I’ve got a pet peeve to share: Capitalising Every Word In A Song Title Is Silly! Not only does it look clunky, but it’s also not correct grammar.

This isn’t just a matter of personal preference. There are long-standing style guides that set the standards for how titles should be written. A few of the big ones are:

• Chicago Manual of Style (widely used in US publishing and the music industry, first published 1906).
• AP Style (standard in US journalism, first published 1953).
• Oxford / British Style Guides (common in UK publishing and academia, with roots in the early 20th century).

Looking for some backup, I put the question to ChatGPT, and got the confirmation I was looking for. So here it is, for your reference (or to quickly scroll past):

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🎵 Title Capitalisation Cheat Sheet

1. Songs / Pop & Jazz Titles (Title Case)

• Capitalise: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
• Lowercase: a, an, the, and, but, or, for, nor, on, at, by, to, in, of, with (unless first or last word).

Examples:

• ✅ Bridge over Troubled Water
• ✅ A Whiter Shade of Pale
• ✅ Land of Make Believe

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2. Classical Works (Sentence Case Is Common)

• Only the first word and proper nouns get capitals.
• Generic terms (concerto, symphony, variations, quartet) stay lowercase.

Examples:

• ✅ Variations on a theme by Erik Satie
• ✅ Piano concerto in A minor, Op. 16
• ✅ Symphony no. 5 in C minor

👉 If writing for a US or non-academic audience, Title Case is also acceptable:

• Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie

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3. General Writing / Blogs / Articles

• Chicago Style → Title Case (common in books, websites, publishing).
• Oxford / UK academic style → Sentence case.

Examples:

• Chicago: How to Badger Your Neighbours with Daily Trumpet Practice
• Oxford: How to badger your neighbours with daily trumpet practice

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✅ Quick Rules to Remember

1. Don’t capitalise short joining words (of, on, a, the, and, in) unless at the start/end.
2. Songs = Title Case. Classical = Sentence case. Blogs = depends on audience.
3. Consistency beats perfection — pick one system and stick with it.

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All that said, I’ve noticed albums in my own collection where the song titles are printed entirely in UPPER CASE, sidestepping the issue altogether. 🤣

Thank you to my friends who have reached out following news that my musical hero, Chuck Mangione, has passed away.

Chuck and his music have had the most significant impact on me as a musician. More than any other artist or teacher. And given the role of music in my life, it would be fair to say that Chuck was (and continues to be) a major influence in my life. It is truly an honour to have an association with the Mangione family, and to also know that Chuck heard and appreciated a video I recorded covering one if his tunes.

There’s a reason why the flugelhorn is my instrument of choice and Chuck’s music is in my heart: It Feels So Good.

Fans of Chuck may be interested in the Chuck Mangione Facebook Group, of which I’m an administrator, and my published Chuck Mangione transcriptions.

Recently, I published forScore Custom Stamps for Trumpet Players, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how popular the download has become. A big thank you to everyone who checked it out! I hope the stamps have been useful to you.

After receiving a few questions about additional stamps for non-brass players, I decided to take the idea a step further. Here’s a new release containing a comprehensive set of 106 annotations designed for musicians of all types—not just brass players. Like the earlier set, these stamps use my favorite Jazz font, which I find friendlier-looking and easier on the eyes compared to traditional music fonts.

From the iPad screenshot, you’ll see that this expanded collection makes the default forScore set practically redundant. If I knew how to remove those from my iPad, I would! All of the stamps are black in their default form, but you can easily customize their colors as needed.

Help yourself to this expanded collection of forScore Custom Jazz Stamps. I hope you find them as useful and practical as I do.

Update 30/12/2024: By request, I’ve added an additional collection of note names A to G in the same Jazz font. So grab that collection too, if you would like it!

For guidance on importing and using the stamps, refer to the instructions in the forScore User Guide.

💡 Tip: Be sure to download the ZIP file to your PC or Mac. Avoid trying to open it directly on your iPhone or iPad unless you have an app that can handle ZIP files.

