Thousands of years ago man discovered that by boring a hole in the side of an animal horn and forcing air through the opening, he could produce sounds that were useful in sending messages short distances. The sound was generated by the player’s either buzzing his lips into the small opening or by blowing across the opening as you would blow across the top of a Coke bottle. The horn then amplified the sound and made it loud enough to be heard some distance away.

Since buzzing the lips into the opening produced the louder sound, this was probably the method most used by early man, and it is the method used today in producing the sound on instruments we call horns. It’s easy to produce a sound by buzzing your lips : lick your lips, close them by saying the letter m, tighten the muscles at the corners of your mouth, and force air between your lips. Professional musicians can actually play songs by tightening and relaxing their lips as they buzz.

Although the discovery of how to make a sound using an animal horn probably excited early man, he soon began trying to improve the instrument he was using. To produce a sound loud enough to travel many miles, he needed a very large horn, larger than most animal horns, so he made instruments out of wood in the shape of animal horns. People living in the Alps of Switzerland play wooden Alpine horns twelve feet long. Many years ago, these giant instruments were used to send messages from mountain to mountain.

As metals and their uses became known to man, people began to make instruments out of them. Metal instruments could be made different lengths, sizes, and shapes to produce different sounds. A metal tube two feet long would produce a very high sound, a tube eight feet long would produce a low sound, a cone-shaped tube produced a mellow sound, and a tube with straight sides, like a piece of pipe, would produce a shrill sound.

As metal instruments developed, it was found that different notes could be played on one instrument. One method was for the player to tighten and relax his lips as he buzzed into the horn. The other method was to bore holes in the horn, which could be left open or covered with a finger. Both methods helped the player produce different notes that allowed him to play very simple melodies as well as send messages.

The horn player was now buzzing his lips into a small cup-shaped mouthpiece at the end of his horn. This change, along with the invention of a valve mechanism in 1815, which opened and closed holes leading to extra pieces of tubing attached to the horn, allowed the player to play every note in the chromatic scale. The metal instruments would soon be an important family in the orchestra, playing complicated melodies and beautiful harmonies.

One of the biggest problems faced by metal instrument makers was how to make a horn long enough to sound in the right range while still being compact enough for the player to hold easily. The solution was to bend the tube in some way. However, since bending the tube also changed the sound a little, the makers tried many different shapes before finding the best shape for each instrument. The brass serpent from the early 1600s had so many twists and turns that it resembled a big snake, hence its name, and some of the early hunting horns had their tubing coiled very tightly in a circle, much as you might coil a garden hose.

Although there are many different instruments in the modern brass family, the important ones are the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba. Each instrument plays in a different range, is shaped differently, and has certain types of music that it plays best.

The exciting sound of the trumpet and its ancestors has impressed people throughout history. It is the smallest and highest-sounding brass instrument and is often heard playing fanfares at important occasions. In the Middle Ages, each of the noblemen of England and Europe had his own trumpet call. Monarchs, including Henry VIII of England, even maintained special bands of trumpeters to play their special calls at royal ceremonies and pageants.

Of course, the early trumpets were much like their cousin, the bugle. They were similar in shape, neither one had valves, and they were capable of producing only a few different notes, the number depending upon the player’s skill in buzzing his lip. Over the years, the bugle has remained much the same, an instrument of few notes whose chief use is communicating military messages across long distances.

Meanwhile, the trumpet developed into the leading instrument of the brass family. Instrument makers experimented to find the best metals to use in making trumpets and added valves; composers began writing special music for the trumpet, and included it as an important instrument in the orchestra; and trumpet players learned to play not only bugle calls but all kinds of music.

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