Instrument family
Instruments sounded by the player’s buzzing lips and tuned by the length of their tubing.
In a brass instrument the vibrating element is the player’s own lips. Buzzing into a cup- or funnel-shaped mouthpiece sets the air in a long metal tube in motion, and the tube amplifies and colours the result. Because a simple tube can sound only a series of related pitches, the player selects among them by changing lip tension and airflow.
To fill in the notes between those pitches, brass instruments change their effective tube length: a slide extends it, as on the trombone; valves add extra lengths of tubing, as on the trumpet, horn and tuba. The shape of the bore — narrow and cylindrical for bright, penetrating sound, wide and conical for mellower sound — largely determines each instrument’s voice.
The trumpet is a brass instrument with a largely cylindrical tube, a flared bell and a cup-shaped mouthpiece against which the player’s lips buzz. Metal signal trumpets date back to antiquity, and the modern valved form took shape in the early nineteenth century. Today it serves as the high voice of the brass section and as a solo instrument in classical music, jazz and popular styles.
The trombone is a brass instrument that changes pitch with a telescoping U-shaped slide instead of valves, so the player can lengthen the tube smoothly and slide between notes. Its ancestor, the sackbut, appears in European records by about 1500 and was used in church and civic music. The modern trombone entered the orchestra in the early nineteenth century and remains central to bands and jazz.
The horn is a coiled brass instrument with a wide, flaring bell and a funnel-shaped mouthpiece, played with the left hand on the valves and the right hand inside the bell. Descended from hunting horns, it gained a chromatic scale first through hand technique and later through valves. Today’s orchestral horn is usually a double horn that combines two lengths of tubing, and its dark, blending tone makes it a bridge between woodwinds and brass.
The tuba is the lowest-sounding member of the brass family: a wide, conical tube of twelve to eighteen feet folded into an upright shape, sounded with a large cup mouthpiece and pitched with three to six valves. Patented in Berlin in 1835 and developed alongside similar instruments in the following decade, it took over the bass line once held by the serpent and ophicleide, and it now anchors orchestras, bands and brass ensembles.