Boplicity (guitar + horns)

[grahambop]

Some time back I did a version of Boplicity (from Birth of the Cool) with all the horn parts from the Gil Evans arrangement played on guitars. It occurred to me that without too much effort, it would be fun to re-do it with the parts played on horns, just because I can (!).

As I already had the whole arrangement written out in Musescore, I exported the individual midi tracks to Reaper, and attached a VST plugin (Sine Player Big Band) for the big-band horn sounds. The plugin doesn't do tuba and french horn, so for those I used the instrument sounds from Musescore.

I re-used the audio and video from my previous guitar melody part and solos. So basically it's the Birth of the Cool nonet with added guitar!

[grahambop]

For comparison here’s the ‘all-guitar’ version. I think it makes the individual harmony voices a bit more distinct?

[bluenote61]

Wow! Great playing!

[grahambop]

Thanks!

Have to say doing the ‘6 guitars’ version took me ages, what with learning all the parts, recording them and producing the video from all the various segments, I doubt I could be bothered to go through it again!

[Strat-itis]

Man, that sounds excellent. I'm particularly surprised at how good the attack and envelope of the horns sound. While you obviously played the rhythm to everything which is right on. It sounds cool because the guitar attacks slightly more immediately and the horns sag slightly like a big band.

[joe2758]

meh, let me know when you play all parts solo. jk, really cool!

[grahambop]

meh, let me know when you play all parts solo. jk, really cool!

dude i’m working on it.

[grahambop]

Man, that sounds excellent. I'm particularly surprised at how good the attack and envelope of the horns sound. While you obviously played the rhythm to everything which is right on. It sounds cool because the guitar attacks slightly more immediately and the horns sag slightly like a big band.

yes the plugin sounds very realistic, amazingly it’s free (it’s made by Orchestral Tools).

[kris]

Nice!

[grahambop]

I also used the plugin for a big-band type arrangement which I wrote and superimposed on this recording of a jam, it was a lot of fun to do. I had to do a lot of research on how to write the arrangement, interestingly I found my knowledge of the Barry Harris 6-dim stuff to be very useful for voicing the horn parts.