Wiktionary
n. (context musical instruments English) A musical instrument whose tone is produced by vibration of the lips as the player blows into a mouth piece (or tubular resonator).
Wikipedia
A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called labrosones, literally meaning "lip-vibrated instruments".
There are several factors involved in producing different pitches on a brass instrument. Slides, valves, crooks (though they are rarely used today), or keys are used to change vibratory length of tubing, thus changing the available harmonic series, while the player's embouchure, lip tension and air flow serve to select the specific harmonic produced from the available series.
The view of most scholars (see organology) is that the term "brass instrument" should be defined by the way the sound is made, as above, and not by whether the instrument is actually made of brass. Thus one finds brass instruments made of wood, like the alphorn, the cornett, the serpent and the didgeridoo, while some woodwind instruments are made of brass, like the saxophone.
Usage examples of "brass instrument".
Trudging one day into the wind, all hats impossible, hair in streams, struggling to keep the brass instrument on its tripod over one shoulder, Dixon at last saw the logic of Emerson's notorious back-to-front coat.
They could see the telemotor, a small, thin brass instrument standing pitifully alone, like the only surviving stump in a fire-ravaged forest.
Pegyul took Maia's smaller hand in his huge callused one and put the brass instrument firmly in her palm, closing her fingers around the cool, smooth disk.
The wizard dropped it on to a strange brass instrument, which looked something like a set of scales with only one dish.
He drew from his pocket a little shiny brass instrument in a lead case, which looked like an abbreviated microscope.
A thud of a drum and then the raw sound of a brass instrument rehearsing short passages penetrated Rhyme's parlor.
Joy carried a complex brass instrument she called a Chi clock, which was supposed to be able to detect the flow of Chi.
Xaran and the other ores spun around at the clattering of the brass instrument on the rocks.
Xaran and the other orcs spun around at the clattering of the brass instrument on the rocks.
It was a handsome, heavily-protected brass instrument hanging in gimbals by the table on which they.