Hi Craig,
1) See Chris Smith's comments RE: why jazz players eschew the F
attachment. There are several high-profile jazz players who play large-
bore instruments -- none of them use F attachments.
2) I already agreed with you regarding the GPO orchestral t.tbn.
samples. Hell, I agree with you that it would be nice if some of the
JABB samples had F-trigger ranges as well. I was just explaining why
this wasn't the case -- the players they sampled for JABB were almost
certainly all using straight horns, which is overwhelmingly the norm
for jazz trombonists.
Cheers,
- Darcy
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
On 10 Aug 2008, at 4:34 PM, Craig Parmerlee wrote:
Two things:
1) You are mixing bore size with instrument length. 95+% of
instruments with the F attachment use a large symphonic bore. It is
the bore size, and not the presence of an F attachment, that causes
NYC jazz players to bring the straight horns. Most of them probably
do NOT own a "jazz-bore" sized trombone that has an F attachment.
And if they did, they might be reluctant to bring it out, not
because it is inappropriate, but because of the various biases and
misunderstandings among the non-trombonists in the house. "He
couldn't be a real jazz player. He's got an F attachment."
2) The sounds included with Finale are NOT designated as "jazz"
trombones at all. In fact, they are designated as "Orch trombone
1/2/3" And that being the case, a cutoff at low-E is just plain
ignorant. There are loads of orchestral scores that assume the
second trombonist can play below the low E, and it would be a very
uncommon scene for any professional 2nd trombonist to not be playing
with an F attachment. It happens, but only when the section is
"going small" to try to recreate a period sound. In these cases,
the Principal will often play on alto trombone and the bass
trombonist might play on a "547" bore trombone (smaller than a
normal bass trombone.)
It is a moot point for me. I've already put out the bucks to buy
the the full JABB set, so the postmen will put me out of my misery
in a couple of days. :)
Darcy James Argue wrote:
Hi John,
It's not that NYC players don't own F-trigger horns or don't know
how to use them. It's that they don't bring them to jazz gigs
(including bigband) where they might be called on to play a solo.
Their main solo horn is almost always a straight tenor trombone.
The F-trigger horn is a backup instrument for those situations
where they need one. It's definitely not a generational thing --
jazz trombone soloists of all ages overwhelmingly prefer the
straight horn.
As I have said previously, Garritan JABB has a sampled bass
trombone in addition to the five tenor trombones. Obviously they
would not put out a big band set without including bass trombone.
That ball was not dropped, I assure you.
In fact, I think anyone would be hard-pressed to complain about the
instrument selection for JABB -- it is amazingly comprehensive.
They actually have MORE instruments than they list on the product
page:
http://www.garritan.com/jazz.html
Saxophones:
Sopranino saxophone
Mezzo Soprano sax
2 Soprano saxophones
(1 straight, 1 curved)
3 Alto saxophones
2 C Melody saxophones
4 Tenor saxophoness
2 Baritone saxophones
2 Bass saxophones
2 Contrabass saxophones
1 Subcontrabass saxophone (Tubax)
Woodwind doubles:
Piccolo
3 Flutes
Alto Flute
3 Bb Clarinets
Bass Clarinet
Trumpets:
5 Bb Trumpets (all with extended range, one with extreme range)
[open, straight mute, cup mute, Harmon mute, bucket mute]
1 Plunger trumpet
5 Flugelhorns
Trombones:
5 Tenor Trombones [open, straight mute, cup mute, Harmon mute,
bucket mute]
Bass Trombone
[open, straight mute, cup mute, Harmon mute, bucket mute]
1 Plunger trombone
Tuba
Keyboards:
Steinway B grand piano
Rhodes piano
Accordion
Guitars:
2 Electric guitars
Acoustic guitar
Basses:
2 Upright acoustic basses (plus one w/arco samples)
2 Fretless electric basses
2 Fretted electric basses
Drum Kits
Classic Jazz kits
Fusion Kit
Brush kit
Percussion:
Vibraphone (hard and soft mallets)
Wide variety of percussion including Latin percussion, bongos,
congas, timbales, wood blocks, bells, whistles, etc.
I really don't see how anyone could have serious issues with that
selection of instruments. Yes, it would be nice if one or two of
the five tenor trombones had F-trigger range notes (though this
could easily be added in an update). But they included a lot more
instruments than they truly needed to for this library.
Cheers,
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Brooklyn, NY
On 10 Aug 2008, at 12:18 PM, John Howell wrote:
At 7:41 AM -0400 8/10/08, dhbailey wrote:
Sure, most of the top-tier jazz trombone players may not use F-
attachments when on jazz gigs (unless they're on 4th bone parts)
but I'm fairly positive that all of them would own and feel
comfortable playing F-attachment horns for those gigs when
they're required to have that extended range, and they could have
been sampled on those instruments. Or Garritan could have done
some programming magic and figured out how to stretch the range.
Soundfonts can do it.
We're a small Music Department with no more than around 140
majors, but our studio teachers are first rate. We don't
presently have a specific jazz major (although we did, and it was
becoming very popular for both instrumentalists and vocalists
before the first of several drastic budget cuts from the state),
and we don't have specific jazz studio teachers (except for
trumpet, since a dual-threat teacher was specifically advertised
for).
That said, however, I can GUARANTEE that any and every serious
trombone major has an F-attachment instrument and is taught how to
use it. And that includes in our two big bands. As I commented
earlier, I'm dealing with a different generation than Darcy is,
but this is the generation that's going to take over in due course.
Considering the use of jazz bass trombone itself, going back to
George Roberts and Kenton, I would say that yes, Garitan dropped
the ball on this, or at least acted on questionable advice that
may not survive the generation gap.
John
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