What John Williams Can Teach Us About Writing Cinematic Trumpets
When we think about heroic trumpet writing, it is easy to focus on the obvious things: high register, strong dynamics, bright orchestration, and powerful brass chords. But those elements alone do not explain why some trumpet writing feels so alive.
A large part of the character comes from the performance inside the phrase.
The rhythm, the weight of the attacks, the way repeated notes are shaped, the slight differences between one note and the next, and the sense of movement toward the next musical event all matter.
John Williams is one of the clearest examples of this because his trumpet writing often feels immediately recognizable not only because of the notes themselves, but because of the way those notes behave as a musical gesture.
The Trumpet as a Statement
A great place to hear this is Olympic Fanfare and Theme.
Listen specifically to the trumpets. The impact does not come simply from loud brass chords. There are short rhythmic ideas, repeated notes, strong attacks, and compact phrases that immediately communicate energy, confidence, and scale.
The trumpet is not merely supporting the harmony. It is making a statement.
This distinction becomes especially important when we try to recreate this kind of writing with MIDI. Looking at a fanfare on the page, or even in the piano roll, it can seem relatively simple. You may see repeated notes, triadic shapes, and a series of short articulations. It can be tempting to load a trumpet patch, place the notes in the right positions, and assume that most of the work is done.
But a fanfare is more than a row of staccato notes.
A Fanfare Is More Than a Row of Staccatos
You can hear that immediately in the opening of the Star Wars Main Title.
The opening establishes its heroic character within seconds. Of course, the harmony and orchestration are part of that effect, but listen to what is happening inside the trumpet phrase itself. The attacks have weight, the rhythm pushes forward, and even the repeated notes feel as though they are going somewhere.
If you took the same pitches and programmed every note with exactly the same velocity, duration, and attack, the notes could be completely correct and the phrase could still lose a significant part of its character.
That is one of the challenges of programming brass convincingly. A real player does not treat every note as an isolated event. The way one note is played depends on what came before it and where the phrase is going next. An accent may slightly change the energy of the phrase. One note may be shorter than another. A repeated note leading into a strong beat may have more urgency.
These differences can be very small, but together they create the sense that a musician is shaping a phrase rather than simply triggering sounds.
This is especially noticeable with repeated-note figures. In notation, they can look almost mechanical. In performance, they rarely are. Even when the rhythm is extremely precise, the phrase has a contour.
That is why placing identical staccato samples next to one another can sometimes produce a result that is technically correct but musically unconvincing.
Think in Gestures, Not Only Articulations
Another good example can be heard in E.T. – Adventures on Earth, around 3:17.
This is where I find it useful to stop thinking only in terms of articulations and start thinking in terms of gestures.
When writing MIDI, we often ask questions such as: Should this note be staccato? Marcato? Should I use an accent? Those are important questions, but sometimes a more useful question is simply: What is this trumpet phrase doing?
Is it announcing something? Is it answering another section of the orchestra? Is it pushing the music toward the next downbeat? Is it creating excitement or making a musical moment suddenly feel larger?
In adventure music, the trumpet often works this way. It can introduce a burst of energy with only a few notes. A short phrase can completely change the direction of a cue without the trumpet needing to dominate the entire orchestration.
That is one reason I like to think of the trumpet as a gesture instrument.
It does not always need to sustain a chord or carry the primary melody. It can answer the strings, punctuate the end of a phrase, introduce a new section, create a short fanfare, or add rhythmic momentum without simply adding another percussion layer.
Sometimes only a couple of seconds of brass are enough to change the character of an entire passage.
Where MIDI Programming Gets Difficult
You can hear a different version of this idea in Raiders of the Lost Ark: Desert Chase, around 1:07.
This type of writing also illustrates why energetic trumpet passages can become difficult to reproduce with MIDI.
You can absolutely build them note by note. You may begin with a staccato or marcato articulation, then adjust velocities, change note lengths, automate dynamics, move some notes slightly, and perhaps combine articulations to strengthen certain attacks.
All of those techniques are valuable, and I use them regularly.
But there are situations where, even after a lot of detailed programming, the result still feels as though a series of samples has been assembled rather than a musical phrase having been performed.
Isolated Samples vs. Recorded Performances
This is where the distinction between isolated samples and recorded performances becomes important.
Traditional sampled articulations are essential. Staccatos, marcatos, sustains, sfz, and other articulations give us enormous control over a MIDI performance. But when we build a phrase entirely from isolated samples, we are responsible for reconstructing almost every aspect of the performance ourselves.
We are creating the relationship between the attacks. We are deciding how the notes connect. We are shaping the timing, dynamics, and direction of the phrase.
With a recorded rhythmic cell or performance, some of that musical information is already contained in the recording.
The player has already shaped the relationship between the notes. The attacks are naturally different from one another. Small variations in timing and intensity happen as part of the performance. The physical behavior of a real trumpet player is already present in the sound.
That does not mean the performance writes the music for you. The compositional decision still belongs to you. But you are starting from a performed musical gesture instead of constructing that gesture entirely from individual samples.
Why I Built Forge Trumpet Around Performances
This idea became one of the main reasons I created Forge Trumpet.
I wanted a library that could help with exactly this kind of writing. Forge Trumpet includes recorded rhythmic cells and performances rather than relying only on a sequence of isolated staccato samples.
When you play one of these performances, the movement between notes, the attacks, and the phrasing are part of the original recording. This can be especially useful for heroic themes, fanfares, adventure scores, and other cinematic passages where the trumpet needs to create momentum.
The library also includes more traditional articulations and gestures, including marcato, staccato, fp, sfz, scoops, falls, and glissandos. So the idea is not to replace detailed MIDI programming or traditional orchestration. It is to add another way of working when you want the trumpet phrase to begin from something that was actually performed.
Listen to the Gesture
The next time you listen to a John Williams score, try focusing on the trumpet for a few minutes without paying attention only to the melody or harmony.
Listen to what happens between the notes.
Listen to the shape of the attacks, the way repeated notes move forward, and the way a short brass gesture can create heroism, adventure, urgency, or scale.
Those details are often where the character really comes from.
And they are also a useful reminder that realistic MIDI orchestration is not only about finding the right sample. It is about understanding how a musical phrase behaves when a real musician plays it.
If you want to explore this approach in your own music, Forge Trumpet is available here.
Comments