Wind instrument - wikipedia Wind instrument This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. ( Learn how and when to remove these template messages ) This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia 's quality standards. The specific problem is : Unclear writing, bad formatting, missing details such as physics formulas to calculate frequency, etc. Please help improve this article if you can. ( March 2014 ) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( September 2009 ) Charles Gounod 's Petite Symphonie pour neuf instruments à vent ( Little Symphony for Nine Wind Instruments ) I. Adagio, allegro II : Andante cantabile III : Scherzo ( Allegro moderato ) IV : Finale ( Allegretto ) Performed by the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet. Problems playing these files ? See media help. Erke, wind instrument of Argentina A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator ( usually a tube ), in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into ( or over ) a mouthpiece set at or near the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of the effective length of the vibrating column of air. In the case of some wind instruments, sound is produced by blowing through a reed ; others require buzzing into a metal mouthpiece. Contents 1 Methods for obtaining different notes 2 Types of wind instruments 3 Physics of sound production 4 Parts 5 Breath pressure 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Methods for obtaining different notes Using different air columns for different tones, such as in the pan flute. Changing the length of the vibrating air column by changing the length of the tube through engaging valves ( see rotary valve, piston valve ) which route the air through additional tubing, thereby increasing overall tube length, lowering the fundamental pitch. This method is used on nearly all brass instruments. Changing the length of the vibrating air column by lengthening and / or shortening the tube using a sliding mechanism. This method is used on the trombone and the slide whistle. Changing the frequency of vibration through opening or closing holes in the side of the tube. This can be done by covering the holes with fingers or pressing a key which then closes the hole. This method is used in nearly all woodwind instruments. Making the column of air vibrate at different harmonics without changing the length of the column of air ( see natural horn and harmonic series ). Almost all wind instruments use the last method, often in combination with one of the others, to extend their register. Types of wind instruments Wind instruments are typically grouped into two families : Brass instruments ( horns, trumpets, trombones, euphoniums, and tubas ) Woodwind instruments ( recorders, flutes, oboes, clarinets, saxophones, and bassoons ) 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 over a fipple, across an open hole against an edge ( as in a recorder or ocarina ), 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 didgeridoo, the wooden cornett ( not to be confused with the cornet, which is made of brass ) and the serpent are all made of wood ( or plastic tubing, in the case of modern serpents ), and the olifant made from ivory, but all of them 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. Physics of sound production Sound production in all wind instruments depends on the entry of air into a flow - control valve attached to a resonant chamber ( resonator ). The resonator is typically a long cylindrical or conical tube, open at the far end. A pulse of high pressure from the valve will travel down the tube at the speed of sound. It will be reflected from the open end as a return pulse of low pressure. Under suitable conditions, the valve will reflect the pulse back, with increased energy, until a standing wave forms in the tube. Reed instruments such as the clarinet or oboe have a flexible reed or reeds at the mouthpiece, forming a pressure - controlled valve. An increase in pressure inside the chamber will decrease the pressure differential across the reed ; the reed will open more, increasing the flow of air. The increased flow of air will increase the internal pressure further, so a pulse of high pressure arriving at the mouthpiece will reflect as a higher - pressure pulse back down the tube. Standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter - wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, and a pressure node at the open end. The reed vibrates at a rate determined by the resonator. For Lip Reed ( brass ) instruments, the player controls the tension in their lips so that they vibrate under the influence of the air flow through them. They adjust the vibration so that the lips are most closed, and the air flow is lowest, when a low - pressure pulse arrives at the mouthpiece, to reflect a low - pressure pulse back down the tube. Standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter - wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, and a pressure node at the open end. For Air Reed ( flute and fipple - flute ) instruments, the thin grazing air sheet ( planar jet ) flowing across an opening ( mouth ) in the pipe interacts with a sharp edge ( labium ) to generate sound. The jet is generated by the player, when blowing through a thin slit ( flue ). For recorders and flue organ pipes this slit is manufactured by the instrument maker and has a fixed geometry. In a transverse flute or