Euphonium Euphonium The euphonium is a large, conical-bore, baritone-voiced brass instrument that derives its name from the Ancient Greek word "euphōnos", meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced" ( "eu" means "well" or "good" and "phōnē" means "sound", hence "of good sound"). The euphonium is a valved instrument. Nearly all current models have piston valves, though models with rotary valves do exist. The euphonium may be played in bass clef as a non-transposing instrument or in treble clef as a transposing instrument. In British brass bands, it is typically treated as a treble-clef instrument, while in American band music, parts may be written in
Brass instrument almost universal by (at latest) 1864 as witnessed by Arban's Method published in that year. The effect of a particular combination of valves may be seen in the table below. This table is correct for the core 3-valve layout on almost any modern valved brass instrument. The most common four-valve layout is a superset of the well-established 3-valve layout and is noted in the table, despite the exposition of four-valve and also five-valve systems (the latter used on the tuba) being incomplete in this article. Since valves "lower" the pitch, a valve that makes a pitch too low (flat) creates