Hey, it’s Joe Cocker and Brian May… and Phil Collins on drums! But I’m wondering, are the trumpet at 2:00 and the sax at 2:25 made of some kind of plastic or ceramic? Are they just painted brass? I’ve never seen “brass” instruments like that.
You can get a good look at the Trumpet at around the 2 minute mark.
2:33 for the Sax.
They’re all coated in white, so hard to tell for sure. But typically painted brass instruments are still brass under the paint.
There’s a little bit of the trumpet right by the mouthpiece that appears not to be painted. It’s a bit difficult to tell, given the lighting, etc., but it appears to be ordinary metal that you would expect to see on a trumpet.
Can’t tell, but Charlie Parker sometimes played a plastic sax, so this guy’s in good company.
Doesn’t that affect the timbre or quality of the sound?
Tripler
Might birth the new phrase, “Plastic Yakkety Sax.”
I didn’t know that. Weird. Reading briefly into it there seemed to be a lot of issues with them.
In the hands of a mere mortal, probably.
The important part of a wind instrument isn’t made of brass, or silver, or plastic, or wood. It’s made of air. The solid whatever-it-is is just to keep the air in the right shape.
Mine was an ordinary brass sax painted white (at a local
weapons/aerospace company, but don’t tell anyone).
Why paint a brass instrument white, just to look different? Would it change the sound quality at all?
The white tuba I’ve seen used; sounded the same. The green sax sounded the same. Both were painted brass.
Plastic woodwind instruments aren’t uncommon; I own a plastic bass clarinet. I’ve never been able to distinguish any difference in sound, although many musicians insist that wood clarinets sound “mellower.”
Metal clarinets were common in the early 20th century. I tried one when I was in college, and it sounded really obnoxious to me, but it could have simply been a poorly-made instrument.
White saxes and trumpets are generally normal brass instruments that are painted in a white enamel laquer, just as ‘silver’ instruments are brass with silver plating.
Laquering a horn does change the sound. It will likely make it slightly less bright. Not really an issue for horns in large ensembles on stage. Plating an instrument with silver or gold does not have that effect, which is why you don’t see a lot of cooorful instruments but you do see lots of different platings.
The most difficult thing about painting an instrument like a sax is that you have to completely dismantle it, chemically remove the old paint or plating, apply the new stuff, then you have issues like whether the grooves in the old pads match the now-painted sound holes, so you are probably going to replace all the pads. And some minor re-tuning might be required.
Thanks. Are they painted just “for looks,” then?
In my case - yes !
The brass was very “distressed”, and i couldn’t afford to get it re-laquered.
And my friend worked at the aforementioned company …
Or just a duff reed !
Yup. Playability and sound are either unaffected or made very slightly worse.
It looks like the whole horn section has that same look (see 2:19).
Yes, indeed. Thanks, everyone.
Shaped air, eh? Cool. Maybe like this:
Just a point of information . Many white tubas, specifically sousaphones, are made of fiberglass to be lighter. Sucks the tone out of them, too, but nobody cares once it’s on a football field.