The modern trumpet belongs to a family of metal instruments that we call brass instruments. The other main members of the family are the tuba, the trombone and the French horn. When these instruments play together in an orchestra, we call them the brass section. (More…)

dodoBrass, Trumpet5 Nov, 20082 Comments

Can you imagine the sound of lots of brass instruments all playing together? Think of a band of musicians turning the corner and marching down your street! They are playing trombones, trumpets and horns, not to mention cornets and tubas, as well as drums and crashing cymbals. You would probably see the trombone players first. They often lead a parade, so that there is plenty of space for their long slides to move in and out.

Special instruments

Brass bands have several of their own special brass instruments, which you wouldn’t normally see in an orchestral brass section. One of these is the cornet. (More…)

dodoBrass, Drums, Trumpet5 Nov, 20082 Comments

There is a children’s story from Russia about a boy called Peter, his grandfather, a cat, a bird, a duck, a wolf and some hunters. The story is special because it is told not just in words but in music, too. Each character is matched to an instrument of the orchestra. Whenever you hear the instrument, you picture the character it represents. Three of the characters are played by reed instruments — the clarinet, the oboe and the bassoon. These are the three main reed instruments in the orchestra. (More…)

dodoBrass, Music Box, Music Equipments, Music Genres, Music Software, Musical Instruments, Woodwinds5 Nov, 20082 Comments

Jazz is a mixture of many different kinds of music. Although jazz is now played nearly all over the world, its true ‘home’ is the United States of America. This is where jazz began almost 100 years ago. Early jazz was created by black-American people, the descendants of slaves who were brought from Africa. Their jazz was a combination of a kind of sad folk music called blues, mixed with melodies and rhythms from African music, church music, brass band music and from popular dances. (More…)

dodoBlues, Brass, Folk Music, Jazz, Saxophone1 Nov, 20082 Comments

Serpent

It is obvious how this instrument got its name! It looks like a snake, but it is not used by snake charmers. The serpent was first made about 400 years ago in France but is seldom played today. If the serpent were straightened out, it would be about 2.5 metres long. Remember the brass instruments whose tubing was so long it had to be folded up? (More…)

dodoBrass, Music Equipments, Musical Instruments21 Oct, 20082 Comments

In addition to the notes of the four “open” strings, the players make many other notes by stopping the string with the fingers of their left hands. When a string is pressed against the fingerboard, its length is shortened, and a higher sound is produced. The closer to the sound box the finger is pressed, the higher the note. There is nothing on the fingerboard to tell a player exactly where to place his fingers (that is, unlike a guitar, a violin has no frets); he must listen very carefully and practise hard to learn where the right spots are for each note. (More…)

dodoBrass, Guitar, Jazz, Music Box, Percussion Instruments, Popular Music, Violin, Woodwinds7 Oct, 20082 Comments

Even though the tone of the trumpet is very brilliant, it is capable of playing beautiful melodies. When its sound is blended with that of other instruments, new and exciting sounds are created. As with all brass instruments, the tone of the trumpet can be altered by placing a mute in the bell. This is a cone-shaped device usually made of metal or fibreboard. A muted trumpet has a soft, faraway sound and is often used to represent an echo of the sounds of other instruments. (More…)

dodoBrass, Jazz, Music Equipments, Trumpet3 Oct, 20082 Comments

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. (More…)

dodoBass Guitar, Brass, Classical Music, Music Box, Musical Instruments, Trumpet3 Oct, 20082 Comments

The saxophone has to be treated as a family of seven instruments of different sizes, each one covering 4 octaves and all seven a compass of 51 octaves. Saxophones look like outsize metal tobacco pipes supported by neck slings, apart from the sopranos which are shorter, parabolic cones. All have a single reed, clarinet-type mouthpiece. Classed as woodwinds, though made of brass, their part is written in a treble clef on a stave beneath the clarinets. (More…)

dodoBrass, Home Theater, Jazz, Multimedia, Music Book, Music Equipments, Music Software, Piano, Popular Music, Saxophone, Sheet Music, Woodwinds25 Aug, 20083 Comments

Horn parts are written in treble and bass clefs without key signature, accidentals being written in as they occur. The horn is a transposing instrument and sounds a fifth lower than written in the treble clef but a fourth higher in the bass clef.

In his book on the French horn Morley Pegge described the sound of the instrument as ‘the most refined and poetical voice in the symphony orchestra’. Its emotional range certainly covers the moods from martial to melancholy. (More…)

dodoBrass, Piano23 Aug, 20083 Comments