Brass Instruments: The Full List, and Which One to Start On

A brass instrument is one you play by buzzing your lips into a cup-shaped mouthpiece. That is the whole definition, and the metal has nothing to do with it — which is why a saxophone made entirely of brass is a woodwind, and why a wooden cornett and a hollowed alphorn are not.

Your lips are the reed. The tube in your hands only decides which of the notes they can already produce will actually come out, and there are three ways it does that: valves that add tubing, a slide that lengthens it, or nothing at all. Almost every difference that matters across the family follows from that, plus one other thing — whether the tube is the same width all the way along or gets steadily wider.

Table of Contents

• Every brass instrument, and what its tube is doing
• The shape of the tube decides the sound
  • Cylindrical: bright and cutting
  • Conical: round and warm
  • Valves, a slide, or nothing
• The four that make up a brass section
  • Trumpet
  • French horn
  • Trombone
  • Tuba
• The relatives, and which one gets confused with which
  • Cornet and flugelhorn
  • Mellophone
  • Baritone and euphonium
  • Sousaphone and helicon
• The ones on every list that hardly anyone plays
• Three dates that made the modern brass section
• Why your trumpet's C is not the piano's C
• Which brass instrument to start on
  • Trumpet or trombone
  • The step up, and when it is worth taking
  • If you replace the mouthpiece, match the shank
• Read next
• FAQs

Every brass instrument, and what its tube is doing

The last three rows are the ones that give the family definition away. A cornett is carved from wood and covered in leather, a serpent is a wooden bass version of it shaped like its name, and an alphorn is a hollowed spruce log twelve feet long. All three are played by buzzing the lips, so all three are brass instruments. Meanwhile the saxophone, which is brass from bell to neck, is a woodwind, because a cane reed makes its sound.

The shape of the tube decides the sound

Two brass instruments can be the same length, in the same key, with the same fingerings, and sound nothing alike. The reason is the bore — whether the tubing holds one diameter for most of its run or widens continuously from the mouthpiece to the bell.

Cylindrical: bright and cutting

The trumpet and the trombone are the cylindrical ones. Their tubing stays at roughly one diameter until it flares into the bell in the last stretch, and the result is a tone with a hard edge to it that carries across an ensemble. This is the sound people mean when they say a section is brassy. The trombone has no choice about it — a slide can only work on a tube of constant diameter, which is why the one brass instrument without valves is also permanently in this group. The cimbasso is the odd cylindrical bass, and it is why Verdi’s low brass writing sounds so much more menacing than a tuba playing the same notes.

Conical: round and warm

Everything else widens as it goes: cornet, flugelhorn, horn, alto horn, baritone, euphonium, tuba, sousaphone. The tone is rounder, blends more readily and cuts less. A flugelhorn is the extreme case — same key as a trumpet, same fingerings, and it will disappear into a section rather than sit on top of it, which is exactly what a jazz player picks one up for.

The clearest demonstration is the cornet and the trumpet. Same key of B♭, same length of tubing, same fingerings for every note, and a cornet player can read a trumpet part without changing anything. The cornet still sounds mellower, and it is entirely because its tube tapers where the trumpet’s does not. Flugelhorn vs. cornet takes the comparison one step further along the same axis.

Valves, a slide, or nothing

Buzz into a fixed length of tube and you get the harmonic series — a handful of notes, spread wide apart at the bottom and closer together as you go up. That is all a natural brass instrument has, which is why every bugle call in the US Army is built from the same five notes and why no bugle call contains a scale.

Valves fixed that. Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel took out a Prussian patent on the idea in April 1818, and it is the single change that turned a family of ceremonial noisemakers into orchestral instruments. Each valve drops in an extra loop of tubing when you press it: the second lowers the pitch a semitone, the first a whole tone, the third a tone and a half, and the seven usable combinations fill in every note between the harmonics. Pistons move up and down and are what trumpets, cornets, euphoniums and most tubas use; rotary valves turn instead, are quieter and smoother under the finger, and are standard on the French horn and on German orchestral trumpets and tubas.

