![]() The simple difference is, ones a squeak, and ones a note. There’s a big difference in the highest note that can be “hit” verses the highest trumpet note that can be “played”. What about the highest notes professional trumpet players play? It seems like they have no limit. Okay, we know what the “written range” is and that it’s the effective range of the B-flat trumpet. Yea, even though I practiced that note perfectly many times before, at concert time it sounded just awful. But I was only in the 7 th grade, and the sun was in my eyes, and it was windy (excuses, excuses, excuses). Now I understand why, the notes were “close together”. I painfully recall having to hit a “high C” in middle school and making a short stop at B-flat on the way there. This closeness of notes is one of the challenges of hitting them cleanly. When you watch videos of players doing this, they aren’t shaking the trumpet like you have to when playing inside the staff (where the space between notes is very clear). This “harmonic compression” makes slurring up there easier as demonstrated by the late great Maynard Ferguson who was known for his “lip trills” or “Shakes”. That makes hitting a “C” above the staff cleanly takes more control than a “G” above the staff for example. You know the feeling of “slotting” a note? Feels great right? Well, the “slot” for each note is closer together the higher you go. The reason is that the harmonic range compress at the upper limit of the trumpet. Beyond that, it just seemed to get exponentially harder to control the notes. The goal for many of us was to hit “High C” or the “C” above the staff. In my early days, I found most music written for the first trumpet part had the occasional “C” and the rare “D” above the staff. “In the most common case of a B♭-pitch trumpet, the highest note that can be played is said in elementary reference books to be one octave higher than the B♭ just above the middle line of the treble clef, but there are ways to produce even higher notes.” ![]() On the “high side”, Yamaha for example writes: ![]() In other words, what is harmonic range of the B-flat trumpet? What was it designed to do? It’s been commonly written that the highest note is a “D” above the staff as the highest trumpet note and the lowest, F-sharp below the staff. The first thing to clarify is, “what is the written range of the B-flat trumpet”. The written range for the B-flat trumpet.
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