monetteB4L wrote:
By yesterday's standards, lead trumpet playing (in most cases) meant playing the highest notes in the trumpet section.  Today, being a good lead trumpet player means having to be able to do so much more.
While I agree with the overall message of your post (primarily props to Wayne Bergeron!), the sentences I've quoted above are somewhat askew, in my opinion. 'Back in the day', the job of the lead trumpet was to lead the band, i.e. set the phrasing, much as the Leader (principal violin) of a symphony orchestra would. The fact is that most of the great high note trumpet players, Maynard Ferguson included, were not the lead trumpet in the bands they came up in. In the case of MF, I'm speaking of the Charlie Barnet and Stan Kenton bands, amongst others. Another famous example would be Cat Anderson with the Ellington Band.

This all changed, by all accounts, as a result of Bill Chase's tenure with the Woody Herman band where he took on not only the lead book, but also some of the high note work too. This resulted in arrangers starting to include both in the one part. Arguably, this has served to make the job of the lead trumpet more difficult, and has almost definitely redefined the expected sound of lead trumpet. Even many of our favourite contemporary lead players have a noticeably different, most often thinner, sound than the earlier greats like Conrad Gozzo.

Rather than having to play so much more THAN high notes, I would argue that today's lead players have to play so much more BECAUSE they are expected to have good (extreme) high chops.

Also, to give my opinion on the original question posed in this thread: Yes! Double High Cs are overrated. Contemporary lead players make money by having good pitch and feel, and (in terms of high chops) having killing 'money notes' in the high F-A range (above high C). Just my 37.6 cents....


Last Edited By: bdtptboy Apr 30 10 11:06 AM. Edited 1 times.