Trumpet and Horn – basic ideas for showing about them in the music classroom

There are a few activities you can do which will make music lesson plans about Brass instruments in the music class lots of fun.

Make a rudimentary brass instrument. You will need plastic beverage bottles (e.g. two-liter soda bottles) and sharp scissors or utility knife. Cut the bottom off a plastic bottle. Try to get different tones by Buzzing your lips into the neck of the bottle Experiment with different sizes and shapes of bottles. The bottom of the bottle can be used as a mute or hat as you will see trumpet players do to change the sound.

You can have great fun by measuring things in “horns” and “trumpets.” A trumpet, if it were uncoiled would stretch about 1.8 metres or 6 foot An uncoiled horn would stretch about 12 feet or 3.6 meters. Cut lengths of string into these dimensions and give them to groups of students. Students can then measure things in their classroom and around the school using their strings. e.g. the blackboard might be 2 trumpets long, and the hallway might be 5 horns in length. Smaller things could be measured by folding the strings For example, if a trumpet string must be folded three times on a desktop, the desktop is 1/3 of a trumpet long. Some estimation and rounding is going to be necessary to make this exercise work As a possible homework assignment, ask students to measure their bedrooms, beds, family vehicles, yards, etc., and report back the next class. This activity will focus students on the amount of tubing within the relatively compact brass instruments.

You may wish to show students this recording:Mozart, Horn Concerto No. 1 in D. Barry Tuckwell and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. EMI Classics 74967.