Sackbut modern orchestra sounds out of tune, but it tunes perfectly well on in a sackbut choir if everyone plays natural harmonics. Plenty of musical understanding can be gathered from reading the original music print. Publishers such as SPES and Arnaldo Forni Edition provide facsimile copies of plenty of music for trombone from this era. To read these it one needs to become familiar with the old clefs, time signatures, ligatures and notational conventions of the era. The sound of sackbuts (and trombones) has long been thought especially solemn and noble, had an association with death and the afterlife. The instrument
Musical instrument classification Musical instrument classification Throughout history, various methods of musical instrument classification have been used. The most commonly used system divides instruments into string instruments, woodwind instruments, brass instruments and percussion instruments; however, other schemes have been devised. The oldest known scheme of classifying instruments is Chinese and dates from the 3rd millennium BC. It grouped instruments according to the materials they are made of. Instruments made of stone were in one group, those of wood in another, those of silk are in a third, and those of bamboo in a fourth, as recorded in the "Yo Chi" (record of ritual