Trumpet Players Rejoice, Silent Brass Has Your Back

I love practice rooms. Egg crates, sound proof doors, and curtains contain the ear piercing wail of even the most prodigious salsa scream. Sadly I don't have a practice room in my living space, in fact I have very little living space in my living space, so I own a Silent Brass system instead.

Pick up the mute and you'll notice something. It feels similar to a straight mute, but has a little more weight to it. If you put the mute in your bell and blow you'll likely notice two things. The first is that the sound is reduced, and I mean ridiculously reduced. Blasts that should have half your neighbors cowering in fear are no louder than conversational speaking volume. The other thing is you get this kind of uncomfortable back-pressure, kind of like playing directly into a plunger. It makes playing slightly awkward at first, but you eventually get the hang of it. The mute itself is highly durable. I've dropped mine on any number of occasions and it still works just fine.

The back-pressure does limit your playing slightly by making most notes well below middle C difficult to play, and you can throw peddal tones right out the window, because that is just not going to happen. Then once you get a few lines over the staff you might start to have problems squeaking out that high G just because of the restricted air flow through your horn.

An interesting addition is that you can plug in a small box to your mute, then plug headphones into the box. Can you guess what that does? If you guessed pipe red hot screaming trumpet into your ears, then you'd be correct. Well, if you can play red hot screaming trumpet at least. The sound quality of the mic isn't studio quality, but it does let you hear if your tone is airy or raspy, though you have to take into consideration you're playing with quite a bit of back pressure. The headphones it comes with are standard, but kind of lame. The good news there is you can replace them with any pair of you want to because it's just a standard headphone jack.

So go out and get some practice in. Just remember that when your neighbors yell at you to shut up, you can always go buy a Silent Brass system and never hear them complain about your awesome chops ever again.