Research Paper

The trumpet is one of oldest and most beautiful instruments around. From the first moment that you pick up and play the trumpet you instantly fall in love with tunes that gracefully make its way through the mouthpiece to the horn. This wonderful instrument has been played by some great musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, just to name a couple. Louis Armstrong was probably the best trumpet player to ever live, and without him jazz may not have been the same without him. Before continuing on to far take the time to read the history of the trumpet and exactly what a trumpet is.

The trumpet belongs to the family of brass instruments and is one of the oldest among them. Before the 18^th the trumpet did not have crooks, side holes, or valves to change the sound that came out, only its natural sound would grace your ears. Back then trumpet were only for the purpose of military or ceremonial purposes, like when they were on the battlefield, or when someone died. Early into the 18^th century crooks were inserted between the mouthpiece and body to alter the trumpets pitch or sound. Other experiments were made with the keyed sideholes and slides for the same reasons. It was very difficult for some of the musicians who played the trumpet to hit those high notes so they began to lower notes in their music. In 1796 the composer Franz Joseph Haydn wrote a famous trumpet concerto for the keyed trumpet. He did this because it produced extra notes that other trumpets couldn't play at that time. People didn't like the keyed trumpet because it sounded like an oboe so they gave up that idea and tried lengthening the tubing and adding valves. The invention of valves was added in 1813 and was used for general orchestral use. The length of the trumpets tubing was shortened to 4 to 4-1/2 feet. Today trumpets and cornets are in the brass section and are B flats or C. Cornets do not normally play in the orchestra unless the music has a military sound or calls for the cornet. They have three valves, a tuning slide so that you can adjust the pitch, a cup-shaped mouthpiece and a coiled tube. A musician can change the sound he plays by changing the position of his lips on the mouthpiece or pushing down one or more or the valves. When he pushes down on the valves the part of the tubing that is sounding is made shorter so the pitch changes.

Today you can see the trumpet being played in a jazz band or orchestra. The trumpet plays a very important role in both of these bands especially in the jazz band. In a jazz band it can be one person or a small group of musicians called a combo. It also can be a big band of ten or more. The jazz is divided into sections, the brass, the reeds, drums, piano, guitar, and bass. The brass section, which is where you would find the trumpet, is the principal brass instrument along with its brother the cornet and friend, the trombone. The trumpet and cornets are melody instruments of identical range but the cornet is consider more mellow and the trumpet is usually consider more brassy. In jazz bands most use the trumpet. The trumpet blends with the slide trombone. Jazz trumpeters frequently use objects called muted to alter their sound of their trumpet. They take their mutes and stick it inside the bell of the trumpet where the sound comes out of causing the different sound to come out. In the orchestra the trumpets are also located in the brass section where there is usually 2 to 5 trumpets. The biggest difference between the orchestra and the jazz band is the style of music that they play. If you would listen to the sound of one and then the sound of the other you would easily be able to hear the difference and know which is which. The trumpet is one if the oldest instruments today dating back all the way to 1200 B.C. It is also a very beautiful sounding instrument as well. Many might assume that the trumpet is probably one of the easier instruments to play with only three keys on it but that is far from that. Pressing on any one key can easily be three or four different notes, so you have to be careful when you play. The trumpet is a very simple instrument but yet at the same time it is very complicated and very challenging. So don’t think that just because you only see three keys on the trumpet that it is easy to play because there is so much more to it than that.

Some of the greats to grace the world with their talent of the trumpet are Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Wynton Marsalis. The greatest of these trumpets though is Louis Armstrong as he made Jazz what it is today and was probably the most influential trumpet players ever. If you ask any serious trumpet player who Louis Armstrong they can tell you without even thinking about it.

Louis Armstrong was born on 1901 in New Orleans. Armstrong learned to play the trumpet while he was in a home for colored waifs. He had been shooting off a gun in the middle of the street into the air and after getting of a few shots he was arrested and put in the home for delinquency. After he had gotten out he continued to play the trumpet and in 1922 joined King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in Chicago. Oliver helped and greatly influence Armstrong during his time with the band. Armstrong would continue on to join a Fletcher Henderson band in New York for higher pay. His time with the band was short though as he would quit fourteen months later and return to Chicago saying that he was homesick and missed his wife. There in Chicago Armstrong created a band called the Hot Five. Armstrong could now do more of what he wanted, which was singing. By the mid 1930’s Louis had became more of a popular entertainer but still continued to play the trumpet so beautiful the way he did. As the years went on though he cut back on playing the trumpet and begin to sing more. The great Armstrong would die on 1971 and although he was gone his music was not.

Another great and influential trumpet player was Miles Davis. He was a jazz trumpeter and bandleader, known for his forceful but still beautiful style of the trumpet. Davis was born in Alton, Ill on 1945. Davis learned to play the trumpet at the Juillard School in New York City. Miles love to play and were always playing with a jazz band. As a matter of fact one of the bands that he was in help create the modern form of jazz called bebop or bop. Some of the great recordings Miles came out with were Miles Ahead, Porgy and Besss.