Comparison of the mechanics of the brass players’ lips during slurred note transients

When sounding a note on a brass instrument, a strong coupling is established between the vibrating lips of the player and the air column resonance. In moving between notes as smoothly as possible, or “slurring,” there is a transition from one strongly coupled, steady-state, regime of the lip/air column to a different steady-state coupling of the lip/air column. To the listener, there are sometimes subtle differences in the sound of the transition between notes depending on how this transition is achieved: by lip slur, valve slurs, and, in the case of the trombone, slide slurs. This paper uses data collected from high speed video capture of the players’ lips, synchronized with microphones in the mouthpiece and the bell of the instrument, to investigate and compare the motion of the brass players’ lips for different types of slurred internote transients.