Taps is twenty-four notes long, and it is often the moment at a service when people who have held themselves together finally let go. Its story begins in a Civil War camp in the summer of 1862.
After the Seven Days' battles, the Union Army of the Potomac lay in camp at Harrison's Landing, Virginia. There, in July 1862, Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield worked out a new call for lights out with his brigade bugler, Oliver Willcox Norton. As the Department of Veterans Affairs history of Taps explains, Butterfield did not compose it from nothing; he revised the closing measures of an older call, "Tattoo," into the twenty-four notes known today. Norton later wrote that the music "was beautiful on that still summer night," and buglers from neighboring brigades came the next day asking for copies.
The first use of Taps at a funeral came during the same campaign. Captain John C. Tidball of Battery A, 2nd Artillery, ordered it played at the burial of a cannoneer killed in action. The enemy was close, and he worried that the customary three volleys would be mistaken for renewed fighting. A bugle call was the quieter way to say goodbye.
Taps became an official Army bugle call in 1874. The VA history notes that the earliest official reference to its mandatory use at military funerals appears in the Army's Infantry Drill Regulations of 1891, and in the defense authorization act signed in January 2013 Congress designated Taps the National Song of Military Remembrance. It is still sounded each evening on military installations.
Under 10 U.S.C. § 1491, eligible veterans' families may request a funeral honors detail that, at minimum, folds and presents the flag and plays Taps, at no cost to the family. The law allows Taps to be played by a bugler or, if no bugler is available, by a recording. Military OneSource explains how families and funeral directors make the request.
At a private ceremony at sea, families most often play a recording through the Bluetooth speakers on deck, sometimes just after the release and before the captain rings eight bells. Some families invite a bugler they know. Either is fitting. If you use a recording, download it in advance, and listen to it once before the day so you know how it begins and ends. Our page on veterans and burial at sea covers the other honors families include.
Twenty-four notes are enough. Let them finish, and let the quiet afterward be part of it.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm current rules with the cited sources or an attorney.