Chicago? Horns with a rhythn section. Original lineup with Terry Kath on guitar. The "Feeling Stronger Everyday" recording studio jam is so cool, man. It's on YouTube.
Do you also have a good organ player? What is the range of your lead singer? Do you have 1 or 2 good backup vocalists, in addition to the lead singer?
If you have a decent organ player and lead singer, there are several great songs on the second Blood Sweat and Tears album (this is their best known one, including the songs Spinning Wheel, And When I Die, etc). Some of them require a killer trumpet player (i.e. God Bless the Child) while others can be played by mere mortals. Many of these songs have horn parts scored for two trumpets, a sax and a trombone, and if one of your sax players plays the alto they might work with the alto playing the 2nd trumpet part. I know Spinning Wheel can work this way, since I transcribed the horn parts for that one. There are not a lot of vocal harmonies on the BS&T songs, so you can get away with not having good backup vocalists.
Chicago songs typically are scored for one trumpet, one sax, and one trombone, although "Movin In" (first song on Chicago II) has two sax parts on the original studio recording. Most Chicago songs have multiple singers, either 3-part harmonies or alternating lead vocals. The best Chicago songs, and horn parts, can be found on their 1st 2nd and 5th albums.
You can also find some really cool horn parts in songs by musicians who are not known as running horn bands. Joe Cocker's version of "The Letter" is one our covers band does, and that is a blast. I think Van Morrison has some great horn arrangements in some of his songs. How about Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out"?
That sounds like a fun band, with room for lots of freedom.
Those are excellent comments above; Listen to Candy Dulfer's take on many tunes which are usually vocal oriented, she arranges them to suit her band and let the horn be featured.
"Castlerock" ?, "Manteca"-Dizzy Gillespie, "The Chicken" by PeeWee Ellis, James Brown's sax man; Jaco did some real good covers of this), "Pick up the Pieces"-AWB, "Arroz con Pollo"- Ronnie Cuber really does this nice, just about any 12 bar blues tune , "Jazz-Me blues" and other trad jazz-Shiek of Araby-Basin Street Blues, St Louis Blues...etc.
Your imagination and your fellow musicians' interests matter most, just play songs that you all like, and have fun with them. A couple of you set up the beat, and the others ride on top playing melody and improvising, mix it up a bit and trade off until it's time to end the song.
"Entry of the Gladiators" -Fucik--Why Not?) So What, Song For My Father. There are so many possibilities......Chicago songs as instrumentals i.e. 25 or 6 to 4 ?
With those horns you could do sax or brass quartet music rearranged slightly to use Trumpet and Trombone, if you work the issues of range out a bit. (like Trumpet/alto sax/trombone/Bari sax)
I was watching a video of a Phish concert and they work into their jams the fanfare from "Also Sprach Zarathustra" -- more people know it as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey -- and I thought that it would make a great sound for a horn section in a rock band.
The opening of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is a deceptively simple fanfare and one that is respected by some of the most seasoned of symphonic wind instrumentalists. If Phish is using real horns instead of synthesized brass sounds my hat's off to them for sure.
Of course it's all a matter of taste and what you want to play. We STILL have no idea what sort of music the OP is asking about. Or maybe he/she just wants suggestions across the spectrum, which is fine, but it would help to narrow it down a bit.
I guess the OP really meant it when he said "that's all I've got."
Hope some of these suggestions were helpful anyway.
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