This is not that unusual an effect for brass players. What composers (including Ligeti) seem not to realize is that brass instruments are designed *not to make noise* when you blow air through them, which tends to defeat the purpose.
The proper way to get the desired effect is to remove the mouthpiece, invert it, and blow the air thru the inverted mouthpiece across the opening of the mouthpipe. The only caveat is you have to give the player time to take the mouthpiece out and invert it. Any dynamic from pp to ff is possible, but playing ff requires lots of air, so there is no way for a single player to sustain a note for very long. On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Aaron Rabushka <arabus...@austin.rr.com> wrote: > IIRC Ligeti calls on his brass players in Atmosphères to blow air through > the instruments without any definite pitch or characteristic brass > instrument sound. Does anyone here know of others who have done this, and > what the limits are? (You'd think having been a brass player I'd know this, > but nothing comes to mind at the moment.) > > Aaron J. Rabushka > arabus...@austin.rr.com > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
