How to Deal With Unusual Instrumentations

One of the most common situations when leading a school big band is dealing with unconventional lineups. The band may include multiple woodwinds (that aren’t saxophones) or perhaps twice as many trombones, or maybe not enough instruments in a certain section to begin with. When you pair that issue with the fact that so many music programs don’t have the funding for custom sheet music and have to make do with whatever is in their library, it can definitely lead to a very frustrating situation. So what do you do?

The simple answer is to understand the instruments you are working with and their limitations. Without that crucial step, you will find yourself guessing and a lot of the time be left with music that doesn’t sound great and the musicians don’t enjoy playing it. As there are so many different combinations of instruments you may be faced with, I’m going to take one particular situation someone I know is currently facing and walk through what I would do as an example that you could follow with your own instrument combination. 

A particular friend of mine is currently dealing with growing a music program from the ground up, a common situation for many schools, and one which comes with varying numbers of students on different instruments. For their jazz band they have five saxes, a trumpet, a clarinet, and four flutes, definitely a stretch from the more conventional sax/trumpet/bone lineup. However, if there are students interested in learning and performing music, there will always be a way to get them involved, we may just have to get creative.

Before diving into a possible solution there are a few more contextual points to be aware of. Firstly, it being a new music program it is likely that the students are not well versed in the jazz tradition and may need to be introduced to foundational concepts. Secondly, I’m not too sure of the skill of each player and where the strengths and weaknesses may be. Because of this, I’ll be leaning more toward an introductory approach where repertoire will be chosen based on simplicity and developing critical jazz ensemble skills. These skills may already be present which means we could go to a more advanced approach to begin with, but in my experience there are more big band directors leading beginner bands so an introductory approach will likely benefit more people reading this. 

So where to start? Let’s identify the characteristics and strengths of each of the instruments we have:

Saxes - Having five saxes gives a lot of flexibility as they could potentially cover everything from Soprano down to Bari. With five of them a lot of jazz harmony can be covered and make an ensemble feel full

Clarinet - A very versatile instrument with a large range and variety of timbres, could be used in various ways and has a long lineage with the big band tradition

Flutes - Can only really cut in the middle/high register when the full ensemble is playing, definitely considered a Soprano instrument when voicing and will have to be handled with care

Trumpet - The only instrument that has a brass timbre in the group, most likely restricted to the middle/low register due to the average student ability

By looking at the collection of horns through this light it starts painting a picture about how each can be used. For instance, a lot of the foundational harmony will have to be played by the lower saxes and clarinet as they are the only instruments that can go into the tenor register. This will help balance the higher pitched instruments too.

Now how do we adapt a chart to suit this instrumentation? The standard approach would be to take a big band chart and reassign instruments, however this will likely lead to a lot of major gaps due to the lack of trumpets and trombones. If you were to do this, I would restrict the repertoire choice to charts that are always full tutti horn sections with the harmony being fully realized in the saxes. These may be a bit less interesting than something which has independent trumpet, trombone, and sax section parts, but will sound considerably better with the given situation. 

To begin with, you would have to go through the chord progression of the chart and check that any harmonized moment in the horns is fully covered in the saxophones. What this means is that at the bare minimum the saxes are playing the 3rd and 7th. With this in place, no matter what is happening in the trumpets or trombones, you will know the harmony will sound full simply by isolating the saxes. That will then give you freedom to reassign any of the other parts to the given instruments. I would probably have the flutes double the lead lines in an appropriate register (not too high or too low), trumpet could play the trumpet 1 part (could drop it down 8vb if it is in a silly register) and then put the clarinet wherever makes the most sense (could double one of the saxes or the trumpet 1 part etc). As a result the harmony will feel full because of the saxes and then there would be a lot of doubled unison/octave parts with the leftover parts. There are better fixes but this is one that would work if you were restricted to traditional big band repertoire.

However, if you had the option to look at other types of scores, I would instead take a different approach and probably go for a small group arrangement, something with maybe three clear parts and then assign those to given instrument groups. These also play into an introductory ensemble as they can be written a bit simpler and help students learn the fundamentals of styles and the jazz language before having them play overly technical lines and harmonies. A good arranger/composer would have made the three unique horn parts work without the need for large homophonic band textures, which will be generally more interesting for musicians to play than standard section style writing. With this sort of repertoire in mind, you could assign the parts to whatever instrumentation you liked, having a mix of textures or strong musicians along with weaker ones. It would also allow for a lot more variation with the same piece as you could move musicians from one melody part to another. There are many benefits to this approach at the introductory level, more than I’ll write here, but choosing small group repertoire and doubling multiple parts is a fantastic way of dealing with unusual instrumentations. It may not sound like Basie, but when a band is in a place where they can’t bolster a standard big band instrumentation, this is simply a stepping stone which engages students while you try and fill in the instrument gaps.

Being in a situation with a non-traditional ensemble trying to play “traditional” music can be quite difficult and frustrating. The plus side is, at least you have musicians that are wanting to play!. As I said earlier, there are so many different combinations that people find themselves with and to try and accommodate all of them in this post would be impossible.

Thanks so much for reading this far and checking out my weekly newsletter. It seems a lot of people liked the previous week's topic of 6/8 Afro Cuban styles and what to give to the rhythm section. So with that in mind, next week I’m going to dive into another style and explain the characteristics and what each instrument should be doing.

Thanks,

Toshi