Brass Instruments Being Called Wind Instruments?

[Daid]

I was looking at equipment lists and I noticed that signal horns had perform (wind instrument) connected to them. This makes sense only the devs got confused by the English Horn which is larger Oboe or by the fact that the French Horn, which is a brass instrument, is played in a wind quintet.

I then look up perform skills a while later and I see that wind instruments includes the trumpet in the examples list. Wind and brass instruments are about as different to play wind and string instruments!

Is there any reason why the they should be combined?

Daid

[dragonhunterq]

Simplicity.
It's close enough for a layman and we don't need a proliferation of subskills. If you want to add it, talk to your GM. For most people it just really doesn't make that much difference.

[Daid]

I'm surprised at that anyone, layman or not, would consider them even similar, also I am definitely a layman in all instruments, I might be able to muster a Mary had a Little Lamb on the piano but beyond that is beyond me and there is a huge difference to me.

I maybe could understand it if there was one category for all instruments but once you have divided into types as pathfinder does you can't claim them as similar enough to be one type, can you?

[Psi51]

Brass instruments are wind instruments. Wind instruments comprise of brass and woodwind instruments. The other catagories are percussion and string instruments.

[Daid]

What I was always told was language evolution shortened woodwind to wind so wind instruments only refers to woodwinds.

[jbadams]

What Psi51 said: brass instruments and woodwind instruments are generally considered to be subtypes of "wind instruments", so there's nothing wrong with the categorisation depending who you're talking to.

A quick Google for "wind instrument" will confirm, although there are sometimes other uses where you would be considered correct.

[Claxon]

Do you blow into it? Wind instrument (from a gaming perspective). You don't need to introduce a whole other skill to cover the differences between woodwind and brass.

[Gauss]

Having played a woodwind in grade school (many eons ago) I had never heard woodwind instrument shortened to 'wind instrument' except as a reference to the greater group of wind instruments that woodwinds are a part of.

Brass and woodwinds are both types of wind instruments and this is confirmed by a quick internet search for the definition "wind instruments".

[dragonhunterq]

by 'layman' I meant someone you'd have to show which end of the stick to blow into (like me).

[Davor]

I'm going to echo what others above have said: simplicity. They're differentiating between "Hold in your hands and blow" and "Hold in your hands and bow" and "hold in your hands and strike" and "hold in your hands and it's a keyboard, so really string or percussion could work depending on the instrument, or maybe wind because accordions have a keyboard..."

It's all for simplicity's sake. Don't look at it too hard.

[Kazaan]

Wind instruments are any instruments that are operated by force of breath. Brass Wind instruments are based on "lip reed"; your lips are vibrating. Woodwind instruments are based on "wood reed"; one or more thin pieces of wood that vibrate as you blow past it/them. The "wood" in "woodwind" refers to the wooden reed, not what the entire instrument is made from; this is why saxophones are still considered woodwinds despite being made from brass. Flutes are kind of the odd-ball here, since they are "0 vibrating instruments. All brass, as well as any double-reed woodwinds (ie. bassoon) are 2-vibrating instruments; in the case of all brass, the two vibrating membranes are your lips. In the case of two-reed woodwinds, it's the two reeds. Single-reed woodwinds are 1-vibrating instruments. Flutes and Piccolos are 0-vibrating instruments. Another loose distinction is that Brass instruments typically add more tubing to change the tone; trombones slide the tubing out while valved instruments (tuba, trumpet, etc) switch the air-path down routes of differing length. Woodwinds, both reed-based as well as flute-type, cover holes instead, though there are crossovers. Slide whistle-type instruments are woodwinds that use brass-style tone adjustment; meanwhile, the Serpent and the Ophicleide are brass instruments that use woodwind-style tone adjustment. Lastly, woodwind instruments are non-directional; the sound radiates equally in all directions. Flutes fall into this category. But brass instruments are highly directional; the sound is focused strongly straight out of the bell. This is the strongest point that is used to separate "woodwinds" from "brass", which are both subcategories of "wind" instruments, and the biggest reason that flutes, despite having no wooden reed, are considered woodwinds. Even the fact that flutes used to be made of wood is inconsequential because they were made of bone before they were made out of wood.