This is research on the New Orleans Brass Band tradition. How popular music has influenced the bands repertoire and the style of music has been transferred to other areas of the country resulting in the formation of hybrid bands. Madison, Wisconsin is an area with two popular brass bands that began by studying the New Orleans brass bands' culture and music. Those bands are Mama Digdown's Brass Band and Youngblood Brass Band. Mama Digdown's is a brass band that performs original music in the traditional styles and forms of New Orleans brass band. Youngblood Brass Band started because Mama Digdown's inspired them and began playing shows with Digdown's and eventually broke away to form their own band. They wanted to push the limits of the New Orleans brass band instrumentation by incorporating hip-hop, rap, jazz, 1980's pop music, rock, and heavy metal that is rolled up into an intense brass sound.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Oklahoma, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: This paper is the writing component of a project the author under took to create an entertaining program for a chamber ensemble. It discusses ways for chamber ensembles to create entertaining concert programs for today's audiences. Information was gathered by analyzing four interesting and successful groups--The Canadian Brass, Mnozil Brass, Les Trompettes de Lyon, and The Blue Man Group--and identifying common traits. These traits help facilitate the ultimate goal of making connections with audiences and include originality, comedy, choreography, memorization, continuous presentation, musical appeal, high quality presentations, and the proper personnel. These attributes were then implemented into the author's experimental group, the Omni Brass Ensemble, for testing with live audiences. Materials were used from published interviews, articles, newspapers, ensemble websites, and recordings of their performances. From the author's performances with the Omni Brass Ensemble, indications are that these findings work with live audiences. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2012

Today’s leading brass chamber ensemble is the brass quintet, whose inception was relatively late compared to the string quartet or woodwind quintet. The first modern brass quintet formed in the 1950s, while the first string quartet can be traced to the 17th century. Compositions for woodwind quintet were written as early as 1811 during the Classical Period. The New York Brass Quintet, American Brass Quintet, and Annapolis Brass Quintet commissioned a large portion of the currently existing brass quintet literature. The literature grew exponentially as the brass quintet became popular in the 1960s. Also during this time, a new genre of works emerged for brass quintet with orchestral accompaniment. The paper references fifty-seven works for the brass quintet with orchestral accompaniment that were found through music catalogues, reviews, recordings and searching JSTOR, World Cat and Google. Since the author was not able to discover any scholarly treatment of this genre, this paper will address the gap and unearth the quantity of literature available. Many of these works are unrecorded. While there are many existing scores in the literature, there is a resurgence of compositions currently being written for brass quintet with orchestral accompaniment. This document is presented in two parts: Part I, “Overview of Brass Chamber Music in the Twentieth Century,” “Earliest Music in the United States for Brass Chamber Ensembles,” “A Brief History of the Modern Brass Quintet,” “Annapolis Brass Quintet,” and “A Survey of Existing Works for Brass Quintet and Orchestra.” The second part of this dissertation contains materials which are pertinent to the Doctor of Musical Arts Degree which include recital programs, program notes, and vita.

Females make up the minority in professional euphonium playing and teaching roles in the USA. The purpose of this research is to unveil the reasons behind this imbalance and to discover potential impacts females experience as a minority in the field. Research methods included sending a questionnaire to professional female euphonium players and teachers to document the experiences of participants. A secondary purpose of this study is to further document the existence of past and present potential female euphonium role models. Through a discussion of possible origins of and reasons behind a perceived lack of female euphonium players, I am seeking ways to achieve greater parity by garnering a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by female euphonium players.

Since the 1980s, British-style brass bands - community ensembles modeled after the all-brass and percussion bands of Great Britain - have enjoyed a modest regeneration in the United States. During this same period, as many as 23 colleges and universities in the U.S. have founded their own curricular or extra-curricular brass band. The purpose of this research study was: to discover which schools sponsor a brass band currently; to discover which schools formerly sponsored a brass band but have since discontinued it; to describe the operational practices of collegiate brass bands in the U.S.; and to determine what collegiate brass band conductors perceive to be the challenges and benefits of brass band in the curriculum. Data for the study were collected between February, 2015 and February, 2016 using four custom survey instruments distributed to conductors of college and university brass bands. The results showed that 11 American collegiate institutions were sponsoring a brass band during the period of data collection. Additional findings included descriptions of the operations of collegiate brass bands, such as availability of credit, rehearsal time, and instrumentation. Results also included the conductors' reported perceptions that both challenges and benefits are inherent in student brass band participation, and that brass band is a positive experience for students. An additional 3 community-based brass bands, not sponsored by but located near a college or university, were found to include collegiate students among their player personnel. A total of 9 schools formerly sponsoring brass bands were found to have discontinued their program. A repertoire analysis of 733 titles of compositions performed by both active and formerly active brass bands revealed that bands performed original works for brass band nearly as often as transcribed or arranged works.