Resources:

• forScore Custom Jazz Stamps ZIP file.
• forScore Custom Jazz Stamps Text A-G ZIP file.

Created by me and free for you to use.

What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.

The launch of Apple’s 13″ iPad finally convinced me to move on from playing paper charts and go digital. Now, I use my iPad for all my big band charts, musical theater books, method books, and more—no paper required. I’m a very happy convert.

Like most iPad-reading musicians, I rely on the forScore app to manage and display all my sheet music. Within the app, I use stamps and other annotation tools to mark changes and highlight important details. While forScore includes a limited range of built-in stamps for common markings, it also allows you to import custom stamps created outside the app.

As a trumpet player, I’ve created nearly 40 custom stamps that give me quick access to the markings I use most often. And as with most things I create, what’s mine is yours too! Below, you’ll find a ZIP file containing my forScore custom stamps, ready for you to download and import into your app.

My stamps are styled primarily in a Jazz font, with each being a PNG image with a transparent background, sized at 144×144 pixels. For guidance on importing and using these stamps, check out the instructions in the forScore User Guide.

💡 Tip: Be sure to download the ZIP file to your PC or Mac. Don’t try to open it on your phone or tablet, unless you have an app on the device that can open ZIP files.

Resources:

• forScore Custom Stamps for Trumpet Players ZIP file.

Created by me and free for you to use.

What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.

I recorded a brief demo to show Tech Tone trumpet cup mutes in action. These mutes play beautifully in tune and speak well. I think that they blend nicely when played in a section. Will let you decide for yourself after listening.

Australian-made Tech Tone Mutes are available in a range of colors and finishes at https://techtonemutes.com/

There are many great quotes from trumpet players that I admire. But this one, which I copied from the trumpet method book A Tribute to William Adam, is my favorite.

“You have to remember the trumpet is a mean instrument, the meanest there is. It’s a damn monster. Sometimes I feel like throwing it out the window, it’s such a beast. There are times when it treats you so sweet and nice that everything comes out just perfect. Then you come back to it the next night, rub your hands together and say to yourself you’re going to do it all over again. You pick up the horn, put it to your chops, and the son of a bitch says, ‘Screw you.'”

– Roy Eldridge.

Starting my 2023 trumpet practice routine on a positive note… 😉

Photo credit: William Gottlieb/The Library of Congress via Flickr

I’d love you to check out my YouTube channel and subscribe to it.

https://www.youtube.com/garybadger

On my channel, you’ll find videos of my musical collaborations as well as a variety of other things that I’ve served up outside of the scope of this website.

Two of my Happy Birthday videos have amassed over 136,000 views and I’d love to be getting some of the advertising revenue that YouTube makes from them. But to do that I need more subscribers and more views… Can I count you in, please? 🙂

What do you think? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Updated: December 2022.

I enjoy looking at the statistics and metrics from this blog, from time to time. I like seeing the number of visitors and the files that they download. I thought I’d publish a list of the Top 5 downloads since WordPress started measuring them in 2019.

I’m so pleased to see that the works of one of the greatest artists of our time consistently rank at 1st place. It sure looks like the trumpet players who visit this site really dig music with a groove!

2022

1. Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke (trumpet)
2. Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up (trumpet, tenor sax, trombone)
3. Earth, Wind & Fire – In The Stone (trumpet)
4. Amy Winehouse – Valerie (trumpet)
5. Johnny Cash – Ring Of Fire (trumpets)

2021

1. Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke (trumpet)
2. Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up (trumpet, tenor sax, trombone)
3. Stevie Wonder – Master Blaster (trumpet & tenor sax)
4. Earth, Wind & Fire – In The Stone (trumpet)
5. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell (trumpets & tenor sax)

2020

1. Stevie Wonder – Master Blaster (trumpet & tenor sax)
2. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Hell (trumpets & tenor sax)
3. Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke (trumpet)
4. Earth, Wind & Fire – In The Stone (trumpet)
5. The Doors – Touch Me (trumpets, alto, tenor, baritone sax, trombone, violins, cellos)

