Piccolo Clarinet

The clarinet is a type of woodwind instrument. The first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed.

Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitches. The clarinet family is the largest such woodwind family, with more than a dozen types, ranging from the BBB♭ octo-contrabass to the A♭ soprano. Of these, many are rare or obsolete, and music written for them is usually played on the common types. The unmodified word clarinet usually refers to the B♭ soprano clarinet, by far the most common clarinet.

Johann Christoph Denner invented the clarinet in Germany around the turn of the 18th century by adding a register key to the earlier chalumeau. Over time, additional keywork and airtight pads were added to improve tone and playability. Today, the clarinet is used in jazz and classical ensembles, in chamber groups, and as a solo instrument.

The piccolo clarinets are members of the clarinet family, smaller and higher pitched than the more familiar high soprano clarinets in E♭ and D. None are common, but the most often used piccolo clarinet is the A♭ clarinet, sounding a minor seventh higher than the B♭ clarinet. Shackleton also lists obsolete instruments in C, B♭, and A♮. Some writers call these sopranino clarinets or octave clarinets. The boundary between the piccolo and soprano clarinets is not well-defined, and the rare instruments in G and F might be considered as either. Shackleton along with many early twentieth-century composers uses the term "piccolo clarinet" to refer to the E♭ and D clarinets as well (piccolo merely meaning "small" in Italian). This designation is now less common today; with the E♭ and D instruments are more usually designated soprano clarinets.

The A♭ clarinet is pitched a minor seventh higher than the B♭ soprano clarinet. Its lowest note, E ,sounds as concert middle-C, the same as many concert flutes.

Clarinets pitched in A-flat appeared frequently in European wind bands, particularly in Spain and Italy, at least through the middle of the 20th century, and are called for in the stage-band parts for several operas by Verdi.

Cecil Forsyth associated the high instruments with Austria saying, "Clarinets in (high) F, and even in (high) A♭ are occasionally used abroad. The latter instrument is regularly employed in the Austrian military bands.” A famous example of extensive use of a high clarinet in a Viennese small ensemble was the Schrammel quartet, consisting of two violins (the brothers Johann and Josef Schrammel), a bass guitar, and G clarinet, played by Georg Dänzer, during the 1880s.

Bass Clarinet

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B♭ clarinet, it is usually pitched in B♭, but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B♭ clarinet. Bass clarinets in other keys, notably C and A, also exist, but are very rare (in contrast to the regular A clarinet, which is quite common in classical music). Bass clarinets regularly perform in symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, occasionally in marching bands, and play an occasional solo role in contemporary music and jazz in particular.

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" (French compound word made of haut ("high, loud") and bois ("wood, woodwind"), "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca. 1770 from the Italian oboè, a transliteration in that language's orthography of the 17th-century pronunciation of the French name. A musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist.

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature. The bassoon is a non-transposing instrument known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, variety of character and agility. Listeners often compare its warm, dark, reedy timbre to that of a male baritone voice.

The contrabassoon, also known as the bass bassoon or double bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower. Its technique is similar to its smaller cousin, with a few notable differences.

The cor anglais or English horn, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family.

The cor anglais is a transposing instrument pitched in F, a perfect fifth lower than the oboe (a C instrument), and is consequently approximately one and a half times the length of the oboe. The fingering and playing technique used for the cor anglais are essentially the same as those of the oboe. Music for the cor anglais is thus written a perfect fifth higher than the instrument actually sounds. Because the cor anglais normally lacks the lowest B-flat of the oboe, its sounding range stretches from the E (written B natural) below middle C to the C two octaves above middle C.

Saxophone

The saxophone (also referred to as the sax) is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846. He wanted to create an instrument that would both be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds and the most adaptive of the brass, which would fill the vacant middle ground between the two sections. He patented the sax on June 28, 1846 in two groups of seven instruments each. Each series consisted of instruments of various sizes in alternating transposition. The series pitched in B♭ and E♭, designed for military bands, has proved extremely popular and most saxophones encountered today are from this series. Instruments from the so-called "orchestral" series pitched in C and F never gained a foothold.

While proving very popular in military band music, the saxophone is most commonly associated with jazz and classical music. There is substantial repertoire of concert music in the classical idiom for the members of the saxophone family.

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel-Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones.

A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a flute player, a flautist, a flutist, or less commonly a fluter.

Aside from the voice, flutes are the earliest known musical instruments. A number of flutes dating to about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.

The piccolo (Italian for small) is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo mostly has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written. This gave rise to the name "ottavino," the name by which the instrument is referred to in the scores of Italian composers.

Piccolos are now only manufactured in the key of C; however, they were once also available in D♭. It was for this D♭ piccolo that John Philip Sousa wrote the famous solo in the final repeat of the closing section (trio) of his march "The Stars and Stripes Forever".

In the orchestral setting, the piccolo player is often designated as Piccolo/Flute III or even Assistant Principal. The larger orchestras have designated this position as a Solo position due to the demands of the literature. Piccolos are often orchestrated to double (i.e., to play together with) the violins or the flutes, adding sparkle and brilliance to the overall sound because of the aforementioned one-octave transposition upwards.

Concertos have been composed for piccolo, including those by Lowell Liebermann, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Todd Goodman, Martin Amlin, Will Gay Bottje, Bruce Broughton, Valentino Bucchi, Avner Dorman, Jean Doué, Michael Easton, Egil Hovland, Guus Janssen, Tilo Medek, Dexter Morrill, Raymond Niverd, Daniel Pinkham, Thomas Schudel, and Allan Stephenson. Graham Waterhouse composed a Quintet for Piccolo and String Quartet.

Aerophone

An aerophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound. It is one of the four main classes of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.

Hornbostel-Sachs divides aerophones by whether vibrating air is contained in the instrument itself or not.

The first class includes instruments where the vibrating air is not contained by the instrument itself, such as the bullroarer. Such instruments are called free aerophones. This class includes free reed instruments, such as the harmonica, but also many instruments unlikely to be called wind instruments at all by most people, such as sirens and whips.

The second class includes instruments where the vibrating air is contained by the instrument. This class includes almost all the instruments generally called wind instruments - including the didgeridoo, brass instruments in the west, such as the trumpet, the french horn, and the trombone, and woodwind instruments such as the sheng, the oboe, and the clarinet.

Additionally, very loud sounds can be made by explosions directed into, or being detonated inside of resonant cavities. Instruments such as the calliope (and steam whistle), as well as the pyrophone might thus be considered as class 42 instruments, despite the fact that the "wind" or "air" may be steam or an air-fuel mixture.

The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes (reed chambers) or multiple holes. The pressure caused by blowing or drawing air into the reed chambers causes a reed or multiple reeds to vibrate creating sound. Each chamber has multiple, variable-tuned brass or bronze reeds, which are secured at one end only, leaving the other free to vibrate.

Reeds are pre-tuned to individual tones, and each tone is determined according to the size of reed. Longer reeds make deep, low sounds and short reeds make higher-pitched sounds. On certain types of harmonica the pre-tuned reed can be changed (bending a note) to another note by redirecting air flow into the chamber. There are many types of harmonicas, including diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, orchestral, and bass versions.

Bagpipes

Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument, aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes have been for centuries played throughout large parts of Europe, the Caucasus, around the Persian Gulf and in Northern Africa. The term "bagpipe" is equally correct in the singular or plural, although in the English language, pipers most commonly talk of "the pipes", "a set of pipes" or "a stand of pipes".