute] Or with your hand, because it has an opening at the end.  [demonstrates solotone with wa-wa effect]

Randy: [demonstrates harmon mute, stem in] And again, you can use your hand as well. [plays “Sugar Blues” in harmon mute with wa-wa effect]

Randy: [demonstrates harmon mute, stem out]

Randy: [demonstrates “fanning” with derby mute]

Trumpet Techniques

Randy: I’m going to talk about some of the special techniques that the trumpet can do that maybe some of the instruments cannot do, or maybe not as well as the trumpet. One of them which is very associated with Louis Armstrong, although he was probably the first but many have done it since, is the shake or lip-trill, whatever you want to call it. And let me demonstrate it. [plays a cadenza with several lip trills in different registers] Now, the way I’m doing it is like a lip trill, where I’m just sort of using the back of my tongue to modulate the air stream to get the upper note in the harmonic series; in other words, if I slow it down, it’s: [plays a slow trill, accelerates] It’s very important to keep the air going through all that, so that, you know, as long as you have the air stream strong and steady, you can get the other notes, and play around with the air stream. The way Louis and some of the other people do it is to actually shake the horn, which is called a shake, and that’s not the way I do it but I’ll try to show you. [demonstrates a shake a la Armstrong] Another thing that Louis was fond of doing that many have imitated and used successfully is a rip, where you kind of slide up to a note, but, you know, abruptly for effect. [plays a line with three rips] And also there’s a technique called growling, and there are two ways to do this too. One is flutter-tonguing, where you go trrrrrr, like that with your tongue; another way to do it which I kind of prefer is just a rasp in the throat, kind of like grrrrrr, like that. But they’re both kind of nasty sounds, and they’re supposed to be. So here’s just a flutter tongue. [plays a short phrase with tongue growls] And then this is the rasp. [plays a similar, longer phrase with throat growls] As you can see, they’re used a lot in bluesy kind of passages. Another thing is a kind of moaning way of playing which you can use, the half-valve, where you don’t push the valves up all the way. Again, Louis was a master of this, Bix Beiderbecke had a great, very personal way of doing it, but it was something like this. [plays a bluesy phrase with several half-valve moans] Another effective half-valve technique is the gliss, and Louis Armstrong was a master of this and he really popularized it, and—I’ll demonstrate… [plays a lick ending with two high glisses]

Your Role

Randy: I want to talk a little bit about the role of the trumpet or cornet as the lead instrument in ensemble playing in traditional jazz. It’s very important to realize that you’re stating the melody, so you want to, first of all, know the melody, and know it correctly, but then know how to play around with it a little bit, and we’ll talk about that. For instance, let’s take “Hindustan”; I’ll just play the opening phrase, the way it’s written. [plays a few bars of “Hindustan” melody] Now, what you can do is, even if I’m going to play the same notes, try to swing it, syncopate it, make it rhythmically a little punchier. [plays a few bars of “Hindustan”, embellished melody] You know, very simple variation. Now a couple of important things to be aware of. One is that between phrases you want to leave space for the clarinet and the trombone to fill in. So you don’t have to play all the time, and this really makes it easier to play, to sustain. The other thing is that you don’t want to conflict with the ranges of the trombone below you and the clarinet above you; you want to keep things pretty much in the middle register. Maybe on the outchorus at the very end you can take off and go high and the clarinet can play above you, and you can get a little looser with it. And it’s important that the people who are listening be able to recognize the tune you’re playing; you’re kind of the anchor that’s holding it together. So it’s very important to state the melody clearly, directly, simply, but still with some fire and some drive; and that’s usually a matter of making nice little rhythmic phrases out of it, thinking rhythmically—so important.

Being the “Floor Leader”

Randy: The trumpet player/cornetist, being the lead instrument, generally sets the lead in many ways, not just by playing the melody; but frequently he’s the one or she is the one that counts off the tune, and also sets the dynamics, the general overall dynamics. Another role that the cornetist or trumpet player has very frequently is to direct traffic, we say, or just determine the order of solos; and usually you do this by looking at the person, or pointing, or you know, maybe even saying quietly, but it’s important for everybody in the band to have their eyes open and pay attention and just observe what’s going on. And it’s also very important for the leader, if it is the trumpet player, whoever does it, to be clear about their intentions. Now when you get to the end of the piece, it’s also a function of the trumpet player to generally decide whether you want to continue with a couple of outchoruses—could be just one outchorus, could be two, could be more, depending on how you feel. And again, it’s good to build, to not start out so loud that you’ve got nothing left. So these are important things to remember. Now, there are certain hand symbols that are kind of universal that everybody uses. For instance, “another chorus” is this [twirls finger]; for instance if you want somebody to take another chorus as a soloist you do this [twirls finger]. If you want to cue taking the band out, finishing, you do that [makes a fist], and you can play with one hand and signal with the other. Another thing typically in the ending is sometimes you’ll have a—you come to the end of the last chorus and you want the drums to play a break. So you can do this [holds up four fingers], “four”, which means a four-bar drum break; it can also mean trade fours with the drums, so it depends on the context. If it’s in the middle of the tune, this [holds up four fingers] would mean “fours”; and sometimes you do this: point to yourself, point to the drums, or point to him first, meaning that he or she would start. But at the end of the tune if you finish the last chorus and you do this [holds up four fingers] it means usually a four-bar drum tag. And then the choice again of the trumpet player or the leader of the ensemble is do you end it with four bars, or say the last eight bars of the tune. And the only way to signal this is to just basically shout it out, “four” or “eight”—just say “four!” [raises trumpet], “eight!”—hopefully everybody will hear you, and they’ll be listening for it, too.

