How To Make Sure Your Horns Don’t Sound Muddy

It was 2015 and one of the professors at the university had asked if I could arrange a big band chart for Danilo Perez (pianist with Wayne Shorter, Dizzy Gillespie and more). In a pretty short turnaround of a day or two, I whipped up the arrangement and brought it into the rehearsal. Everything went well and Danilo enjoyed the interpretation of his composition, but I was left feeling like the chart sounded sluggish. To top it off, when I looked at the score, I had no clue what was causing the issue.

Usually if something sounds muddy, the first area I look at is the trombones and low saxes. One of the important approaches I was taught early on was the concept of the bass register and to generally avoid harmonizing in it at all costs. If you’re unaware of this approach, the quick explanation is that any note below the D in the middle of the bass staff should only ever double the bass note of a chord. There are many exceptions to this but when you start out it is a great rule which can help your arrangements avoid serious pitfalls.

So I looked through the score but realized that none of the lines I had written actually went into the bass register. I was perplexed. The solution actually didn’t come to me for many years and only presented itself in the pandemic years of 2020/21. Due to the lockdown restrictions imposed on venues, bands had to be quite small. For me, that meant reducing my arrangements to a maximum of five instruments. I embraced the challenge and began orchestrating the shows that were being booked.

Five horns became two, which introduced the issue of how to deal with harmonizing parts when there simply weren’t enough instruments to fully realize my normal voicings. I found that it was better to avoid replicating the harmony and focus on the strengths a smaller ensemble offered, specifically focusing on melody and countermelody. To my surprise, using more octave and unison voicings actually didn’t have that big of an effect on the arrangements, and in some cases they actually sounded better. By removing harmonization, I realized the strength melodies carry and by outlining the interesting color notes in my counterlines, I could still give the impression of the chords I once had. However, one of the biggest takeaways was that it allowed passages to breathe.

One such example was my arrangement of the theme to Monster’s Inc. I had written a bebop inspired soli that was originally harmonized out in five part harmony. With the reduced instrumentation, that changed to unison and octaves. As a result the music felt far quicker and less bogged down by all of the passing chords and harmonization. When we performed it I had one of those light bulb moments. Harmonization can also cause muddiness, especially as the tempo increases. I proceeded to look at my old arrangement for Danilo with this insight in mind and what I found was a lot of harmonization on fast moving parts, especially in the lower brass. No wonder it felt sluggish at the time. Now that it has been a few years since that realization, I would say my arrangements have a lot more clarity and are only muddy when I want them to be. Although the pandemic was not necessarily the most fun of times, it definitely led to some great discoveries for one reason or another. 

Going forward, next week I’m going to break from the usual weekly newsletters to celebrate Christmas with my family but you can expect one in two weeks time. Thanks for taking the time to read this far and I wish all of you a happy holiday season! 

Thanks,

Toshi