MEET THE BRASS!
Meet the Brass Family and learn about its different members. The instruments in the brass family are all made of a shiny metal, called brass – which is how they got their name. The instruments are made by twisting the metal into all sorts of shapes and sizes. Brass instruments include the trumpet, trombone, horn, and tuba.
Use the Notes Feature below to answer the questions below. When finished, click the Save button to add to your "My Work" folder.
- What is your favorite instrument in the brass family and why?
- Which brass instrument is the highest, and which is the lowest?
- Why are the brass always in the back of the orchestra?
- How do brass instruments make sound? How do they change pitch?
- Try buzzing your lips like a brass player.
WATCH THIS: Meet the Brass, take a video tour for a brief overview of the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba. Tell the students to listen for the following:
- Pitch—which instruments are higher which instruments are lower?
- Where the instruments are seated within the orchestra.
- Differences in timbre—sound and tone color.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
Meet the Brass Family with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra
CONDUCTOR:
So let me introduce you to the brass family.
See, the brass have been used for millennia.
Anytime you think of signals and hunting calls and music for the battlefield.
The brass are instruments that are made out of metal, long coil tubes, and we have the french horn.
We also have the trumpet and the trombone, and also the tuba.
Nice. Let's hear more about the breaths.
Our instruments make sound by buzzing our lips through a mouthpiece like this.
We have buttons called valves and pistons that change the length of the tube, except for the trombone that uses a light.
The tube length and how fast we bus our lips changes the pitch.
Cool. So let's hear all of that come together, the slide, the valves and the pistons in Gabrieli's Canona re number two.
Brass horns used to be made of animal horns. Each has a mouthpiece on one end and a flaring bell at the other. Each is curved and coiled. Using lip pressure and a slide or a key connected to a valve that changes the tube length, you can make different notes. Cornet plays highest; tuba plays lowest.
