Today's numbers are
9. Flugel Horn
The flugelhorn is a brass instrument that resembles a trumpet but has a wider, conical bore. Some consider it a member of the saxhorn family developed by Adolphe Sax (who also developed the saxophone). Other historians assert that it derives from the valve bugle designed by Michael Saurle (father) in Munich in 1832 (Royal Bavarian privilege for a "chromatic Flügelhorn" 1832), which predates Adolphe Sax's work.
The flugelhorn is built in the same Bâ™ pitch as many trumpets and cornets. It usually has three piston valves and employs the same fingering system as other brass instruments, but four-piston valve and rotary valve variants also exist. It can thus be played without too much trouble by trumpet and cornet players, though some adaptation to their playing style may be needed. It is usually played with a more deeply conical mouthpiece than either trumpets or cornets (though not as conical as a horn mouthpiece).
Some modern flugelhorns feature a fourth valve that lowers the pitch a perfect fourth (similar to the fourth valve on some euphoniums, tubas, horns, and piccolo trumpets, or the trigger on trombones). This adds a useful low range that, coupled with the flugelhorn's dark sound, extends the instrument's abilities. More often, however, players use the fourth valve in place of the first and third valve combination, which is somewhat sharp (compensated for on trumpets and cornets and some three-valve flugelhorns by a slide for the first or third valve).
The tone is "fatter" and usually regarded as more "mellow" and "dark" than the trumpet or cornet. The sound of the flugelhorn has been described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn, whereas the cornet's sound is halfway between a trumpet and a flugelhorn. The flugelhorn is as agile as the cornet but more difficult to control in the high register (from approximately written G above the staff), where in general it "slots" or locks onto notes less easily. It is not generally used for aggressive or bright displays as trumpets and cornets often are, but tends more towards a softer and more reflective role.
The flugelhorn appears mainly in jazz, brass band music, and popular music, though it appears occasionally in orchestral music. Famous orchestral works with flugelhorn include Igor Stravinsky's Threni, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony, Danzon no. 2 by Arturo Marquez, and Michael Tippett's third symphony. The flugelhorn is sometimes substituted for the post horn in Mahler's Third Symphony. In HK Gruber's trumpet concerto Busking (2007) the soloist is directed to play a flugelhorn in the slow middle movement. The flugelhorn figured prominently in many of Burt Bacharach's 1960s pop song arrangements. It is featured in a solo role in Bert Kaempfert's 1962 recording of That Happy Feeling. Flugelhorns have occasionally been used as the alto or low soprano voice in a drum and bugle corps.
Joe Bishop, as a member of the Woody Herman band in 1936, was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn. Shorty Rogers and Kenny Baker began playing it in the early fifties, and Clark Terry used it in Duke Ellington's orchestra in the mid-1950s. Chet Baker recorded several albums on the instrument in the 1950s and 1960s. Miles Davis further popularized the instrument in jazz on the albums Miles Ahead and Sketches of Spain, (both arranged by Gil Evans) though he did not use it much on later projects. Other prominent jazz flugelhorn players include Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Art Farmer, Roy Hargrove, Hugh Masekela, Tony Guerrero, Jimmy Owens, Maynard Ferguson, Terumasa Hino, Woody Shaw, Guido Basso, Kenny Wheeler, Tom Harrell, Bill Coleman, Thad Jones, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Loughnane of the rock band Chicago, Mike Metheny, and Harry Beckett. Most jazz flugelhorn players use the instrument as an auxiliary to the trumpet, but in the 1970s Chuck Mangione gave up playing the trumpet and concentrated on the flugelhorn alone, notably on "Feels So Good". Mangione, in an interview during an Olympic Games telecast on ABC for which he wrote the theme Give it All You Got, referred to the flugelhorn as "...the right baseball glove."
Pop flugelhorn players include Probyn Gregory (Brian Wilson Band), Rick Braun, Mic Gillette, Jeff Oster, and Zach Condon of Beirut. More recently, in the 1996 film, Brassed Off, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band uses a flugelhorn in the "Adagio" from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez.
Another notable Flugelhorn player is Scott Spillane of the American indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel.
Paul McCartney is also known to have played flugelhorn on some Beatles and solo songs.
See and hear the Flugel Horn being played
18 Ophicleide
The ophicleide is a family of conical-bore keyed bugles. It has a similar shape to the sudrophone.