2019 (July to December)

1. Stevie Wonder – Master Blaster (trumpet & tenor sax)
2. Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke (trumpet)
3. The Trammps – Disco Inferno (trumpet & tenor sax)
4. Aretha Franklin – Rock Steady (trumpet & tenor sax)
5. Joe Cocker – The Letter (trumpet & tenor sax)

I continue to record new Virtual Collabs all the time, so I continue to transcribe trumpet charts to make that possible. There’s a steady list of transcriptions in the works and they’ll be added to this blog as the recordings are finished.

This is not a transcription post, although I did transcribe a lot of this including trumpet and strings leveraging a part that I bought on MusicNotes.com. I’m sharing this video on my blog because I’m very excited about this musical collaboration. I think that the audio recording truly characterizes my trumpet style and the way that I like to play naturally. And it is such a joy to be able to play with such fantastic and accomplished musicians.

Thank you so much to my friends and co-collaborators Antonio Freire (drums, audio engineering), Georgi Chobanov (keys), Jay Reawaruw (percussion), Richard ‘Bolo’ Loupatty (bass, video editing), Ynping Mak (violins), Yoichi Kishi (guitars).

A special shout-out to my good mate Adrian Munn for his amazing videography and trumpet mentoring.

I hope you enjoy “Fandango”. Composed by Juan Carlos Calderon. Originally recorded and released by Herb Alpert in 1982.

Having collaborated in over 400 online recording projects, there are a few lessons that I’ve learned for achieving the best results. I thought I’d pass on some of these on an ad-hoc basis. In this post, I’m sharing a few simple thoughts about how to play “tightly” together when you and your collaborators are not in the same room (or even in the same hemisphere).

When we play live, we know that a rock-solid connection is needed between the drummer and the bass player in order to sound tight and set a strong foundation for the other musicians. Without that, the band will sound loose and sloppy. These guys must work to lock things together and set the groove for everyone else to play in. We need to work hard when recording virtually, to ensure that we achieve the same standards of musicianship and performance discipline.

The order in which the tracks are recorded is key to achieving this.

1. Drums should always be recorded first. Assuming we’re recording a cover, the drummer plays along to either the original recording or to a metronome click track. The completed drum track is then shared with everyone in a shared drive.
2. Bass should always record next, playing along closely with the drum track. If an original recording has been used as a backing track, this should be low in volume; just enough to hear the melody as a guide. Unless there are parts of the song with no drums, the click track (or backing track) can be discarded. Or, otherwise, it can be edited to only keep time during those periods of silence. It’s the bassist’s role to lock-in to the drum track to ensure a strong foundation. The bassist shares the completed track with everyone in a shared drive.
3. The remaining rhythm section members (keys, guitars, percussion) all record next, in any order, playing tightly with both the drums and bass track. The click track (or backing track) is optional by this stage. If a backing track is still being used, it should be set low in the mix to only act as a musical roadmap. All tracks that have been recorded are shared so that successive musicians can play along with them, which they most certainly should do.
4. Finally: vocals, horns, and strings, all of which tune by ear, can record now. They should play along to shared tracks only. By now, the original backing track should be a distant memory and no longer used for recording. Share all tracks as completed, so that subsequently recorded tracks may benefit from them.

Recording this way, from the ground up, we’re able to form and then build upon a strong, solid rhythmic and chordal foundation. And since backing tracks can often be tuned to something other than the A440 that our rhythm section will tune to, we avoid potential catastrophes by removing the backing track before vocals, horns, and strings can be deceived by it.

When I’m asked to collaborate on trumpet, I almost always wait until the rhythm section has completed its tracks before recording my own. This allows me to better play “in the pocket” rhythmically, while also avoiding the risk of accidentally tuning my ear and horn to a backing track that is not quite on A440.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Or better practices that you follow? If so, please share by adding a comment!