When the Saints Go Marching In Trumpet Duet

Description

NOTE: This trumpet duet of When the Saints Go Marching In is also included in the Forty Trumpet Player Duets book. 

When the Saints Go Marching In Trumpet Duet

Arr. Eddie Lewis

When the Saints Go Marching In trumpet duet is a New Orleans party just waiting to happen. While it leans ever so slightly towards the bebop side of jazz, it remains true to the NOLA vibe.

Practiced and played privately, duets have always been a great source of entertainment and education, and this duet arrangement of When the Saints Go Marching In can certainly be used that way. But it can also be used in performance situations.

Programming this jazzy trumpet duet can lighten the mood of an otherwise more serious recital. It can also be used on fanfare gigs to change things up a little. When the trumpet duets are used as background music (I’ve played a bunch of those gigs), When the Saints Go Marching In trumpet duet can add a toe-tapping atmosphere to the audiences’ experience.

Jazz Trumpet Duets

I’ve written a number of jazz trumpet duets over the years. Most of them are in my Celebrations duet book, which becomes more popular with every passing year. Those jazz trumpet duets are mostly originals. In fact, this is my first time writing a jazz arrangement for trumpet duet.

If you like this arrangement and would like to see more like it, please let me know. I am always open to hearing what you like and don’t like in the compositions and arrangements we publish here.

Skill Level

Officially, the skill level for this jazz trumpet duet is at our Trumpet Player skill level. I stress “officially” because it is not easily sight read by students at that skill level. It is learnable. It falls under that intermediate skill level, but it will probably need some real practice time invested into for a good performance.

What makes When the Saints Go Marching In trumpet duet a little on the higher side of the Trumpet Player skill level is the chromatic twists and turns. The technique for that chromaticism falls outside of every day major scale finger patterns. So learning those chromatic motifs will require some diligent practice.

Practice Recommendations

As with a lot of technical practice, the best way to approach this trumpet duet arrangement of When the Saints Go Marching In is slowly. None of the chromatic twists and turns in this arrangement are tricky. There are just a lot of them. Be organized and systematic in your approach to learning each phrase. Isolate a difficult phrase from the rest of the duet and repeat it at least ten times at a very slow tempo.

Because I recognized the possibility of this arrangement being used educationally, I included very specific slurring. I am not consistent in this practice. It depends on who I think will be playing the piece. If it’s at a more professional level, I will not dictate as many slurs. But for certain educational purposes, I will write out all of the slurs the way I would slur them if I was performing it.

If you slur where I’ve marked them, then it should help get the proper swing feel. So pay close attention to those slurs as you work your way through the arrangement.

When the Saints Go Marching In Free Trumpet Play-Along

We have a free trumpet play-along video for When the Saints Go Marching In in our You Play First Chair video series. This is a series of videos meant to give students a way to practice their sight reading and ensemble playing, but it also works as an opportunity to allow prospective customers to take the piece for a test drive. Click the following button to go to that video:

When the Saints Go Marching In Demo Video

The following video is intended for demonstration purposes. We want you to have an opportunity to hear the arrangement before deciding whether to purchase it or not.