The ophicleide was invented in 1817 and patented in 1821 by French instrument maker Jean Hilaire Asté (also known as Halary or Haleri) as an extension to the keyed bugle or Royal Kent bugle family. It was the structural cornerstone of the brass section of the Romantic orchestra, often replacing the serpent, a Renaissance instrument which was thought to be outdated. Its long tubing bends back on itself, and it is played with a cupped mouthpiece similar to modern trombone and euphonium mouthpieces. It originally had nine keys, later expanded to as many as twelve keys, covering the large tone holes. Examples exist in Eâ™, C, Bâ™, and Aâ™ (soprano), F and Eâ™ (alto or quinticlave), Bâ™ and C (bass), and Eâ™ (contrabass). The most common members are the bass ophicleides pitched in Bâ™ or C. Soprano and contrabass instruments are very rare. Adolph Sax and the modern maker Robb Stewart have built examples of soprano ophicleides an octave above the bass. Currently, only five contrabass ophicleides are known to exist. Three are in museums, and two are privately owned: one in Cooperstown, New York and one in Petaluma, California. Those in private hands were both made by Robb Stewart and are the only playable examples.
The bass ophicleide was first scored for in the opera Olimpie by Gaspare Spontini in 1819. Other famous works which employ it include Felix Mendelssohn's Elias and Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (originally scored for English Bass Horn), as well as Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which was originally scored to include both an ophicleide and a serpent. The instrument was standard in French mid-19th century serious operas by Meyerbeer, Halevy, and Auber, as well as English operas by Michael Balfe, Vincent Wallace, and others. Verdi and Wagner also composed for the ophicleide as did Sir Arthur Sullivan in his Overture Di Ballo (which, like Wagner's Rienzi, also has an additional part for serpent).
The ophicleide (oficleide) was used in Brazilian choro bands well into the 20th century—soloist Irineu de Almeida was the major performer on the instrument—until it was superseded by the saxophone.
The ophicleide was eventually succeeded by the tuba and euphonium through careful and deliberate marketing, although it remained popular in Italy until the early twentieth century. One of the last great ophicleide players was the English musician Sam Hughes. The instrument has also been considered a direct ancestor of the saxophone: supposedly Adolphe Sax, while repairing an ophicleide, put a woodwind mouthpiece on the instrument and liked the sound, leading to the saxophone's later creation; however, this story is not considered plausible, since the developmental history of the saxophone is well documented, and the ophicleide and saxophone are only superficially similar to each other in that both have a wide conical bore and large tone holes.
A very loud bass reed organ stop is named after the ophicleide .
The instrument's name comes from the Greek word ophis (ὄφις)"serpent" + kleis (κλείς) "keys", since it was conceived of as a serpent with keys. Like the serpent, some found it difficult to play, and early twentieth century musicians felt it had a somewhat unpredictable sound, leading to the doggerel:
"The Ophicleide, like mortal sin
Was fostered by the serpent."
The ophicleide, like the keyed bugle (the soprano member of its 'family') has a fingering system like no other wind instrument. All keys except one are normally closed, opening only when a finger presses the associated key lever. Just below the bell is the largest of the key-covered tone holes, which is normally open, closing only when the lever is pressed. This normally open tone hole is the acoustic bell, with the bell itself having little effect on sound or pitch. The sound produced with no key levers pressed is the nominal pitch of the instrument. If the player presses the lever for this normally open tone hole, that hole is closed and the now-longer air column extends past this hole up to the bell, lowering the pitch by one half step. In general, the player can obtain all the "partial" pitches available for a given air column length. To play a higher series of partials, he opens one of the normally closed tone holes, effectively making that hole the "bell" of the instrument, with a corresponding shorter air column and higher series of pitches. The left hand controls three such tone holes plus the normally open one below the bell. Pitches in the upper and middle range of the instrument can be obtained by using only the left hand's set of tone holes, and the right hand can hold and stabilize the instrument. At the point where the air column is shortened by opening all of the left hand tone holes, there comes a difficult couple of notes that can best be played by continuing to shorten the air column with two fingers of the right hand, before the series of partials "wraps" and the left hand is used again for another set of notes. In the lowest octave, some pitches cannot be obtained very well using the holes closer to the bell. For these notes, the other fingers of the right hand can open a few more tone holes that are relatively closer to the mouthpiece than to the bell. Some instruments were made with between one and three extra right hand keys to provide better intonation for specific notes in this register. The right hand keys may also be used in the upper registers as alternate fingerings to facilitate faster passages or to improve intonation. With the exception of these special few pitches in the low octave, the combinations of partials on various sets of opened tone holes results in the left hand fingers going through something very similar to what they would be doing to manipulate the valves on a modern brass instrument.
See and hear the ophicleide being played.
I'm still on 1!!!!
none for me today. The Gong however was really different than I thought it would be. Especially with the sticks. I thought he would hit it with the sticks but he did that kind of movement "scratching" on it. I haven't decided if I like it or not, but I do like this Bingo very much!