Akai Headrush, Ampeg SVT And A Piece Of Aluminum Make For A Unique Live Trumpet Rig
Jaimie Branch has played trumpet in some unorthodox contexts, including with punk bands. She used to lug around an SVT stack to compete with the massive stage volume, but now she places her trust in the sound guy for amplification.
Jaimie's also been known to play through a number of effects for some more experimental tones, including an Akai Headrush delay / looper, and a thick sheet of aluminum foil.
JAIMIE BRANCH: My name is Jaimie Branch. I'm a trumpet player in Chicago. If If I'm asked to like bring an amp or pedals or stuff like that, I bring my own mic, and I set it up into my guitar amp and do it that way. I used to play in a lot of punk rock bands and ska bands and they'd have to amplify the horns and usually it meant playing the show without hearing anything that you're playing and hoping that they can hear you in the crowd. For a while, to fight against that, instead of bringing this giant Ampeg bass amp that you see there -- and that thing is like 200 pounds and I was like, "I'm a trumpet player. What am I doing carrying a 200-pound amp?" so I gave that up. Almost it's like I'm a the mercy of the sound guy.
If I use pedals with the horn, it's got to be somebody asking me to do it specifically, and I have to be like have to be into it but I'm not. I'd certainly screw down instead at home but I don't really play out with it when it's my own thing, but if somebody asked me to and I'm into their music then yeah.
I use an Akai Head Rush mostly. It has like a simulated tape echo and also like normal delay and then also it loops up to 48 seconds I think if you have it in like extend mode, and that's the main pedal. I've also used like a pitch shifter delay, a PS-2 Boss pedal. I've also used like the orange distortion pedal, but these days it's mostly that Akai and my amp, which is a Music Man 2x10 which has a really great dirty sound and it has tremolo built in, so I use that sometimes too.
Or I use like a -- I use a piece of metal. This is like my equivalent of pedals maybe. It's that I use a plunger and I use a piece of metal [JAIMIE MUTES TRUMPET WITH SHEET METAL AND PLAYS], and oftentimes, when I play with an amp, I bring a microphone too. I usually bring a large diaphragm and I bring a power supply for it. It's a digital reference large diaphragm [INDISCERNIBLE], but then I put this piece of metal like between the horn and microphone and filter that too, and that sounds kind of manipulated already clean but then -- and then through the pedal add something different, and mostly this is like a rattle maker. And, depending on how you use it, it can be more conventional muting, it can be rattlely, it can -- if you press on this one section, it splits the tone into a multiphonic [JAIMIE DEMONSTRATES MUTING EFFECTS WITH SHEET METAL], just cool; it's really handy. It's from Tim Daisy, the drummer. It's a thick piece of aluminum, I think [JAIMIE TAPS TRUMPET WITH SHEET METAL], or shielding, maybe plating for like a roof or something.
[JAIMIE PLAYS TRUMPET WITH EXTENDED TECHNIQUE]
The So-Called Trumpeter
What a Talentless Idiot.Why even bother pressing the valves down.Just get a Kazoo, I'm sure your chops won't suffer.What a waste of a good instrument and gear.Wow, those companies are really booming having you talk about what you use and how the aluminum make a great rattly sound.
To The So-Called Music Teacher
The fact that Jaimie didn't feel the need to show off in this video speaks to the fact that she's comfortable enough with her ability -- which, if you took the time to check out some of her music online, you'd see that she has in spades. There's a reason she's working and has worked with so many different Chicago artists.
At first, I felt bad for you for having such limited views on music. Then I saw that you labeled yourself as "Music Teacher", meaning you probably foist your limiting views on otherwise unwitting students. Do you tell them to avoid "Talentless Idiots" like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and John Medeski just because they experimented with textures as well as intervals? Seriously, you need to be stopped.
i don't know, man
What she is doing is really creative and she creates some pretty awesome textures. In a classic music hall you won't see someone muting their trumpet with a plunger and aluminum foil, of course. However, as a lover and practitioner of ambient and experimental music, I really appreciate what she is doing with her music. Would you tell miles davis he was an idiot for half the stuff he did with his trumpet on bitches brew? How about the tape loops and multi-tracking used to create the Stockhausen influenced space-sounds on that album?
It appears, and correct me if I am wrong, that your knowledge of jazz ends at around 1962.
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