The trombone did not need fixing, because it had solved the problem in the fifteenth century. Its slide lengthens the whole instrument continuously through seven positions, each one a semitone lower than the last, and because the movement is continuous rather than stepped it is the only brass instrument that can play a true glissando and the only one where intonation is entirely in the player’s arm rather than partly in the manufacturer’s tubing lengths.

The four that make up a brass section

A symphony orchestra’s brass is four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and one tuba — ten to twelve players against sixty-odd strings, and they can still cover the lot when the score asks. Every other brass instrument is either a specialist substitution for one of those four or a relative that lives somewhere other than the concert hall.

Trumpet

The highest of the four, and about four and a half feet of mostly cylindrical B♭ tubing with three piston valves. It carries melody and it is designed to be heard, which is both why it gets the tune and why practising one in a flat is a negotiation.

It is also the most common first brass instrument by a wide margin, which cuts both ways: the fingerings transfer to cornet, flugelhorn, mellophone and baritone, and there will be six other trumpet players competing for the first-chair seat. The fingering chart covers the notes, what a trumpet costs covers the money, and the brands to avoid covers the ways a first purchase goes wrong.

French horn

The one with the bell pointing backwards and the player’s right hand inside it. It descends from the hunting horn of seventeenth-century France, it uses rotary valves worked by the left hand, and it is the hardest of the four to play in tune — the notes of its harmonic series sit so close together in the upper register that neighbouring ones are a hair apart, which is why even professionals crack them in public.

The hand in the bell is not there for support. Closing it off lowers the pitch, which is how horn players filled in the notes their valveless instruments could not reach for the whole of the eighteenth century, and it survives as a technique: written a certain way, the part asks for a stopped note, and the sound goes thin and metallic. No other brass instrument is played with a hand inside it.

A single horn is one instrument: three valves and one set of tubing, pitched in F or, less often, in B♭. A double horn adds a fourth valve under the thumb that switches the air between an F set of tubing about twelve feet long and a B♭ set about nine. The shorter side is more secure high up and the longer side is richer low down, and having both is why the double is what almost every orchestral player owns. What a French horn costs goes through the difference in money. Despite the name, the English horn is neither English nor a horn — it is an alto oboe, and it is a woodwind.

Trombone

Held horizontally, played with the right hand pushing the slide and the left hand carrying the weight. The B♭ tenor is the standard instrument and it reads in bass clef at concert pitch — no transposition, so what is written is what sounds, which makes it far and away the easiest brass instrument to learn to read on.

An orchestra’s three are usually two tenors and one bass, and they spend a lot of their time harmonising as a block rather than playing separate lines. A bass trombone is the same length with a wider bore and one or two thumb valves that add tubing for the low register. What a trombone costs and what one weighs cover the practicalities.

Tuba

The lowest and largest, and the foundation the rest of the section is stacked on — an orchestra carries exactly one. Confusingly, tuba is Latin for trumpet, which is what the Romans called their straight ceremonial horn.

Tubas come in four common keys. BB♭ and E♭ are the band and brass-band instruments, CC is what most American orchestral players use, and F is the small one for solo and chamber work. A school will hand out a BB♭. What a tuba costs and what one weighs are the two questions everyone asks, in that order.

The relatives, and which one gets confused with which

Cornet and flugelhorn

Both are B♭ instruments with the same fingerings as a trumpet, and both are conical where the trumpet is cylindrical. The cornet is the compact one with the mellower edge, and it was the melody instrument of the nineteenth-century band before the trumpet displaced it — Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky all wrote real parts for it. It is still the top voice of a British brass band, which has no trumpets in it at all.

The flugelhorn takes the taper further and gets a soft, covered, almost vocal sound out of it. It has a thin orchestral repertoire and a large jazz one, and it is a doubling instrument — nearly everyone who plays one started on trumpet or cornet, and it costs what a second horn costs. The cornet is not in that position at all: a British brass band has no trumpets to start on, so the cornet is its beginner instrument, and it seats ten of them to the flugelhorn’s one.

Mellophone

A marching band’s substitute for the French horn, and the reason is geometry: a horn’s bell points behind the player, which is fine in a concert hall with a wall to reflect it and useless on a field. The mellophone is pitched in F like the horn and reads the same written notes, so a horn player can pick one up in August and play the right pitches on sight. Everything physical is different — trumpet fingerings, a trumpet-width mouthpiece rim, right hand on the valves, and about two pounds less to carry.

