The Differences Between Trumpets & Clarinets

Video Transcript

"Hi this is WarrenVache of WarrenVache.com. Trumpet player here in New York City. And author of the DVD I love the Trumpet. Now we want to talk a little bit about the difference between a trumpet and a clarinet. Well the first and the biggest difference is the clarinet is a member of the woodwind family. And the coronet and trumpet are members of the brass family. The basic difference being with these instruments something has to vibrate to make a sound. On a brass instrument what vibrates is your lip. You are essentially doing into the mouth piece. The clarinet player gets a piece of bamboo that's been carefully shaped to fit his mouth piece and he puts it on the mouth piece and it is that piece of bamboo that vibrates to make the sound hence, woodwind. They are both in common what they have is that they are both wind instruments. It takes your breath to make the sound on both of the instruments. Clarinet and trumpet are both pitched in the same key and the clarinet has a much wider range then the trumpet it can play a little lower and quite a great deal higher. The sound of both instruments because it's my lip that's making the sound in the clarinet player's piece of wood, the sound is going to be very, very different. They do play and can play very effectively together but it's not very common that you find clarinets and trumpets written for together. Basically because they belong to those two different families. A trumpet is a brass instrument, the clarinet is a woodwind instrument. In the style of Dixie land music, you find that the trumpet player and the clarinet player work very much together. The clarinet player is usually pitched one third higher then the trumpet note and it helps if you are making friends with the clarinet player."