Hi,

My son is approx Grade 4 trumpet and I'd really like to find some jazz duets we could play.

Can anyone suggest some fairly easy ones? Preferably for trumpet &/or clarinet but I'm pretty good at re-arranging and transposing on the PC, so anything would be great, including instrument & piano accomp. duets.

Thanks,

Steve

Do you mean jazz duets i.e. a tune arranged for two instruments to play with chord progressions mapped out for improvised solos, or do you mean a duet in a jazzy style, i.e. each part is fully notated?

Definitely the latter!!!

Steve

PS The only improvising I do in my house is using sweeteners when the sugar runs out!

I don't know anything specifically for clarinet and trumpet, but there's a fair amount of stuff for saxophone and pieces for 2 equal saxophones might just work. Clarinet will easily cover the saxophone range, the trumpet will struggle with the higher areas but there are duets that are scored for either A/A or A/T in which case the lower part might be in a more comfortable range since it must be playable by the tenor, or if you're happy transposing you could take everything down a 4th (or possibly 5th) to keep it in a reasonable key signature and still playable by clarinet, not sure how low a trumpet goes!

I think you can also get some flexible ensemble type stuff, I might even have some at home - I'll try and have a look later and let you know.

If he is about grade 4 I guess he probably won't want to go lower than the g below middle c and probably not be comfortable with anything above a high g. Sorry I don't know any clarinet/trumpet duets either - I have got quite a nice book of gershwin for clarinet and piano - but it does go a bit high for trumpet. I guess it might be easier for to get duets for two trumpets and the clarinet follow the trumpet part - as the clarinet is far more flexible. Trumpet usually sounds best within the female vocal range so why not use some simple song arrangements for piano - it would be very easy to transpose the vocal part for trumpet. I have also used Aebersold backing tracks it might be fun to do some improvising together to the CD.

The series of ensemble books I was thinking of are here

link

I'm not clear to what extent the brass and woodwind series overlap, but whereas the trumpet may find the range of the clarinet part a bit of a struggle it should be OK the other way round, so you could get the trumpet book.

I have the tenor sax version and it's arranged so that the solo part (the tune) is on one page and the accompanying part or parts are on the facing page. If you got the CD as well I should think they could be quite good fun to play around with.

Thanks for all the advice. Yes, you're all right about the clarinet. The range makes it so easy to play just about anything. Trumpet parts are easy-peasy for the clarinet!

I'll have a look at the links. I have an alto sax and a set of those duet books where you can mix-match sax with trumpet, clarinet etc but they're a bit too difficult.

The Gershwin sounds good. I have a piano book somewhere with Gershwin so maybe I can play with that.

Steve

Hey, I'll write you one. What's your favorite tune?

Check out ebay and purchase some jazzy duets from the following ebayer-

http://stores.ebay.com/TOP-SCORE-MUSIC_10-...2QQftidZ2QQtZkm