Harmon WOW-WOW Trumpet Mute

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While the practice mute will make it possible to practice in apartments or in crowded homes, they restrict the air resistance of the trumpet. Always practice a piece without the practice mute before performing it, so you have the opportunity to get used to the difference in effort and air required to play the piece. In Summary

Ericson, John. "Understanding Stopped and Muted Horn and Right-Hand Position". Arizona State University . Retrieved 14 September 2020. Harmon mutes are some of the most unique of the commonly used trumpet mutes. They are either cylindrical or bulbous and round in shape and almost always made from aluminum. To stay inside of the trumpet bell, there is a band of cork on the small end of the mute. There is also a second piece, called a stem, which is a long insert with a flared end that goes in the middle of the mute.

Plunger Mute

Practice mutes are designed to cut down on volume without affecting tone or intonation. However, some practice mutes are more successful than others.

The tone created by this practice mute is vibrant, warm, and responsive. It will preserve the timbre of your trumpet, even in the extreme levels of your register. By using this mute, nearly all of your trumpet’s sound will be reduced. This is great for players who live in apartments or are staying at a hotel. A cup mute is similar to a straight mute but has an additional cup on the end, which is an inverted cone that covers nearly all the bells of the trumpet. The cup mute restricts air from exiting the trumpet anywhere but the very edge of the bell, creating a quieter, darker tone than the straight mute.In classical music, when the composer intends for a passage to be played with a mute, they will add the notation “con sordino” which is Italian for “with mute”. In Jazz, most composers use English, or their native language, and indicate to use a mute by writing the name of the mute, and “open” when the mute should be removed. That about wraps up our guide to choosing trumpet mutes, we hope it helped make a bit more sense of them all.

TrumCor is a well-known brand that is dedicated to playability. The Zinger is a Harmon mute developed over four years, as they wanted to create a mute at the highest performance level.Once you get to grips with the basics on the trumpet, we’d highly recommend experimenting with the different sounds you can get from all the mutes covered above. A mute is a device attached to a musical instrument which changes the instrument's tone quality (timbre) or lowers its volume. Mutes are commonly used on string and brass instruments, especially the trumpet and trombone, and are occasionally used on woodwinds. Their effect is mostly intended for artistic use, but they can also allow players to practice discreetly. Muting can also be done by hand, as in the case of palm muting a guitar or grasping a triangle to dampen its sound. Wagner, Joseph (1959). Orchestration: a practical handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill. p.49. ISBN 978-0-07-067655-8.

Mutes generally affect the pitch of your trumpet. It's better to have a mute that overall makes the trumpet flat than have a generally balanced intonation with some individually funky notes. The reason for this is that you can more easily adjust the tuning of your trumpet to accommodate an overall pitch change with your main tuning slide. If individual notes are affected, you have to be more cognizant of each note's pitch tendencies. For a deeper dive into intonation adjustments, see our guide on how to tune a trumpet. Using a plunger, an excellent player can make the trumpet sound almost like it’s talking! (The parents voices in the Charlie Brown movies are created by a trombone using a plunger mute!) How do you change the sound of your trumpet? Just put something in the end of your bell right? Wait. Then nothing would come out. Or would it? What do you put on the end of a trumpet?

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Because it has a fiber and wood construction, the TrumCor practice mute will provide a beautiful tone. Unlike other practice mutes that tend to dull tone and affect intonation, TrumCor solves many of these issues.