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Brass Instruments

Brass instruments are lip-vibrated instruments (labrosones). Here you can ask questions about the different types of brass instruments, methods of cleaning them, etc.

739 Questions

What happens when you change the pressure of your lips when playing a brass instrument?

The player's embouchure, lip tension, and air flow are used to play various octaves of a note. Pitches can be changed by altering the player's embouchure.

What are trombones made out of?

They are predominantly brass. Various alloys are used with it. The brass contains typically 80% copper and 20% Zinc, but some other varieties contain more copper and less zinc.
most commonly, trombones are made of brass, but can also be made of silver, gold, wood, nickel, glass, and even plastic!

What is the most important instrument in the Brass Family?

The most impotant instrument of the Brass Family is the Trumpet.

What is the most popular brass instrument to play in the world today?

the most popular brass instrument is the french horn. I also play it :)

Is there a baritone mute?

There is a such thing as a baritone mute. It is rare to find them in any store and if you see someone using one, they have usually constructed it themselves. Most mutes for baritone look like a very large practice mute for trumpet, and are rarely used by any baritone players. Baritones with curved bells(e.g. bell front concert horn) make it dificult to use mutes, as well as the fact that most Baritone/Euphonium have different bell radii, making a standard mute hard to make.

How much does a good baritone cost?

A good baritone voice is not something you can buy easily, although if you have the basics, you can purchase lessons to train your voice. A good baritone saxophone can cost as much as $3,000, if you are purchasing a new one.

What should you do if you get your head stuck in a tuba?

Well, I guess you should Lather your head in butter. It may be icky, but you can always wash it out. Be careful, though. Get someone to help you, too.

From where did trumpets originate?

Egypt, Greece, and Africa. These trumpets had no valves. The valve trumpet was introduced in 1814 in Berlin by Heinrich Stozel.

How do you clean a bugle?

shove spunges and toilet bowl cleaner and pine sol into it

Can a saxophone replace a french horn in a wind quintet?

Yes, and no. I suspect far more no than yes.

First, tone. The french horn tone is utterly different from any of the saxophones. The saxophone was intended to provide a string-like sustained tone to the wind band. There was never an intention of approaching the sound of the french horn, since that was already available, and Adolph Sax was trying to expand the sound-pallet of wind bands when he invented the Saxophone. It is the french horn's tone that keeps it as part of the woodwind quintet; as for brass quintets, the saxophone largely reproduces the tone of trumpets and trombones (without actually sounding much like them) and would reduce the tonal variety, considerably. (Many composers and arrangers discover, the hard way, that variety is what has kept the traditional woodwind and brass quintets in their accepted forms for so long!)

Second, attack. The french horn has a very characteristic "double blip" in the start of notes, which can be smoothed to almost nothing on quite notes but becomes quite pronounced at the higher dynamics. The saxophone lacks this characteristic. Eliminating this characteristic sound element would further reduce the diversity of sound in either woodwind or brass quintet.

Third, the sax is a considerably different instrument from the horn, with a completely different approach to sound generation, so that phrases which would be liquid and facile on one instrument would sound awkward and out of place on the other. This is one of those venn-diagram things, where two circles are overlaid, some of the area of each circle is superimposed, but each circle has area which does not jibe with the other. This is most-often a matter of taste, and requires consideration of the audience as well as the music director. (Sometimes, this works fairly well, like the canonical "What do I do, the oboe player just swallowed his last reed!"..."Use a muted trumpet!" joke.)

Finally, transposition. The horn is usually written in F, meaning that when the hornist sees a C in his music, the note he plays comes out as F in "orchestral pitch". The Saxophones are pitched in Bb and Eb, so any F horn parts will require transposition. There are Eb horn parts, which would be directly readable on the proper-sized sax, but the Eb horn is even more sonically removed from the sound of saxophones that the effect could be anything from annoying to unacceptable, even to completely untrained and unfamiliar non-musicians.

So largely, substituting a sax for a horn would be a good thing only in cases where the necessity is so great, or the desire to fit a player who only plays sax into a quintet so pressing, that it would outweigh the affects.

Can a trombone player play the trumpet?

A trumpet player will probably be able to make a sound on the trombone, but a lack of skill in using the relatively large mouthpiece on a trombone will result in a low quality sound at best. Plus, playing a valved trumpet will usually not make for an easy experience trying to learn a slide trombone.

For a bit of fun, ask a trombone player in your band if you can try his instrument out. Try using your trumpet mouthpiece to see what it's like.