What are Trumpet Valves?

Part of the Video Series Trumpet Lessons for Beginners: Scales

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Trumpet valves are used to express notes, scales, harmonies and chords; learn more from our expert trumpet player and teacher in this free trumpet video music lesson.

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Video Transcript

What are Trumpet Valves?
Now we're going to talk about valves. The valves on trumpets and valve trombones (some brass instruments), they all have valves. The valves have holes in them, and the holes allow air to travel through certain sections of pipe and change the pitch of the instrument. Early trumpets didn't have any valves, so they were based, basically, they were restricted to playing notes like this. (Trumpet playing.) And that was about it. So once valves were developed, and the idea of tubing and changing the air flow, people could go (Trumpet playing.) And my valve is sticking, so when we get to the maintenance version I'll show you how to oil your valves. Valves freed up the trumpet and other instruments to become fully chromatic that means they could play every note and didn't need to switch back and forth. This didn't happen until a relatively recent time, in the 1800's, early 1800's. So it really freed up the instrument to become more popular and more playable for the average guy, like myself.

About the Expert

Expert: J.D. Keating is a musician, artist and educator from Western Massachusetts. For two decades he has lent his varied talents to innumerable projects in the music industry. Read More