Types of Wind Instruments
Wind instruments are typically grouped into two families:
- Brass instruments
- Woodwind instruments
Although brass instruments were originally made of brass and woodwind instruments have traditionally been made of wood, the material used to make the body of the instrument is not always a reliable guide to its family type. A more accurate way to determine whether an instrument is brass or woodwind is to examine how the player produces sound. In brass instruments, the player's lips vibrate, causing the air within the instrument to vibrate. In woodwind instruments the player either:
- causes a reed to vibrate, which agitates the column of air (as in a clarinet, oboe or duduk)
- blows against an edge or fipple (as in a recorder), or
- blows across the edge of an open hole (as in a flute).
For example, the saxophone is typically made of brass, but is classified as a woodwind instrument because it produces sound with a vibrating reed.
On the other hand, the wooden cornett (not to be confused with the cornet, which is made of brass) and the serpent are both made of wood (or plastic tubing, in the case of modern serpents), but belong to the family of brass instruments because the vibrating is done by the player's lips.
In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, wind instruments are classed as aerophones.
Read more about this topic: Wind Instrument
Famous quotes containing the words types of, types, wind and/or instruments:
“Our children evaluate themselves based on the opinions we have of them. When we use harsh words, biting comments, and a sarcastic tone of voice, we plant the seeds of self-doubt in their developing minds.... Children who receive a steady diet of these types of messages end up feeling powerless, inadequate, and unimportant. They start to believe that they are bad, and that they can never do enough.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“He’s one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)
“It is not a piece of fine feminine Spitalfields silk—but is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables & hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book—on risk of a lumbago & sciatics.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of this false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)