Piccolo

A piccolo is a woodwind instrument in the flute family. It is a small or "half-size" transverse (side-blown) flute and plays in a higher range than the music actually written for it.

The piccolo is used in a wide variety of musical settings including orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, and it is featured prominantly in military marches. The high pitch of the piccolo pierces through the spectrum of sound coming from the other instruments and stands out beautifully at the top.

Because of the high pitch and outstanding projection of this tiny instrument, only one or two piccolo players are generally needed in any group. These players are usually the top players from the flute section and double on piccolo when the part calls for it.

While the piccolo isn't used much in popular music where guitar and drums dominate, it should be. Like other transverse flutes and woodwind instruments in general, the piccolo is a very expressive instrument and adds tonal color (timbre) wherever it is featured.

While piccolos can be made from glass and ceramics, most piccolos today are made of plastic, metal, wood, or some combination of these materials.

Plastic piccolos can be molded from ABS resin, vulcanized rubber, or some other composite material. Some of these composites can even contain wood fragments in an effort to produce better tone.

Metals used can include precious metals like silver and gold, and not so precious metals like nickel-silver, a type of brass containing no actual silver.

Wood piccolos are usually made from select grenadilla, a type of hard African blackwood, but have also been made from rosewood which many consider to be a better choice due to the quality of the tone it produces. While rosewood may be the preferred wood, most manufacturers choose grenadilla because it offers a much lower opportunity for defects in the manufacturing process which, in turn, helps keep the cost to the consumer down.

The select grenadilla wood and precious metals used in professional piccolos are sought out for their tonal qualities but are more expensive and harder to maintain than the plastic and nickel-silver used in student piccolos.

Wood piccolos require regular oiling of their bores to prevent cracking. Precious metals like silver react easily with hydrogen sulfide or oxigen, leaving a brown tarnish that must be removed regularly. Piccolo players use a cloth treated with calcium carbonate, or some other minor abraisive, that removes the tarnish without scratching the metal surface. Polish can also be applied to help prevent tarnish.

Student piccolos made from plastic and nickel-silver are constructed to mimic the sound of higher end instruments while providing durability, ease of maintenance, and lower costs at the student level.

Transverse flutes like the piccolo create sound when the player blows an airstream accross a sharp edge, called the embouchure hole, forcing the air down into the instrument where it vibrates against the air already inside creating a sound wave. All sound is vibration; an audible wave of pressure transmitted through matter, either solid, liquid, or gas.

In order to change the pitch (the note) we hear, the player must change the frequency of the sound wave. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz), with 1 Hz equal to one cycle per second. In music, we use 440 hertz to indicate A above middle C on a piano. This is the standard reference tuning pitch in music and it is referred to as A440 (A-four-fourty). Lower pitched notes have a lower frequency, and therefore a lower hertz measurement. The opposite is true for notes with a higher pitch.

At the most basic level, we can think of a piccolo as a tube with holes in it. These holes are called tone holes. The player changes the frequency of the sound wave by opening and closing these tone holes, either by activating keys on the instrument or by covering and uncovering the holes with their fingers. Since frequency is inversely related to wavelength (frequency = wave speed / wavelength), changing the distance the wave has to travel by opening and closing tone holes changes the frequency. At A440, or 440 hertz, the sound wave in the instrument would be oscillating 440 times per second between the source of the vibration and the open tone hole. When more tone holes are left open, the tube is shorter, the air column inside the tube and the sound wave being carried through this air is shorter, making both the frequency and the pitch heard higher.

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