Mellophone vs. French horn works through what transfers and what does not, and mellophone vs. trumpet covers the switch most marching mellophone players are actually making.

Baritone and euphonium

These two are the same length as a tenor trombone — B♭, one octave below a trumpet — with the same range and, near enough, the same fingerings, and they are told apart only by how fast the tube widens. The baritone’s bore is narrower and its wrap tighter, so it sounds brighter and closer to a trombone. The euphonium’s is wider and closer to a tuba’s, so it sounds fatter and darker, and it is the one that gets the tune in a concert band.

American schools use the two names almost interchangeably and hand out whichever is in the cupboard. Where it matters, it matters: a euphonium solo played on a baritone sounds thin. Euphonium vs. baritone is the full comparison, and euphonium vs. tuba and tuba vs. baritone cover the step down from there.

Sousaphone and helicon

A sousaphone is a BB♭ tuba rebuilt to wrap around the player so the weight sits on one shoulder instead of in the lap. Same tubing length, same range, same part. J.W. Pepper built the first one in 1893 at John Philip Sousa’s request; C.G. Conn built his own version in 1898 and got most of the credit.

What Sousa actually wanted was the bell pointing up so the sound spread over the band rather than at whoever was behind him — the forward-facing bell everyone pictures came later, once bands were marching in front of crowds. The helicon is the instrument he was modifying: the same wrap-around idea, made in Central Europe from the 1840s, with the bell aimed sideways. It is still played across Austria, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and it is essentially extinct in American bands. Tuba vs. sousaphone and what a sousaphone costs have the detail.

The ones on every list that hardly anyone plays

Several of these are museum pieces, ceremonial objects or specialist hires rather than instruments anyone takes up, and it is worth knowing which is which before going looking for one.

The bugle is alive but narrow: military ceremony, Scouting, and drum and bugle corps. It has no valves, so it plays five notes, and every call from Reveille to Taps is assembled from those. Trumpet vs. bugle covers what adding valves actually bought.

It is also the one instrument here that a non-musician buys on purpose, usually for a ceremony or a troop. The specification to look for is regulation — the B♭ pitch and bore the US Army settled on in the nineteenth century, which is what makes the standard calls come out at the pitch everyone expects. A regulation bugle with a carrying bag runs around $110. Anything sold as a decorative or novelty bugle is a wall ornament and will not hold a pitch.

The piccolo trumpet is a working professional’s instrument rather than a rare one, but it is a fourth or fifth horn, not a first. Pitched an octave above the B♭ trumpet with a fourth valve to fill in the bottom, it exists for high Baroque writing — the second Brandenburg Concerto, and the descant on Penny Lane that McCartney asked for after hearing it.

The cimbasso is a contrabass valved instrument with a cylindrical bore and a bell pointing forward, and it exists because Verdi wanted a bass voice that could snarl where a tuba only rumbles. Opera houses and film scoring stages hire them. Nobody owns one casually.

The cornett and serpent are the early-music survivors — wooden, finger-holed, and played with a small brass-style mouthpiece, which is the combination that makes them so strange to classify and so hard to play. The alphorn and the natural horn are the valveless ancestors, and the alto horn in E♭ is a genuine working instrument that happens to live almost entirely inside British-style brass bands.

Three dates that made the modern brass section

Lip-blown instruments are as old as anything in music — the two trumpets buried with Tutankhamun around 1323 BC still exist, one silver and one bronze, and both were played in 1939. For most of the three thousand years since, they could only do what a bugle does.

1818. Stölzel and Blühmel patent the valve in Prussia. Within a generation the trumpet and horn stop being ceremonial instruments that composers wrote around and become chromatic ones that can carry a line anywhere.

1835. Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Moritz patent the bass tuba in Berlin. The brass section finally has a bass that can play every note rather than an ophicleide or a serpent approximating one, and the shape of the modern orchestra’s low end is set.

1893. Pepper builds the sousaphone. Nothing changes musically, but brass becomes portable at the bottom end, and the American marching band as it exists today becomes possible.

