Slightly OT: Seeking Salsa Horn Charts to buy or trade.

[frogmonkey]

I posted before asking for advice on arranging for my 10-piece salsa band with trumpet, alto, tenor, and trombone. Well, now I've got a handfull of solid, killer horn arrangements, mostly of Fania stuff. Transcribing and arranging the parts is very rewarding, but it sure is time-consuming.

 

Are there any arrangers here with 4-horn salsa charts to trade?

 

Do you know any arrangers with charts to trade?

 

Do you know where I can find them?

 

Thanks!

[Michelle ggurl]

Sent you a PM, Andric, with hopefully some useful ideas.

[Dave E]

PM sent

[Dave E]

So, what tunes are you guys doing, Andric?

 

I'm way out of touch with the Salsa world - more than I should be. What are the cool tunes of the last ten or twelve years?

 

Any cool links you'd like to share?

 

[frogmonkey]

If I find any good resources for charts, I'll post it here, but I haven't found much.

 

We're actually not playing modern Salsa, yet. We're focusing on Fania-style charts, mostly from the 50's to the 70's. Fania was the record label at the center of the New York salsa scene. Hector Lavoe, Willie Colon, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente...

 

I've been lifting arrangements from records.

 

Traigo Salsa by Ismael Rivera gets me fired up, and it has a nice tidy horn arrangement:

[video:youtube]IKptmuUx1nE

 

 

We do Candela, but the arrangement is from the Ibrahim Ferrer record, not the better-known Buena Vista version. It's awesome:

[video:youtube]fv6RR6803UE

 

Bemba Colora by Celia Cruz is a good one. This isn't the arrangement we do, but this is a pretty cool live video even though you don't see much of the horns.

[video:youtube]eFTPn0iP-Kw

 

 

Salsa y Control by Los Hermanos Lebron:

[video:youtube]lmPBhqdz4bM

 

I'm just finishing Ah Ah by Tito Puente. We also do El Cayuco. I can't find any vids of Tito doing those tunes, but here's El Cayuco by his orchestra without him:

We also do Oye Como Va by Tito Puente. The biggest challenge with Tito tunes is that his horn section on the records was gigantic, and he really layers the parts. I mean his trumpet section was bigger than my whole band.

 

Let's see, what else?...

Que Lio by Willie Colon

Aquanile by Hector Lavoe

Kimbo Kimbesa by Graciela

La Murga by Hector Lavoe

 

 

 

 

 

[Dave E]

Thanks for the links, Andric.

 

I found an interesting score in my files... not my transcription. "Just Kiddin'" by the great Michel Camilo. It's sort of strange to see clave music written like Funk .... usually this stuff is written in cut time:

 

 

 

Here's the chart I have:

 

DivShare File - Just Kiddin__0001.pdf

[frogmonkey]

Dave, that's cool! I'll check out that chart for sure.

 

I really love the Latin Jazz thing, as well as modern Salsa and Timba. Timba is the modern descendant of Salsa in Cuba- it's wicked.

 

The sound that my band is going for is pretty specific to the "Salsa Dura" sound of the New Yorican scene. AFAIK "Salsa Dura" literally means "hard salsa" though I could be mistaken.

[Michelle ggurl]

Love salsa dura, nice choice of direction, Andric!

 

And thanks for the link to "Just Kiddin'," DaveE ... I am writing a Latin jazz/funk tune right now (well obviously I'm taking a break) so this is a timely reference. Mine's a very different take, though, but still ....

[frogmonkey]

Dave that's a cool chart. I get perplexed by 16th notes in Latin music- I'm very much accustomed to cut time, too. Actually I have a strange aversion to 16th notes that I've been trying to overcome lately.

 

I've been working through a series of books called "Beyond Salsa Piano" by Kevin Moore. I'm spending a lot of money on the "suggested listening". They are quite amazing, working their way through Cuban music from the earliest Changui recordings up to contemporary Timba. It is very much focused on Cuban music, as distinct from New York salsa or any other Latin music. Anyway, the impression I get is that the NY cats write in cut time, with 8th notes, and that the Cuban cats write 16th notes. The author writes all the examples and exercises BOTH ways.

 

Michelle you might be interested in these books. The author explicitly intends to pick up where Rebeca Mauleon left off. There's like 10 volumes or something. He gets to Timba around volume 5, and then it's Timba Timba Timba.

 

Timba is some badass music. I find it a bit fatiguing sometimes, but other times it really lights me up.

[Michelle ggurl]

There Kevin's series sounds interesting, thanks. I haven't gotten much into timba so that may be a good reference. Private lessons that were really individual master classes, taking percussion classes, and just playing with a lot of musicians ranging from respected journeymen to venerable experts in Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music has been my education to date.

 

FWIW my observation about charts is that Cuban and Brazilian seem to be in 2/4 alot (16th notes), US charts in 4/4 (with 8ths). Sometimes I see 2/2 for salsa charts but I'm not sure if that's from an original source or a more modern transcription.