Ensemble Trumpet Playing: Classic New Orleans Style

Dan: The early New Orleans players might play “Hindustan” something like this, with a pronounced vibrato, maybe a more staccato approach to the music but always very rhythmic, very energetic, and hopefully exciting. Here’s “Hindustan” as might have been played by one of the early New Orleans greats. [plays lead on “Hindustan”, partial chorus] And you get the idea with the vibrato—I’m actually shaking the horn to get that effect.

Ensemble Trumpet Playing: New Orleans Revival Style

Dan: One of the very special trumpet players who used a derby on a stand like this to good advantage was a New Orleans Revival trumpet player named Kid Thomas Valentine. And he had a very explosive, continually surprising style, very exciting. I’ll try to, to the best of my ability, give you an idea of what that style was like. Here’s the old standard called “Hindustan”, as might have been played by Thomas Valentine or one of the other New Orleans players using a derby mute like this.  [plays lead on “Hindustan”, partial chorus, in derby mute] So he had a little bit of fun going back and forth between the derby and the open horn.

Ensemble Trumpet Playing: San Francisco Style

Dan: Now in the San Francisco Style one often finds two cornets or two trumpets in a jazz band. That means the lead trumpet has to play fairly straight and fairly directly, so that the second trumpet can improvise a harmony part underneath him. So here’s “Hindustan” in a San Francisco Style. It’s going to be a little bit brassy, fairly straight, and I’m always keeping a two-beat feeling in mind for this style of jazz. [plays lead on “Hindustan”, partial chorus] There are various ways to end tunes. One of the most popular originated in New Orleans in the early days, and was adopted by the San Francisco jazz bands, and it became part of the San Francisco Style. It’s called a double ending. And what we do is we add two bars to the end of the chorus. We end on the tonic chord, and extend it by two bars, playing a hot phrase, and of course trying to end it decisively and clearly. So let’s go back to the last section of “Hindustan”, and I’ll try and play a double ending for you. [plays last 8 bars of “Hindustan” with double ending] There’s a double ending.

Ensemble Trumpet Playing: Chicago/Swing/Mainstream Styles

Randy:  Let me give you an example of the same kind of lead on “Hindustan”, but Chicago style. [plays lead on “Hindustan”, partial chorus]

Dan:  Now endings have to be clear and decisive, and one of the cleanest endings is ending on the third beat of the last measure. But instead of ending on the third beat of the last measure, you might want to end on the “and” of two. Let me try and set up that kind of an ending for you. Here’s the last section of “Hindustan”. [plays last 8 bars of “Hindustan”] A little more syncopated than ending right on three.

Soloing on Trumpet: Classic New Orleans Style (a la Armstrong)

Randy: Of course you have much more freedom on a solo than you do with stating an ensemble chorus. We’ll start with the Classic New Orleans Style, and you know, something you might have heard on the Armstrong Hot Fives. [plays a solo on “Hindustan” in early Louis Armstrong style]

Soloing On Trumpet: Chicago Style

Randy: And then we get to the more flowing, more chordally intricate perhaps, Chicago Style. [plays a solo on “Hindustan”]

A Message From Randy

Randy:  I think that there are many important lessons to be learned specifically from traditional jazz. You can’t hide behind all kinds of fancy, you know, harmonic schemes and all this, or playing a lot of notes. So it’s a great music to listen to and it’s great to play. It’s a very joyous music; it’s really from the heart, it’s a passionate kind of music.

A Message From Dan

Dan: I used to play records at home and try and play along with great cornet players, and when I could play what they were playing then I would try and throw in my own little phrases in between their phrases, and basically learned how to improvise that way. And it’s time well spent. So I’ll encourage you to listen, keep practicing, and keep playing traditional jazz.

Clip of Louis Armstrong

Randy: Louis Armstrong is a giant in music; and sit back, relax, and watch the master at work.

Louis Armstrong plays “Dippermouth Blues” with his group

Clip of Bix Beiderbecke

Randy: Bix Beiderbecke, you know, a master melodic player; beautiful sound, beautiful phrasing.

Bix Beiderbecke and his Gang play “Jazz Me Blues” [dubbed soundtrack]

Clip of Bobby Hackett

Randy: Bobby Hackett is an object lesson in how to play smooth and hot at the same time.

Bobby Hackett plays “Bill Bailey” with his group

Clip of Sidney DeParis

Dan: And now here’s the great trumpet player Sidney DeParis, with his metal derby mute.

Sidney DeParis plays “Royal Garden Blues” with the Wilber DeParis band

 

Performance Clip Details

Ch. 15: Louis Armstrong, “Dippermouth Blues”, 1947: Louis Armstrong cornet, Mutt Carey cornet, Barney Bigard clarinet, Kid Ory trombone, Charlie Beal piano, Bud Scott guitar, Red Callender bass, Zutty Singleton drums

Ch. 16: Bix Beiderbecke and his Gang, “Jazz Me Blues”, 1928 (video)/1927 (audio): Bix Beiderbecke cornet, Frank Signorelli piano (audio only), Adrian Rollini bass saxophone (audio only), Chauncey Morehouse drums (audio only)

Ch. 17: Bobby Hackett, “Bill Bailey”, 1962: Bobby Hackett cornet, Dave McKenna piano, Nabil Totah bass, Morey Feld drums

Ch. 18: Wilbur DeParis band, “Royal Garden Blues”, 1960: Sidney DeParis trumpet, Sonny White piano, John Smith banjo, Hayes Alvis bass, Wilbert Kirk drums; clarinetist Garvin Bushell is seen but not heard

Music heard under the “A Message From…” chapters is performed by the Capital Focus Jazz Band youth group of Washington, DC.