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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