Today, they are made of wood, metal, plastic or some combination. They are all basically narrow cylinders or pipes, with holes, an opening at the bottom end and a mouthpiece at the top. You play them by blowing air through the mouthpiece that's the "wind" in "woodwind" and opening or closing the holes with your fingers to change the pitch. Metal caps called keys cover the holes of most woodwind instruments. The mouthpieces for some woodwinds, including the clarinet, oboe and bassoon, use a thin piece of wood called a reed , which vibrates when you blow across it.
The clarinet uses a single reed made of one piece of wood, while the oboe and bassoon use a double reed made of two pieces joined together. Just as with the stringed instruments, the smaller woodwinds play higher pitches while the longer and larger instruments play the lower notes.
The woodwind family of instruments includes, from the highest sounding instruments to the lowest, the piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon and contrabassoon. The flute is the oldest of all instruments that produce pitched sounds not just rhythms , and was originally made from wood, stone, clay or hollow reeds like bamboo. Modern flutes are made of silver, gold or platinum; there are generally 2 to 4 flutes in an orchestra.
A standard flute is a little over 2 feet long and is often featured playing the melody. You play the flute by holding it sideways with both hands and blowing across a hole in the mouthpiece, much like blowing across the top of a bottle. Your fingers open and close the keys, which changes the pitch. A shorter version of the flute is called the piccolo , which means small in Italian.
At half the size of a standard flute, piccolos play the highest notes of all the woodwinds; in the orchestra one of the flute players will also play piccolo if that instrument is required.
The high piping sound of the piccolo is also heard in traditional drum corps and marching band music. The oboe is a 2 foot long black cylinder with metal keys covering its holes, and its mouthpiece uses a double reed, which vibrates when you blow through it. This vibration of the reed makes the air inside the oboe move, and thus creates sound. To play it, hold the oboe upright, blow through the double reed in your mouth, and use both hands to press down on the keys to open and close the holes and change the pitch.
There are usually 2 to 4 oboes in an orchestra and they produce a wide range of pitches, from haunting sounds to warm, velvety smooth notes, which make the sound of the oboe very memorable.
In addition to playing in the orchestra, the first oboist is also responsible for tuning the orchestra before each concert. Listen for the special note "A" that the oboe plays before the music begins. It has a clear, high sound that can be either gentle or piercing. An even higher-sounding instrument is the piccolo , a very small flute that is much more common in bands than in orchestras.
It is black, made of wood, and at sight can be mistaken by the nonmusician for a clarinet. The cor anglais , or English horn , is a slightly larger double reed instrument with a deeper, gentler tone, that is sometimes called for in orchestral music. The clarinet is also black and normally made of wood, although good plastic clarinets are also made. It uses only a single reed. It is a versatile instrument, with a very wide range of notes from low to high, and also a wide range of different sound colors available to it.
In the orchestra, clarinets are no more numerous than the other woodwinds, but it is usually the most numerous instrument in bands and wind ensembles because of its useful versatility. There are many sizes of clarinet available, including bass and contrabass clarinets, but the most common is the B flat clarinet. The clarinet is the only common orchestral woodwind that is usually a transposing instrument, although there are less common woodwinds, such as English horn, that are also transposing instruments.
The bassoon is the largest and lowest-sounding standard orchestral woodwind. Bass clarinet and contrabassoon are used only occasionally. It is a long hollow tube of wood; you can often see the tops of the bassoons over the rest of the orchestra. Like the oboe, the bassoon is a double reed — the player blows between two reeds — but the player does not blow into the end of the bassoon.
The air from the reeds goes through a thin metal tube into the middle of the instrument. The orchestral brass are all made of metal, although the metal can be a silvery alloy instead of brass.
A slide, or three or four valves, help the instruments get different notes, but players rely heavily on the harmonic series of their instruments to get the full range of notes. Please see Wind Instruments: Some Basics for more on the subject. The orchestral brass instruments are the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba. As with the woodwinds, the number of each of these instruments varies depending on the size of the orchestra and the piece being played.
There are usually two to five each of trumpets, horns, and trombones, and one or two tubas. The trumpet is the smallest, highest-sounding orchestral brass instrument. Trumpets may read in C or may be B flat transposing instruments. The cornet , which is more common in bands than in orchestras, is very similar to the trumpet and the two instruments are often considered interchangeable.
The cornet has a more conical, gently-flaring shape and a slightly mellower sound. The French horn, or horn , is much more conical than the trumpet and has a much mellower, more distant sound. It has a wide range that overlaps both the trumpet and trombone ranges, and in the orchestra is often used to fill in the middle of the brass sound.
It is a transposing instrument that usually reads music in F. The trombone is the only valveless brass instrument in the modern orchestra. Yes, the sounds of string instruments come from their strings.
The strings may be plucked, as in a guitar or harp; bowed, as with a cello or a violin; or struck, as with a dulcimer. This creates a vibration that causes a unique sound. Stringed instruments include the violin , viola , cello , bass, harp , and dulcimer. Woodwind instruments produce sound when air wind is blown inside. Air might be blown across an edge, as with a flute; between a reed and a surface, as with a clarinet; or between two reeds, as with a bassoon.
The sound happens when the air vibrates inside. Woodwind instruments include flute , piccolo , clarinet , recorder , bassoon , and oboe. History Government U.
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