a pan flute the slit is formed by the musician between his lips. Due to acoustic oscillation of the pipe the air in the pipe is alternatively compressed and expanded. This results in an alternating flow of air into and out of the pipe through the pipe mouth. The interaction of this transversal acoustic flow with the planar air jet induces at the flue exit ( origin of the jet ) a localised perturbation of the velocity profile of the jet. This perturbation is strongly amplified by the intrinsic instability of the jet as the fluid travels towards the labium. This results into a global transversal motion of the jet at the labium. The amplification of perturbations of a jet by its intrinsic instability can be observed when looking at a plume of cigaret smoke. Any small amplitude motion of the hand holding the cigaret results into an oscillation of the plume increasing with distance upwards and eventually a chaotic motion ( turbulence ). The same jet oscillation can be triggered by gentle air flow in the room, which can be verified by waving with the other hand. The oscillation of the jet around the labium results into a fluctuating force of the airflow on the labium. Following the third law of Newton the labium exerts an opposite reaction force on the flow. One can demonstrate that this reaction force is the source of sound that drives the acoustic oscillation of the pipe. A quantitative demonstration of the nature of this type of sound source has been provided by Alan Powell when studying a planar jet interacting with a sharp edge in the absence of pipe ( so called edgetone ). The sound radiated from the edgetone can be predicted from a measurement of the unsteady force induced by the jet flow on the sharp edge ( labium ). The sound production by the reaction of the wall to an unsteady force of the flow around an object is also producing the aeolian sound of a cylinder placed normal to an air - flow ( singing wire phenomenon ). In all these cases ( flute, edgetone, aeolian tone... ) the sound production does not involve a vibration of the wall. Hence the material in which the flute is made is not relevant for the principle of the sound production. There is no essential difference between a golden or a silver flute. The sound production in a flute can be described by a lumped element model in which the pipe acts as an acoustic swing ( mass - spring system, resonator ) that preferentially oscillates at a so - called natural frequency. The instability of the jet acts as an amplifier transferring energy from the steady jet flow at the flue exit to the oscillating flow around the labium. The pipe forms with the jet a feedback loop. These two elements are coupled at the flue exit and at the labium. At the flue exit the transversal acoustic flow of the pipe perturbs the jet. At the labium the jet oscillation results in a generation of acoustic waves, which maintain the pipe oscillation. The acoustic flow in the pipe can for a steady oscillation be described in terms of standing waves. These waves have a pressure node at the mouth opening and another pressure node at the opposite open pipe termination. Standing waves inside such an open - open tube will be multiples of a half - wavelength. To a rough approximation, a tube of about 40 cm. will exhibit resonances near the following points : For a reed or lip - reed instrument : 220 Hz ( A3 ), 660 Hz ( E5 ), 1100 Hz ( C # 6 ). For an air - reed instrument : 440 Hz ( A4 ), 880 Hz ( A5 ), 1320 Hz ( E6 ). In practice, however, obtaining a range of musically useful tones from a wind instrument depends to a great extent on careful instrument design, and playing technique. The frequency of the vibrational modes depends on the speed of sound in air, which varies with air density. A change in temperature, and only to a much smaller degree also a change in humidity, influences the air density and thus the speed of sound, and therefore affects the tuning of wind instruments. The effect of thermal expansion of a wind instrument, even of a brass instrument, is negligible compared to the thermal effect on the air. Parts The bell of a B - flat clarinet The bell of a wind instrument is the round, flared opening opposite the mouthpiece. It is found on horns, trumpets and many other kinds of instruments. On brass instruments, the acoustical coupling from the bore to the outside air occurs at the bell for all notes, and the shape of the bell optimizes this coupling. On woodwinds, most notes vent at the uppermost open tone holes ; only the lowest notes of each register vent fully or partly at the bell, and the bell 's function in this case is to improve the consistency in tone between these notes and the others. Breath pressure Playing some wind instruments, in particular those involving high breath pressure resistance, produce increases in intraocular pressure, which has been linked to glaucoma as a potential health risk. One 2011 study focused on brass and woodwind instruments observed `` temporary and sometimes dramatic elevations and fluctuations in IOP ''. Another study found that the magnitude of increase in intraocular pressure correlates with the intraoral resistance associated with the instrument, and linked intermittent elevation of intraocular pressure from playing high - resistance wind instruments to incidence of visual field loss. The range of intraoral pressure involved in various classes of ethnic wind instruments, such as Native American flutes, has been shown to be generally lower than Western classical wind instruments. See also Concert band Shorthand for orchestra instrumentation References Jump up ^ Baines, Anthony ( 1961 ). Musical Instruments Through the Ages. Harmondsworth : Pelican. Jump up ^ Benade, Arthur H. ( 1990 ). Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. New York : Dover. p. 491. Jump up ^ Wolfe, Joe. `` Clarinet Acoustics : an Introduction ''. University of New South Wales. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 12. ^ Jump up to : Wolfe, Joe. `` Open vs. Closed Pipes ''. University of New South Wales. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 12. Jump up ^ Benade, Arthur H. ( 1990 ). Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. p. 391. Jump up ^ Wolfe, Joe. `` Brass Instrument ( Lip Reed ) Acoustics : an Introduction ''. University of New South Wales. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 12. Jump up ^ Fabre, Benoit ; Gilbert, Joel ; Hirschberg, Avraham ; Pelorson, Xavier ( 2012 ). `` Aeroacoustics of Musical Instruments ''. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. 44 : 1 -- 25. doi : 10.1146 / annurev - fluid - 120710 - 101031. Jump up ^ Wolfe, Joe. `` Flute Acoustics : an Introduction ''. University of New South Wales. Retrieved 2010 - 12 - 12. Jump up ^ Powell, Alan ( 1961 ). `` On the Edgetone ''. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 33 ( 4 ) : 395 -- 409. doi : 10.1121 / 1.1908677. Jump up ^ Coltman, John W. ( 1971 ). `` Effect of material on flute tone quality ''. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 49 ( 2B ) : 520 -- 523. doi : 10.1121 / 1.1912381. Jump up ^ Gunnar Schmidtmann ; Susanne Jahnke ; Egbert J. Seidel ; Wolfgang Sickenberger ; Hans - Jürgen Grein ( 2011 ). `` Intraocular Pressure Fluctuations in Professional Brass and Woodwind Musicians During Common Playing Conditions ''. Graefe 's Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology. 249 ( 6 ) : 895 -- 901. doi : 10.1007 / s00417 - 010 - 1600 - x. Jump up ^ J.S. Schuman ; E.C. Massicotte ; S. Connolly ; E. Hertzmark ; B. Mukherji ; M.Z. Kunen ( January 2000 ). `` Increased Intraocular Pressure and Visual Field Defects in High Resistance Wind Instrument Players ''. Ophthalmology. 107 ( 1 ) : 127 -- 133. doi : 10.1016 / s0161 - 6420 ( 99 ) 00015 - 9. PMID 10647731. Jump up ^ Clinton F. Goss ( August 2013 ). `` Intraoral Pressure in Ethnic Wind Instruments '' ( PDF ). arXiv : 1308.5214. Retrieved 22 Aug 2013. Lay summary. Further reading Wind Instrument Summary CDs are : `` Microsoft Musical Instruments '' ( now out of production but sometimes available on Amazon ), and `` Tuneful Tubes ? '' ( http://sites.google.com/site/tunefultubes ) External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wind instruments. Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Wind instruments. 4. Aerophones / Wind instruments 41. Free 411. Displacement Sword blade Whipcracking 412. Interruptive 412.1. Idiophonic 412.11. Concussion 412.12. Percussion 412.13. Free reed 412.14. Band / ribbon 412.2. Non-idiophonic 412.21 Rotating 412.22 Whirling 413. Plosive Ghatam Udu 42. Non - free 421. Flute 421.1. Non-fipple 421.11. End - blown 421.12. Side - blown 421.13. Vessel 421.2. Fipple 421.21. External 421.22. Internal 422. Reed 422.1. Double reed 422.11. Single 422.12. Multiple 422.2. Single reed 422.21. Single 422.22. Multiple 422.3. Free reed 422.31. Single 422.32. Multiple 423. Brass 423.1 Natural 423.11. Conch 423.12. Tubular 423.2 Chromatic 423.21. Keyed 423.22. Slide 423.23. Valved Instrument intonation Just intonation in any key Fretless string instrument Pedal steel guitar Trombone Human voice Synthesizer Dynamic intonation adjustment Crook Fretted string instrument Wind instruments Just intonation in one key Bagpipes Natural horn Tromba marina Long - string instrument Harmonica Retunable to a just key Keyboard instruments Split sharp Flageolet tones ( harmonics ) or natural overtone series Guqin Đàn bầu Physical just - intoned string part relation with additional 3rd bridge Monochord Pencilina Moodswinger LCCN : sh85146863 GND : 4130897 - 9 NDL : 00564867 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wind_instrument&oldid=802195619 '' Categories : Woodwind instruments Hidden categories : Articles needing cleanup from March 2014 All pages needing cleanup Cleanup tagged articles with a reason field from March 2014 Wikipedia pages needing cleanup from March 2014 Articles needing additional references from September 2009 All articles needing additional references Articles with hAudio microformats Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Talk Contents About Wikipedia Alemannisch Asturianu Azərbaycanca Bosanski Català Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Frysk Gaeilge Galego 한국어 Հայերեն हिन्दी Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Íslenska עברית Latviešu Lietuvių Magyar Bahasa Melayu Mirandés Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Norsk nynorsk Occitan Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча Polski Português Runa Simi Русский Scots Shqip Simple English Slovenčina Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska தமிழ் Тоҷикӣ Українська Tiếng Việt ייִדיש 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 24 September 2017, at 16 : 19. 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Question: the vibrations of brass instruments come from a column of air in a
Answer: tube