Brass Instruments
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50 free Brass Instruments trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Brass instruments are the loud, golden end of the orchestra, and the stories behind them are stranger than the shine suggests. Some are not made of brass at all, one famous look-alike belongs to another family entirely, and the oldest playable examples spent thousands of years in silence. This quiz starts with the basics a school band student learns in the first week: how the sound is made, what the valves do, and what sets a trumpet apart from a trombone, a French horn or a tuba. It then moves through the wider family, from marching-band giants to horns made of wood, plastic and animal horn, and on to the players and pieces that made brass famous in jazz, film, pop and the concert hall. The opening questions are gentle enough for elementary and middle school band classes, while the later ones should stretch seasoned players and band directors. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up something new even when you guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Brass, the metal that gives trumpets and tubas their golden shine, is copper mixed with which other metal?
Zinc
Zinc usually makes up about a third of brass, with copper supplying the rest. Swap the zinc for tin and the result is bronze instead.
Q 02Which instrument is made of brass yet counts as a woodwind because its sound comes from a reed?
Saxophone
Saxophone bodies are brass, but a vibrating reed makes the sound, which puts them among the woodwinds. The reverse exists too: the wooden serpent counts as a brass instrument.
Q 03A silver trumpet and a bronze one, the oldest that still work, came from which pharaoh's tomb, discovered in 1922?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun's trumpets had been silent for over 3,000 years when the BBC broadcast them live to an estimated 150 million listeners in 1939.
Q 04In the Peanuts TV specials, the sound of a muted trombone stands in for the voices of which characters?
The adults
The adults were given trombone 'voices' at the suggestion of the specials' composer, Vince Guaraldi. The trick was first used in You're in Love, Charlie Brown.
Q 05Which plastic horn's monotone drone became the soundtrack of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa?
Vuvuzela
The vuvuzela is about 65 cm of moulded plastic that blares a single loud note. FIFA agreed to allow it in the stadiums in 2010 despite a wave of criticism.
Q 06The name 'trombone' is simply the word for 'large trumpet' in which European language?
Italian
Italian tromba means trumpet, and the ending -one means large. English players only adopted the name in the 1700s, when music from Italy was the height of fashion.
Q 07Which Beatles single features a piccolo trumpet solo that Paul McCartney added after seeing one on television?
Penny Lane
Penny Lane's solo was played by David Mason, whom McCartney had watched performing Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto on the BBC just days before the session.
Q 08Which household tool, minus its handle, do jazz trumpeters wave in front of the horn to make speech-like sounds?
A plunger
A plunger head can be held still for a dull tone or moved about for effects. Trumpeters typically use a sink plunger, while trombonists need the bigger toilet kind.
Q 09A small coiled brass horn features in the logos of which kind of company across much of Europe?
Postal services
Postal services kept the post horn as an emblem because its call once announced the arrival or departure of a post rider or mail coach.
Q 10The so-called 'spit valve' on a trumpet drains saliva and which other liquid from inside the tubing?
Condensation
Condensation forms as the moisture in a player's warm breath meets the cooler metal, which is why 'spit valve' is called a misnomer. Bigger horns collect more of it.
Q 11How does a trumpet or tuba player set the air vibrating before the tubing shapes it into a note?
Buzzing the lips
Buzzing the lips into a mouthpiece is what makes an instrument 'brass', whatever it happens to be built from. Tightening or loosening them is enough to jump between notes.
Q 12When a trumpet player presses a valve down, what happens to the tubing the air has to travel through?
It gets longer
It gets longer, because each valve sends the air through an extra loop of pipe, and more pipe means a lower note. Three valves are enough to give seven different lengths.
Q 13Instead of valves, which moving part does a trombone player push and pull to change notes?
A slide
Q 21Which Broadway musical about a travelling con artist has 'Seventy-Six Trombones' as its signature song?
The Music Man
The Music Man follows Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organiser, takes payment for instruments and uniforms, then plans to skip town.
