Korpo

There's a piece I loved since my childhood for its funky brass arrangement: "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder. I remember hearing it on TV but I forgot all about it except the music, only the melodic lines stayed with me.

Recently I was able, together with my family, to find it again. Everybody knew it from whistling but no one knew whom it was from. We mapped one melodic line on the piano and finally found it by piping that into the app SoundHound. I was so happy!

When I wanted to learn more about it I couldn't find a brass score for it, only arrangements for solo piano and so on. And trying to map both harmony and what instruments are present in a brass arrangement just from listening proved to be an exercise in frustration. I gave up on it for a while.

Recently it came back up for me. I looked for guides that explain how to arrange for the brass section, but instead someone recommended two simple song books from Hal Leonard. One was "R&B Horn Section". I looked it up. It contains 15 famous R&B songs, only the brass. And guess which song is in it? (It also was wonderfully cheap.)