This thesis presents research into the history and contemporary context of brass bands in the Scottish Borders. It discusses how the survival of the brass bands in the Scottish Borders can be accounted for over the last 150 years, in particular with regard to the continuity of their interaction with the community which has enabled them to overcome cultural, social and demographic changes. The textile industry which provided a stimulus for the formation of the brass bands in the nineteenth century has largely disappeared, but the traditional role of the bands has been carried forward to the present day. Previous study of the social and cultural history of the brass band movement has concentrated on the history of brass banding in the North of England. Although research into the history of brass bands has been carried out in other areas of Britain such as the South of England this is the first in-depth study of these bands in a region of Scotland. This research follows previous studies of amateur music-making in specific locations by studying in detail the brass bands that exist in seven towns and one village of the Scottish Borders where the bands can date their formation to the mid-nineteenth century. Historical and archival research has provided most of the data relating to the first hundred years, including the use of individual band archives, local newspaper archives and museum records. Ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation, have provided the data for more recent times. Details of brass band repertoires have been extracted from various sources including musical examples taken from individual band libraries. A central research finding is the strong relationship of the brass bands with their local communities, particularly the support given to the bands by local people and the way in which the bands support their communities by providing music for civic and community events. The close relationship of the brass bands with their local communities has been fundamental in providing the means by which the bands have been sustained over time. There is a strong Scottish Borders identity that links the towns, especially through family ties, and this is also found in a musical repertoire with songs that are specifically connected to the region and to individual towns. By playing this music for civic and community events, especially at the time for the Common Ridings which are annual events unique to the Scottish Borders, the brass bands have provided a service to the community which has ensured their survival.

No description available.

No description available.

The acoustic impedance is a valuable parameter in musical acoustics. Information contained within this frequency-domain parameter can be used to determine the acoustical behaviour of a musical wind instrument: the notes at which the instrument will play; the ease with which a particular note can be played; and the timbre of the instrument. The time-domain version of acoustic impedance - the input impulse response - gives us information on how sound waves propagate within an instrument under playing conditions and how sound is radiated from the open end or from other holes in the bore. Acoustic impedance data can also be used to calculate an accurate profile of the internal structure of the instrument - referred to as a bore reconstruction. This is very useful as the main bore is usually coiled and difficult to measure mechanically. An accurate reconstruction, however, is only possible if the impedance is measured over a large range of frequencies, typically of the order of tens of hertz up to many kilohertz. The bulk of this work follows on from research where the impedance of a short, closed, cylindrically-symmetric tube has been measured experimentally at high frequencies - 1 kHz up to 20 kHz - and compared with theory. The technique used is known as the Two-Microphone-Four-Calibration system, or TMFC system: two microphones are used to monitor the air pressure in the system, and measurement of four closed tubes of different length are required for calibration. The TMFC system has been modified so that impedance data far below 1 kHz (down to 10 Hz) can be attained for a full instrument as well as instrument components - for example trombone mouthpieces or French horn crooks. Suitable algorithms have been developed for processing the impedance data. Obtaining large bandwidth impedance data has allowed the possibility of accurate reconstructions of an instrument's internal profile. The results are compared with plane-wave theoretical models, which are derived in detail, and other well-documented methods of bore and impedance analysis: the acoustic pulse reflectometer (APR), and the brass instrument analysis system (BIAS). An in-depth discussion and analysis of the TMFC results for test objects and instruments of various lengths are presented. Simulations, whereby bore profiles are artificially altered, and a post-processing method utilising transmission matrix theory (TMT), are explored. A variety of orchestral French horn crooks dating from as early as the 18th-Century have been measured using APR and TMFC. A comparison is made between the capabilities of the two systems. Conclusions - of interest from a historical and manufacturing perspective - are drawn. The BIAS has been used to investigate how changes to the bore profile affect the behaviour of trumpets. The impedance of the trumpet is measured using a variety of leadpipes and mouthpieces.