Concert Pitch Trumpet Fingerings

March 30th, 2012
music, trumpet
What everyone else calls a 'Bb', brass players call a 'C'. While you can argue for this, it's confusing and annoying. I want to use the standard names for the notes from the beginning. I took the fingerings from this chart and converted them to concert pitch:

note 1st octave 2nd octave 3rd octave
E 1-2-3 2 2
F 1-3 0 0
F# 2-3 2-3 2-3
G 1-2 1-2 1-2
G# 1 1 1
A 2 2 2
Bb 0 0 0
B 1-2-3 1-2
C 1-3 1
C# 2-3 2
D 1-2 0
Eb 1 1

Now I can figure out the standard keys:

G/Em/Am/Dmix
note 1st octave 2nd octave 3rd octave
G 1-2 1-2 1-2
A 2 2 2
B 1-2-3 1-2
C 1-3 1
D 1-2 0
E 2 2
F# 2-3 2-3

D/Bm/Em/Amix
note 1st octave 2nd octave 3rd octave
D 1-2 0
E 2 2
F# 2-3 2-3
G 1-2 1-2 1-2
A 2 2 2
B 1-2-3 1-2
C# 2-3 2

A/F#m/Bm/Emix
note 1st octave 2nd octave 3rd octave
A 2 2 2
B 1-2-3 1-2
C# 2-3 2
D 1-2 0
E 2 2
F# 2-3 2-3
G# 1 1

Update 2014-01-18: I've now been playing trumpet for a year and a half, and thinking of the notes in concert pitch has worked out well for me. While the fingerings were initially strange they were going to be strange playing contra dance music regardless, and the hard part is the lips anyway. Sometimes before I start an activity I have weird ideas about how the people already doing that activity should be doing something differently, and often I'm wrong, but this is a case where looking back doing it the standard way would have been much harder.

Referenced in:

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Ozy and Vasili Review Lilo and Stitch

Sometimes my seven-year-old, Vasili, wants to see some godawful movie that makes me want to melt my eyeballs out of my head.

via Thing of Things June 27, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

more     (via openring)