Introducing brass

How do you make a sound on the trumpet? ‘You blow, Miss.’ I blow air through the instrument; nothing. ‘Blow and press the buttons.’ I dutifully press the valves and blow again; nothing. So what is the magic ingredient? ‘Blow a raspberry, Miss!’ Aha – that does the trick.

The actual physics of sound production are more complicated. The air causes a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet, which travels down the instrument and back again. But for young beginners, a vibration with the lips is a good start.

Brass instruments are basically all the same: a length of tubing with a mouthpiece at one end and a bell (the flared ending of the tube) at the other – hence the classic hosepipe and funnel demonstration (find videos of this online or try it yourself). It's the shape of the tubing and bell that varies enormously, defining the sound and pitch of the instrument.

Trumpets and cornets look similar, but where the trumpet's bore (the internal diameter of the tube) is cylindrical (except for the bell), cornets have a conical bore and the mouthpiece has a deeper internal cup shape, which creates a more mellow sound. Matching the cornet's tone are other instruments of the brass band: the flugel horn is rather like a big mellow trumpet and is often played in jazz, notably by the great South African player, Hugh Masekela. Brass bands include all the tuba-shaped mid to low brass instruments – tenor and baritone horns, euphoniums and the mighty tuba itself.

Traditional British brass bands are famous around the world. They compete in well-established contests, with bands organised into sections rather like a football league. Brass bands were established in the 19th century, usually connected to industry – particularly collieries. The pits are closed now but many bands continue, some inevitably struggling for funding. Major bands include Black Dyke Band, Fairey Band, the Cory Band, Foden's Band and the Brighouse and Rastrick Band. The top contest is the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain, which take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London and feature in the film Brassed Off (1996), about a brass band's struggle to survive.

Ideas for classroom brass projects

• On a map of the world, place a pin everywhere that there is an interesting example of brass playing. Allocate the pins to different students (or groups of students) and ask them to devise presentations for the class.
• Supply hosepipes and funnels and create your own ‘basic brass band’. How can you make higher and lower sounds? Can you compose a piece together?
• Allocate different well-known brass players to different groups (Masekela, Davis and so on). Ask the groups to create their own musical tributes to other players.

Keys and valves

The brass family is full of transposing instruments. French horns are in F, tenor horns are in E flat and trumpets are in B flat; this means that if you play a C on the trumpet it will sound like a B flat on the piano. Consequently, these instruments can't play from concert pitch notation – trumpet music will need to be written one tone higher than piano music.

Before valves were invented in the early 19th century, brass instruments could only play in one key because they were limited to the notes of the harmonic series (a naturally arising but disjointed sequence of notes that can be played on brass instruments by altering lip pressure alone). Valves meant that players could change the length of tubing, meaning that they could access multiple harmonic series and therefore the full chromatic range. Nowadays, players often use just one instrument pitched in B flat, but the music of a Beethoven symphony can still be notated for trumpet in D, meaning that the trumpeter has to play everything two tones higher than written!

Where would the orchestra be without the brass family? Think of Wagner's ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, where six french horns, three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba take the melody. Key orchestral solo repertoire includes Mozart's horn concertos and trumpet concertos by Hummel (1840) and Haydn (1760) – the latter originally written for the keyed bugle, an early chromatic instrument. Movements from both trumpet concertos are on the Grade 8 syllabuses, and the BBC's ‘Ten Pieces’ features Alison Balsom playing the Haydn. In orchestral film music, British trumpeters have become known for particular themes – the London Symphony Orchestra's Maurice Murphy played the famous theme from Star Wars, and the jazzy theme from James Bond was played by Derek Watkins.

Jazz and world influences

Talking of jazz, let's move our focus to the big band. Alongside the rhythm section and five saxophones (no, saxophones are not brass – they have a reed so are part of the woodwind family) the standard brass line-up is usually four trumpets and four trombones. Famous American band leaders from the so-called Big Band Era (1935-45) include trombonists Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller and trumpeter Harry James. Jazz is full of ‘big name’ trumpeters – Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie (famous for bebop and his ‘bent’ trumpet), Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis.

The sound of brass is also an essential part of what we call ‘world music’. It is an inescapable fact that the presence of brass bands around the world is due to colonial influence, particularly from Britain. I play with the Bollywood Brass Band which is based on the Indian wedding band, in turn developed from the British military band system under the Raj. The band baja is well known to Indian wedding-goers across the diaspora, with the sound of the band mimicking the vocals of Bollywood singers over a driving drum beat. This is the band that gets the wedding party started – the bigger and louder, the better! The Bollywood Brass Band has played for hundreds of baraat processions in the UK and several in India, where our large repertoire of Bollywood songs is often a surprise to the guests.

Party music is also at the heart of the Eastern European or Balkan brass band tradition. This energetic music has its roots in military music from the Ottoman Empire and has combined with gypsy and folk music to develop its characteristic flavour. The Kočani Orkestar from Macedonia is a typical high-energy band. Serbian brass music has also had a major impact – the Boban Markovi? Orkestar is famed for the dexterity of its leader, Boban, who has won the ‘Golden Trumpet’ prize at the Guca Brass Band Festival in Serbia many, many times.

African, jazz and colonial influences are all mixed up in the sound of the marching bands of New Orleans, where the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Rebirth Brass Band revitalised the brass band tradition in the 1980s. These bands feature a sousaphone on the bass line with saxophones, trombones and trumpets playing melodies and jazzy improvisations over snare and bass drum grooves. They evolved from the American marching band, and the sousaphone is named after John Philip Sousa, the composer of marches, who developed it from the tuba in the late 19th century to wrap around the body to be carried while marching.

Brass instruments are so versatile and such fun to play. Let's encourage our young students to take them up to populate the brass bands and orchestras of the future.