Most Americans recognize the music after only a few notes, a mournful tune usually associated with Monday's Memorial Day holiday.
Jari Villanueva estimates that he has performed "Taps" for almost 6,000 military funerals over the span of his career.
While serving in the USAF Band for 23 years, Villanueva worked regularly at Arlington National Cemetery, where he was selected on multiple occasions to perform at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a unique and rare accomplishment for any trumpet player.
"It was not only nerve-wracking to be in such a special place as Arlington, but it was also just an incredible honor," said the Catonsville resident, 59.
His fascination with the 24-note call hasn't waned over the years either. Today, he serves as director of the Maryland National Guard Honor Guard, where he estimates he arranges for "Taps" players to be present at an average of 300 funerals each month.
"It's very interesting, because the call itself — it's almost like a paradox," he said. "It's an easy call to play, but yet it can be the toughest call because under certain circumstances it makes it very difficult to play."
In addition to concerns about heat and rain that any musician performing outside may share, bugle players must also maintain their composure when they're surrounded by the raw emotion of a military funeral.
Although he's a seasoned professional, Villanueva does, from time to time, encounter a funeral that tugs at his focus. Remembering why he is there, and the importance of his presence to the family, however, allows him to follow through, he said.
"Sometimes when you're performing in front of very high officials or a very special ceremony, sometimes nerves can take over, so it can become hard in that sense," he said.
But "you're there to perform a very solemn thing," he continued. "I'm there to sound 'Taps' and to play it as perfectly as I can."
Growing up in East Baltimore, Villanueva began playing the bugle as a boy.
"When I was a little kid, I was in Boy Scouts, of course, and, being a trumpet player, the Boy Scouts always needed a bugler to sound the calls, so I got, naturally, into that," he said. "It's been something I've always been fascinated with."
"I've been a trumpet player all my life," Villanueva said.
After graduating from Patterson High School, he attended the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, where he studied music education.
After teaching at local high schools and middle schools, he received his master's degree from Kent State.
A lot of his work centered on Big Band and jazz music and education, but he always felt a tug of desire to play in a military premiere band — "the cream of the cream," as he describes it. In 1985, at the age of 29, he was accepted into and officially joined the Air Force premier band, the USAF Band, launching his career into the world of military bands and, along with it, funeral services.
Serving in the Air Force, Villanueva said, not only re-ignited his love for the bugle, but also his in the history of the instrument.
"Taps" in its modern form, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, began as a French bugle signal that notified soldiers that it was time to stop drinking and head back to their barracks. During the Civil War, a Union general adopted a shortened version of the French call to signal the end of the day to his soldiers, VA documents say. It became a funeral song when, according to the VA, a Union battery wanted to honor a fallen soldier but needed to find a quieter alternative to the traditional cannon fire salute so as to not give their position away to Confederate troops.
In recent years, Villanueva has found himself an endangered species. As the military made cuts to personnel and spending, "one of the first things they've done is to cut military bands," he said.
Adding weight to the burden of fewer professionally trained military bugle players is legislation passed in 1999 guaranteeing every eligible service member access to at least two military personnel at their funeral; to fold the flag and to sound "Taps".
Short on musicians, it was determined that high-quality recordings that play from a speaker inside a bugle are also acceptable. If no military buglers are available, a civilian musician may play the song, so long as he or she adhere to the song's procedure.
Today, Villanueva estimates some 80 percent of all military funerals use recordings of "Taps" rather than a live rendition. Although the recording is good, Villanueva said, it is not the same as having a real bugler there to play it. In his experience, he said, it is up the family to dictate to the funeral home that they want a live player. The funeral director then makes the accommodation.
In Chicago, Marine and Navy veteran Tom Day started an organization called Bugles Across America 15 years ago to respond to the shortage of live buglers to perform at military funerals.
There is no reason, he said, that a military veteran who dies today should have to be buried without a trained bugler there to play "Taps" in-person for the family. His national organization involves some 6,500 civilian volunteer horn players from around the country. When a request comes in from a funeral home or family for a live "Taps" player, an email goes out to local members within a 100-mile radius of the funeral site. The service is free and Day estimates Bugles Across America handles 2,300 funerals each month.
One of the more enjoyable aspects of his work, he said, has been to see the kinds of people who want to donate their time to honor service men and women. Volunteers range in age from 13 to 93 and come from all walks of life, he said. A few are blind or disabled, but they want to help.
"I guess it's a devotion to the old American spirit of giving back," he said.
"These organizations that have spring up have really done their best to provide a live bugler where possible," Villanueva said.
And learning the tune, he said, is not hard.
"Most Americans know 'Taps.' I mean it's very hard not to recognize the tune after the first three notes and it's a song that a lot of us grew up listening to, whether being in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, or maybe attending a summer camp where it's played or attending a memorial service. You'll always hear it performed," he said. "It's part of our American culture."