How to Practice Trumpet Quietly at Home

hey what's happening gang bobby spellman here to welcome you to a very practical episode of [Music] i live in new york city and here in new york most people live in apartment buildings oftentimes people are living very close to their neighbors and the walls may not be very thick so over the years i've been asked many times by my students so bob i'd love to practice more but i'm afraid that my neighbors are going to go insane people are hitting the ceiling with their broomsticks and calling the police what do i do how can i play the trumpet without aggravating my neighbors and i've got a couple of answers it's not always easy there's always a compromise to be made when you really stifle the sound of the trumpet you get a lot of back pressure so the goal is to try to find that middle ground between bringing the volume of the instrument down without giving yourself too much of a hard time while you're trying to play the first thing that everybody does is they get what's called a practice mute now practice mute looks like this the goal of the practice mute is to eliminate as much sound from the trumpet as is possible unfortunately you also reduce a lot of the air that's coming out of the instrument and it makes it extremely difficult to play a practice mute does quiet the instrument quite a bit and it sounds like this [Music] but the practice mute changes the intonation of the instrument and most importantly playing in the low register or the upper register can become very difficult [Music] in fact the reason i have this practice mute is one of my students hated it so much she gave it to me so here it is now this is a definitely a viable option if you're trying to quiet down the horn and you don't mind a little extra back pressure but it's not my favorite choice because it takes out so much of the sound another option is what's called the yamaha silent brass system this in my mind is miles ahead of the silent of the practice mute rather because the silent brass system first of all will reduce the tone of the instrument in the air it'll take the volume way down but the yamaha silent brass system allows you to plug some headphones into a little box that plugs into a mute that will go into the horn and that will enable you to hear your sound as though you're playing in a concert hall or something like that even though you're playing uh very quietly in your bedroom or wherever you happen to be the other thing about the silent brass system the yamaha system that works very well is that they've designed it in such a way that a little bit more air can come out without causing any too much excess noise so it feels a little bit more natural to play now that being said it still is a a little bit more of a stuffy way to play there's just no good way to make it comfortable to play as though you're playing you know without a mute on there with a something that's going to silent your silence your horn almost completely uh one other option that i always give people that i think is the best option for you for many of my students is just the simple harmon mute good odds you already have one it's a beautiful sound and it's going to bring the sound of the trumpet way down now the harmon mute does carry quite a bit so it's certainly not a silent brass situation it doesn't uh it's not a it's not a practice mute in the sense that it's not going to bring your sound down to zero but it will bring it down to about what it would be if you're listening to television so that's going to sound a little bit like this [Music] now obviously depending on how loud you've got the computer or whatever you're listening to me on uh that's going to sound different i'm not giving you a really good idea of what the decibels would be in your apartment but nine times out of ten you put a harmon mute in there it's going to give you a lot less resistance it's going to bring the volume of the horn way down and it sounds beautiful the ideal situation if you're living in an apartment complex with a bunch of neighbors is for all your neighbors to come out and say wow every morning i wake up and i just hear the beautiful sound of somebody playing the trumpet and it brightens my day and the rest of my day i know is going to be great because i started off with the majesty of musical sound wafting through the air so hopefully you've got those neighbors and that will help out a lot in that case definitely stick with the harm in mute because they're going to say something like what is that miles davis in there wow this is great i'm glad i moved into this building with a trumpet player right next door this is really cool that's the ideal circumstance is that who your neighbor is i don't know there's a lot of neighbors out there some of them are very difficult if your neighbor is especially difficult i would look into getting the yamaha silent brass system only problem with that is it's a little bit expensive if you want a cheap option get a practice mute but be prepared to have a real bad time with it and if you want to just get a beautiful smoky tone out of the trumpet and you think that will lower the sound of the instrument enough that you can practice in your apartment get yourself a harmon mute that'll do the job harmon mute is way quieter than the straight mute and many of the other mutes and it doesn't sound super hokey and you can practice in a way that will make you sound good while you're practicing which is going to make you want to practice more and that's the ultimate goal all right gang so that's my advice on how to practice in an apartment building let me know in the comments if you've got some better ideas because i bet a bunch of people have some really clever ways of practicing in an apartment without aggravating your neighbors too much all right gang thanks for checking this video out and we'll see you on the next video see ya [Music] all right friends thanks so much for checking out this video i hope it helps in your pursuit of the majesty of musical self-expression if you like what we're doing here please like this video and subscribe to the channel big thanks to all the new subscribers we really appreciate your support and we're gonna keep putting out some new videos for you the ridgewood school of music is now accepting new students for lessons online as well as in person in the brooklyn queens and greater new york city area you can find us on our website at www.ridgewoodschool and you can send us a message and we would love to help you achieve all of your musical dreams for some more musical fun you can also follow me bobby spellman on instagram bob spellman or in any of the other social media platforms listed in the description below thanks again for checking out this video happy practicing and we'll catch you next time [Music] you

Channel: Ridgewood School of Music

Views: 71,694

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Id: Y6Hq_44MNFo

Length: 6min 39sec (399 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022