Q 22Which boxing film's theme, 'Gonna Fly Now', opens with a blazing trumpet fanfare?
Rocky
Rocky's theme reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977. A cover by jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson made the top 30 as well.
Q 23Which Rossini overture ends with a gallop, heralded by trumpets, that became the Lone Ranger's theme?
William Tell
William Tell contains no horses or cavalry charges at all. Its famous finale is often called the March of the Swiss Soldiers in English.
A slide changes the length of the tubing smoothly rather than in steps, so a trombone can swoop from one note to the next without any break in the sound.
Q 14Where does a French horn player usually keep the right hand while the left hand works the valves?
Inside the bell
Inside the bell, a cupped right hand can nudge the pitch and darken the tone. Players began doing it in the mid-1700s to reach notes the valveless horn could not otherwise play.
Q 15The French horn descends from coiled horns that riders on horseback once blew during which pursuit?
Hunting
Hunting horns were a French speciality: makers there were credited with creating the instrument's now-familiar circular hoop shape.
Q 16Which wrap-around marching tuba takes its name from the American bandleader who asked for one in the 1890s?
Sousaphone
The sousaphone was first built by J. W. Pepper in 1893 for John Philip Sousa, who was dissatisfied with the helicons used by the United States Marine Band.
Q 17Which jazz trumpeter nicknamed 'Satchmo' is also loved for singing 'What a Wonderful World' and 'La Vie en rose'?
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong's nickname is short for 'Satchelmouth'. He helped turn jazz from group improvisation into a soloist's art.
Q 18Which bugle call signals lights-out on American military bases and is sounded at military funerals?
Taps
Taps was arranged in its present form in 1862 by Union general Daniel Butterfield, replacing an older French lights-out call. It is sometimes known as Butterfield's Lullaby.
Q 19In Prokofiev's musical tale about a boy named Peter, which animal do three French horns portray?
The wolf
The wolf gets three horns, while the bird is a flute, the duck an oboe and the cat a clarinet. Prokofiev wrote the piece in 1936 to introduce children to the orchestra.
Q 20In the Book of Joshua, the walls of which city fell after priests blew horns for seven days?
Jericho
Jericho's walls fell, the story goes, when the people shouted on the seventh day. Seven priests had blown their horns on every daily march around the city.
Q 24In which American city do brass bands lead jazz funerals, with dancing followers known as the second line?
New Orleans
New Orleans funeral bands play sombre dirges and hymns on the march, then turn to upbeat numbers such as When the Saints Go Marching In.
Q 25Which Mexican folk ensemble pairs two trumpets with violins and a big bass guitar called the guitarrón?
Mariachi
Mariachi groups only took up the trumpet as jazz and Cuban music grew popular, and its arrival pushed the violins into a secondary role.
Q 26Which archangel is popularly pictured blowing a trumpet blast to announce the end of time?
Gabriel
Gabriel is never actually named as the trumpeter in the Bible, which mentions a trumpet blast before the resurrection of the dead but not who sounds it.
Q 27Which Aboriginal Australian instrument is traditionally made from a eucalyptus trunk hollowed out by termites?
Didgeridoo
The didgeridoo counts as a brass instrument despite being wood, because it is sounded the same way as a trumpet. Makers knock on tree trunks to listen for a promising hollow.
Q 28Which instrument made from a ram's horn is blown in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah?
Shofar
The shofar is also sounded at the end of Yom Kippur. A ram is preferred, but the Talmud allows the horn of any animal in the cattle family except a cow.
Q 29Which wooden horn, three to four metres long, did herders use to signal between high pastures and the valley floor?
Alphorn
The alphorn's call can carry for several kilometres, and it was even used to gather scattered herds. Brahms worked a melody he heard on one into his First Symphony.
Q 30Which trumpeter led the album Kind of Blue, regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz album ever recorded?
Miles Davis
Miles Davis shaped his hushed 1950s sound by playing through a Harmon mute placed close to the microphone, with spacious, relaxed phrasing.