Tami Dean and Dave Monette didn't have enough to do this year between their regular work and finishing up Irvin Mayfield's Elysian Trumpet (just kidding…), so they decided to design and build the first Monette Bugle! The stars must have aligned just right on August 24, as this is when both decorated horns were completed. The bugle was made for Tom Day of Bugles Across America.

This instrument is designed to bring the evolution of the modern bugle into the 21st century and at the same time honor America's veterans and their families. The basic instrument is similar in weight to our most popular instrument, the PRANA 3 Bb trumpet, designed for Wynton Marsalis. The layout of the instrument and the proportions and trim of the bell, leadpipe and tuning slide have all been altered to accommodate the musical requirements of an instrument that doesn't have valves. The end result is the best playing, most consistent, in-tune and easy to play bugle we have ever experienced. And the sound carries outdoors like crazy!

WHAT DOES THE SAW-PIERCING AND ENGRAVING MEAN?

The decoration of the instrument was once again performed by our resident visual artistic director, Portland Goldsmith Tami Dean. The tuning slide features Tami's saw piercing and hand engraving depicting the Bugles Across America logo, a dove carrying an olive branch and Tom Day's Marine bugler sargeant stripes. Also on the tuning slide is a large ruby to represent the Marine Corps, which is the first branch of the service Tom served in. He signed up 50 years ago this November!

The back vertical bell brace features the scene from a famous civil war painting that is on display at Arlington National Cemetery. The painting depicts Oliver Wilcox Norton performing "Taps" for the first time on the battlefield for the man who wrote it, General Daniel Butterfield. We took the painting and scanned it into the shop computer. Then we laid out the most important lines of the painting in a CAD program so it could be engraved with our CNC mill. The brace had to be indexed and engraved in a mirror image on the back side so that the design would work from either side with Tami's saw-piercing. The 24 saw-pierced triangles between the front and back braces represent folded flags and the 24 notes of "Taps."

Tom's custom mouthpiece was laid out in our computer, and is a popular "cushion rim" design used by many buglers in Tom's organization. The side of the mouthpiece is engraved down the taper and around the circumference of the mouthpiece - one of the benefits of having a four axis CNC mill and programmers right here in our shop.

The bottom tuning slide tube has a mirror finish plaque with an inscription dedicating the instrument to Tom and thanking him for all he has done to honor America's veterans.

BUGLES ACROSS AMERICA AND MARINE BUGLER TOM DAY

The story of Tom Day and Bugles Across America is well known to many people both here in the U.S. and abroad. Tom and his remarkable organization have been featured on too many major national television news programs and in major newspaper and magazine articles to even begin to mention. In brief, Tom is the only living American to have served in all five brances of the U.S. military. He took on a personal crusade to in the year 2000 to preserve the tradition of having live, human buglers honor America's veterans at American military funerals. Tom is one of a select group of people with over 60,000 hours of veteran's service. He has played "TAPS" at over 5,000 military funerals in his career. This is the equivalent of over one a day,every day, seven days a week, for 15 years!

In recent years the Pentagon decided that a CD digital recording of taps played through a fake bugle would suffice for military funerals. Tom and at least 6,000 other military buglers disagree with this policy. Tom organized them via the internet so that families in need of a real, live, human being to perform "TAPS" for their loved one's military funeral would always have access to one. Bugles Across America now has over 6,000 bugler volunteers located in all 50 states and a growing number overseas. Since the Department of Veterans Affairs is expecting more than 1/2 million veterans to pass every year for the next 7 years, Bugles Across America is always recruiting new volunteers. If you are interested in supporting Tom's organization or becoming a member, please refer to the link below.

Tom's WEB site: www.buglesacrossamerica.org

Thanks for all your great work, Tom, and for inspiring a new Monette instrument!