ELI5- How does pushing air through an instrument make a note? And specifically for brass, why does buzzing work but not regular air flow?
In: Engineering
to make a sound you need vibrations for example, when you talk, it is your vocal cords that are vibrating. For a woodwind instrument, like clarinets and saxophones, it is easy to see that a reed is vibrating when you blow through it, making the sound. For brass, you have to vibrate your lips to have that sound travel through the horn. the different pitches comes from different tube length controlled by the valves.
The note is not made by pushing air through the instrument. The note is made by some vibration – vibration of the player’s lips in a trumpet or other brass instrument, vibration of a reed in a clarinet, saxophone or other woodwind instrument, or vibration of the air passing across the mouthpiece of a flute.
That vibration – really, a mixture of vibrations – then passes through the instrument, and right vibration is ‘chosen’ by being the one that properly ‘fits’ in the length of the instrument or distance/s between the mouthpiece and the open holes.
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