trumpet raze his horn was born in the 1940s. he can't really play it. he hinted at that, but i didn't realize the extent of his not-really-being-able-to-play until we were in the same room together. he admitted he was more used to "noise" trumpet than playing in a melodic way. nice guy, though. i didn't have a part written for him. he was worried he wouldn't be able to play anything i liked. i've got this strange knack for drawing things out of people, regardless of their skill or comfort level. in all of these recent adventures, there's only been one person out of more than twenty where i haven't been able to get a good performance from them. and that's because i don't have access to or ever intend to use any kind of vocal-tuning or pitch correction, and you can't get someone to sing in-tune if they're not capable of hearing how far from the notes they want to hit they really are. when the note you want is in switzerland, say, and you're in north dakota, and you think you're near switzerland when you're more than four thousand miles away, there's not a whole lot i can do for you. and if after more than sixty pinpoint vocal edits in one song i still can't carve one useful take out of all kinds of raw material, we're just going to have to start taking separate vacations. anyway. the song we were working on wasn't something that needed trumpet pyrotechnics. all it needed was some atmosphere. and i thought, well, he can get at a few solid notes. that's more than i can do most of the time. maybe i can try to do something like what i've done with the bugle from time to time, only instead of nailing one note and then altering the recording speed a few times to create harmonies, i'll sing him the notes i want, he'll play them, and we'll layer them. we'll make harmonies without cheating. he played two notes and let the second one sustain. i sang him a harmony higher up, he found the note, and we recorded it on top of the first line, letting it dance with the second note. then i sang him a third note, even higher, and we recorded that one too. and then we had three-part trumpet harmony creating itself and overlapping in interesting ways. at one point he was holding a note and running out of breath. in an effort to keep it alive, he made a bunch of rubbery bleats as the last of his air was forced from his lips. he wasn't sure i'd want to keep that take. i said, hell yes, we're keeping that one. it sounds like the trumpet's laughing at the song. that's a perfect accident if i ever heard one. he asked if he could record a bit of what we'd done on his phone while i played it over the monitors. he wanted to show his girlfriend. you coaxed it out of me, he said. you're a total coaxer. he loaned me some records and a book, too. like i said. nice guy. 151029 what's it to you? who go blather from