Talk:Brass instrument

Alloys used in brass instruments?

What alloys are typically used for the making of brass instruments? have these changed over the years? why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.16.173.3 (talk) 02:04, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Is this image labled correctly?

A tenor horn (alto horn) in E♭, baritone horn in B♭, and euphonium in B♭.

I'm pretty sure the middle horn is just a varient on the Eb tenor horn and not a Baritone. A baritone horn is the same size as a euphonium but with different piping. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GirlDoingMaths (talk • contribs) 21:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it is labelled correctly; the middle horn is a baritone in B♭ - you can tell, the tubing on each of the three valves are the same lengths as the euphonium on the right, and both are shorter than the E♭ tenor horn on the left. — Jon (talk) 11:57, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Agreeing with @Jonathanischoice here. One of the problems is that saxhorn/tuba family terminology is very messy and suffers from regional variants. See for example the terminology bit in Cliff Bevan's book which is enough to make you wake up screaming in the night. The smaller-looking saxhorn (clarification: smaller-looking than the euph on the right, I meant ... it is of course the larger of the two saxhorns here, sorry!) in the middle is, yes really, a B♭ horn playing in the same register as the euph ... it just looks a h*ll of a lot different because it is not a baby tuba with huge wide pipes, but it does have the same overall length and all that goes with it in proportion, as Jon rightly points out. It is in no way the higher E♭ instrument that we might call a tenor or alto horn. In some necks of the woods the terms used here are absolutely spot on, whereas in others there is a truly horrible confusion around the word baritone which, in environments where the middle one pictured here is not well-known, sometimes just means a three-valve euphonium. I find this usage very difficult but I do see how it gets used! We can't control the language that tightly though when my government comes to power we will try (goak here). DBaK (talk) 15:21, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Harmonic scale

I am writing as someone who only has a loose understanding of how music works, but I am confused by the talk about how a brass can only play the natural scale and has certain chromatic notes that are impossible to create. I played with the trumpet for a little while in elementary school and I was under the impression that it made whatever note the player made with their mouth. Is that incorrect, and it will only produce sounds on the natural scale, provided you input something approaching the correct input? I guess that would make sense of the fact that I was able to produce sounds that resembled music even though I had no idea what a musical scale was at the time. But if that is the case I think the whole thing is even more interesting and want to know how that works.

But I seem to remember hearing a trumpet do an ascending slide from low to high pitch, which means it can work at the full range of frequencies. In which case what's to prevent you from just lowering or raising the pitch slightly at the mouthpiece to modify whatever sound it is producing? I accept that the performers know what they are talking about, I just don't understand why that is. Idumea47b (talk) 18:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Haas (brass instrument makers)

Just created a quick article on the Haas family of brass instrument makers. I didn't see an obvious place to put them into the article. It would be good to maybe have some sort of list on brass instrument makers/manufacturers. Best.4meter4 (talk) 14:10, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I've parked it in "See also" for now. Thanks! Just plain Bill (talk) 15:17, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Terminology

As far as I can tell, labrophone is an instance of WP:CIRCULAR (see relevant XKCD), the correct term is labrosone, coined by Anthony Baines in his 1976 book. I haven't found a reliable source for "labrophone" that pre-dates a July 2008 edit to the alphorn article (it was introduced to this article in August 2020). Searching Google, Bing etc. for "labrophone" just turns up stuff about alphorns; Hornbostel–Sachs uses labrosone, or even trumpets which is just confusing. — Jon (talk) 00:38, 10 November 2024 (UTC)