Wind Instruments

Musical instruments can be classified into many different groups. Wind instruments are musical instruments that utilize air blown (usually) from the player’s mouth to produce sound. These instruments have a resonator to increase resonance. This is usually a long hollow tube. The pitch of the sound is determined by the length of the resonator. This can be achieved manually to obtain different sounds and hence music.

These instruments are further distinguished into two types. One is the brass instruments and the other is called woodwind instruments. These names were originally based on the type of material used, though they are differentiated based on the means of sound production.

With brass, the air inside the instrument is brought to vibration by the player vibrating their lips. In woodwind, the air within is vibrated by either blowing across or over a fipple or the edge of a hole that is open.

Brass instruments include trombones, trumpets, and horns. The other type, woodwind instruments, includes flutes, recorders, and saxophones.

There are different ways of obtaining different notes. They include blowing through tubes of different lengths, engaging valves to alter tube length or using a sliding mechanism to achieve the same.