Orchestral instruments  (Page 2/3)

The oboe is the instrument that traditionally sounds the first "A" that the orchestra tunes to. It is black, made of wood, and at sight can be mistaken by the nonmusician for a clarinet. But its sound is produced when the player blows in between two small reeds, and its high "double-reed" sound is not easily mistaken for any other instrument. 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.

Brass

The orchestral brass are all made of metal, although the metal can be a silvery alloy instead of brass. The sound is actually produced by "buzzing" the lips against the mouthpiece; the rest of the instrument just amplifies and refines the sound from the lips so that it is a pretty, musical sound by the time it comes out of the bell at the other end of the instrument. 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. Its shape is quite cylindrical (it doesn't flare much until the very end), giving it a very clear, direct sound. 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.