PHANTOM MUTES

Available for: Trumpet, Cornet, Soprano Cornet & Piccolo.

Practice mutes - they usually suck! They can be a neccessary evil BUT many/most practice mutes make you feel like you're working to develop your playing -- that you're getting some extra time in woodshedding those tricky bits -- only to find out the next day that the muted practice has completely messed up your chops. Nothing feels right. The feel is off, the sound is not right, the intonation of the instrument suddenly feels wonky or different than usual.

That's why I designed the PHANTOM mute.

The Phantom mute is designed to be super quiet, with really solid intonation, and to help encourage you to not mess your chops up.

The most important design feature is that the Phantom mute produces an impression of resonance, even at softer dynamics, and the sound you do get out of the instrument is heavily skewed towards the higher overtones of the sound. Basically, the mute has some "sizzle" even at softer dynamics. This sizzle is what tells your brain and ears that you're blowing hard enough and that you don't need to go chasing sound or resonance.

The emphasis the mute puts on the the higher frequencies or "sizzle" in the sound helps make it feel much more resonant and "present " even when playing softly, and helps encourage you to avoid overblowing or fighting the mute for sound. This lets the mute do it's job without messing up your chops.

The problem with many practice mutes is that the lack of those higher overtones -- except when you over blow the mute -- makes the mute feel "dead" or like there is no resonance happening, and one instinctively blows harder as a result.

Avoiding overblowing most practice mutes is REALLY HARD to do, because you keep searching for something that sounds like resonance, and you don't get that until you're blowing too hard.

Even a small amount of time spent overblowing a practice mute in such a fashion can completely mess your chops up the next day and leave you scrambling to work out how to get the "feel" you're used to back to normal.

That was the big design goal I had with these mutes - To make them quiet but still feel very "present", "lively" or "resonant" even when you back off.

An added bonus I have found of this design approach is that when you remove the mute, you will be surprised at how big and resonant your sound is. Rather that the mute making your sound head towards dead and dull when you remove it, I have personally found that I have a big, full, effortless-feeling sound after using the PHANTOM mute.