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The
Memphis Horns
Sound on Sound,
December 2002
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Andrew Love (sax) and Wayne Jackson
(trumpet), better known as the Memphis Horns. Since 1964, these
guys have played on more than three hundred hit records, including
classics like 'In The Midnight Hour', 'Soul Man', 'Knock On Wood',
'When A Man Loves A Woman', 'Dock Of The Bay', 'Shaft', 'Sledgehammer',
etc. With a discography boasting names like Elvis Presley, Otis
Redding, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Peter Gabriel, Sting and
U2, I'm inclined to give them five stars just for showing up.
I was a bit surprised to find that the world-famous Memphis Horns
consists of only two blokes, but the duo fatten up their recordings
by layering their performances and panning them to create a section
sound. Their musical approach is deceptively simple; the players
listen to a track and make up parts on the spot. Harmonies are rapidly
worked out, and before you know it — bingo! Highly effective
brass parts appear out of thin air.
These performances feature a combination of melody lines and chordal
riffs which evoke the golden age of soul. The musical ideas are
inventive and unpredictable, with urgent, funky riffs contrasting
with more relaxed, gentle moods. Spinning in the phrases over a
sequenced backing immediately made the music sound more alive and
organic, and I found that the brass phrases worked equally well
as supporting parts or lead lines.
The 90 bpm Punch is a typical Memphis Horns lick; it starts off
with a declamatory, syncopated sax and trumpet riff reminiscent
of their unforgettable intro to Sam and Dave's 'Hold On I'm Coming',
then ends with a couple of cute, dancey little chord stabs. Wherever
practical, such phrases are cut in two and presented on the CD-ROMs
in both full and cut-up versions, and although this means that much
of the material is in effect duplicated, it gives a lot of flexibility
in use.
Unison lines are usually voiced with the tenor sax playing an octave
below the trumpet, and harmonies tend to stay simple, though there
are some jazzier major 7th and 9th voicings. Light relief (essential
when you're auditioning 2500 samples) is provided by the trumpet
player's commendable impersonation of a laughing horse. The timbres
are quite varied; the trumpet adopts a prickly '30s-style muted
growl tone on a few performances, while others feature the far smoother
sound of multitracked saxes. Some phrases are major, some minor
— in all, there are 153 performances, each delivered in a
choice of five keys (usually C, E flat, F, G and B flat). Considering
that most are double, triple or quadruple tracked, that's enough
blowing to inflate at least six bouncy castles!
The library progresses through fixed-tempo bands of 70, 80, 90,
100, 120, 130 and 140bpm. For anything in between, you can use a
program like Acid to adjust the samples' tempo. Due to an oversight,
nineteen of the phrases are listed at the wrong tempo — correct
details appear on www.ilio.com. There are no single sustained notes,
but there are some unison double-accented hits, along with unlooped
chordal multisamples of fast/slow sustains, fast/slow swells, short
notes and falls, chromatically spanning an octave and offering major,
minor, major 7th, minor 7th and dominant 7th flavours. A selection
of solo licks played on straight and muted trumpet, flugelhorn and
sax struck me as highly useable. The audio discs contain audio versions
of the phrases only, plus WAVs of all the phrases and multisamples;
the sample edits presented on the Akai CD-ROM are not replicated
in WAV form.
Towards the end of the CD-ROM, the lads push the boat out with some
Stravinsky-esque staccato chords, atonal stabs and clusters. Showing
a musical imagination beyond the world of commercial hit-making,
they also perform a number of colourful, atmospheric mood pieces
which sound like film or cartoon short cues. All this occurs in
sections titled MH Noise and Noise Menus — it may be noise
to some, but it's music to my ears.
The playing is soulful, laid-back, punchy where it needs to be,
and rhythmically accurate. Hardly surprising — Love and Jackson's
telepathically tight phrasing and dynamics have developed over nearly
forty years of collaboration. For this money, you get not just a
sample library, but a direct line to two great musicians who have
made an indelible mark on the world of popular music. In the words
of the immortal Aretha Franklin song, 'Respect'! (Yes, they played
on that too.) Dave Stewart, 4 Stars
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