Awesome Trumpets

Take a look inside the Vincent Bach factory, where they handcraft premium brass instruments. In this video, you’ll see craftspeople transform stamped sheets of brass into a variety of precision trumpets for professional musicians. Along the way, you’ll learn about how a trumpet works, too.

Playing a brass or wind instrument requires good breath control. But if you want to hold a note indefinitely, you need to master circular breathing, which allows musicians to refill their lungs through the nose while breathing out through the mouth. This talented horn player clearly has got the technique figured out.

Trumpets typically play notes across a three-octave range. But in the hands and lips of the great Arturo Sandoval, it’s possible to extract almost twice that range. Listen as he plays the lowest lows to the highest highs in this excerpt from Dizzy Gillespie’s Night in Tunisia, with the United States Air Force Band in 2011.

Comedian Taylor aka Itzabennie possesses a unique talent. She can put her lips together and blow in just the right way to make them sound like exactly like a trumpet. After you enjoy some Benny Goodman, how about the Imperial March or La Vie en Rose?

Musician Matt Brockman plays the trumpet alongside himself in this fun medley of familiar tunes from movies, TV, and pop music. The arrangement was put together by Kevin McKee, but the performance is 100% Matt and his lips. We also enjoyed his performances of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and the theme from Jaws.

Please forgive us for posting videos with Flight of the Bumblebee three times in the same week, but this clip that shows the process of crafting a Vincent Bach trumpet mouthpiece from a brass rod was too captivating to pass up.