Echo Taps

Echo Taps is a custom of sounding the call with two buglers standing at some distance apart to achieve an echo effect. Arlington National Cemetery does not permit it to be performed that way during services at the cemetery. A version appeared in the U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps Manual of 1959. It had incorrect rhythms in the third and fourth measures. The version was dropped from later editions of the manual.

Although a popular way of sounding Taps, this is not authorized by the U.S. military and not accepted as correct.

This idea of sounding Echo Taps may have started right at the creation of the new call, when Union buglers played the tune for the first time at Harrison’s Landing (now Berkeley Plantation). Confederates across the James River repeated the new sound, thus introducing it into both armies. As the call grew in popularity, it was not uncommon to hear the sound of Taps being performed at the same time each evening by buglers in other companies, thereby giving an echo effect. The call is meant to be sounded by a solo bugler and really should be performed that way.