The trombone sits outside all of this. It arrived fully formed as the sackbut in the fifteenth century, fully chromatic three hundred years before anything else in the family, and it has changed less since than any other instrument in an orchestra.

Why your trumpet’s C is not the piano’s C

This is the thing that derails more beginner brass players than any fingering, and it is nobody’s mistake. Most brass instruments are transposing: the note written on the page is not the note that comes out.

Play a written C on a B♭ trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn or euphonium reading treble clef, and a piano hears B♭ — a whole tone lower. Play a written C on an F horn or a mellophone and the piano hears F, a fifth lower. The trombone, and the tuba and euphonium when they read bass clef, are the exceptions: they read concert pitch, so written C is C.

The reason is that it lets one player move between instruments of different lengths without learning new fingerings. Every valved brass instrument uses the same fingering for the same written note; the transposition absorbs the difference in tubing. Hand a B♭ trumpet player an E♭ alto horn and they can read the part immediately. The cost is that the trumpet part and the piano part in the same piece of music are written in different keys, and a parent trying to help with practice at the piano will find every note wrong by the same interval.

Which brass instrument to start on

Realistically the choice is between two. The trumpet and the trombone are the instruments schools start beginners on, the ones with the most teachers, method books and second-hand instruments, and the two whose fingerings and slide positions open the rest of the family later. Horn and tuba players are nearly always recruited out of that group a year or two in, and marching instruments — mellophone, sousaphone, marching baritone — are assigned rather than chosen.

Age matters more here than on strings. Brass needs adult-ish front teeth, lung capacity and hands, which puts a realistic start at nine to eleven, against five or six for a violin. Orchestra vs. band covers the wider version of that decision.

Trumpet or trombone

Three things separate them, and none of them is difficulty.

• Arms. Sixth and seventh position on a trombone are a long way out. A small ten-year-old cannot reach them, and the usual answer is to wait a year or start on trumpet.
• Reading. The trombone reads concert pitch in bass clef, so it agrees with the piano. The trumpet transposes, which is one more thing to explain in the first month.
• Competition. Every school band has too many trumpets and not enough trombones. If the point is playing rather than sitting, the shortage is worth knowing about.

Renting from the school is the cheapest way to find out whether any of this sticks, at roughly $20–40 a month for a trumpet or trombone and $40–70 for the large brass. Buying starts to make sense at around the one-year mark, and the school-standard instruments a teacher will point at sit between $400 and $900.

The step up, and when it is worth taking

The gap between a $160 trumpet and a $400 one is not tone, whatever the descriptions say — it is the third valve slide ring. Every trumpet plays low D and low C♯ sharp, because those two notes use all three valves and the tubing the valves add is very slightly too short when they are combined. On a beginner horn there is nothing to be done about it. On an intermediate one the third valve slide has a ring you hook a thumb into and push out as you play the note, and learning to do that without thinking is one of the things that separates a second-year player from a fourth-year one.

So the honest trigger for upgrading is not time served, it is the music. When a student is playing parts that live down there, the ring stops being a specification and starts being the reason the band sounds flat. Until then the cheap horn is doing its job.

If you replace the mouthpiece, match the shank

The mouthpiece in the box is usually the first thing a student is told to change, and it is where a first accessory purchase goes wrong. Trombone, baritone and euphonium mouthpieces come in two shank sizes — the tapered end that goes into the instrument — and the same model number is sold in both. A large shank will not seat in a small-shank instrument and a small one falls into a large-shank one. The model number does not tell you which it is: a Bach 6½AL is a standard small shank, because the L refers to the throat and backbore rather than the shank.

Take the mouthpiece that came with the instrument to the shop, or read the part number rather than the model name. Trumpets and cornets have their own version of this — a cornet’s shank is shorter and narrower, so a trumpet mouthpiece will not fit one even though the two instruments play identically.

Read next

• Types of instruments: the five families, and how an instrument gets into one
• Woodwind instruments and keyboard instruments
• Trumpet fingering chart and trumpet brands to avoid
• Flugelhorn vs. cornet, euphonium vs. baritone, tuba vs. sousaphone
• Orchestra vs. band and orchestra vs. symphony vs. philharmonic

FAQs