TromboneChat

Hi Everyone,
I am playing the muted trombone part in American Salute for Band. It is a duet with the trumpet. Calls for a straight mute. The director wants the trombone part louder. I am having trouble matching the volume of the trumpet. If I blow really loud then I run out of breath. I have lost some lung capacity due to age (76) and health issues.
I am using a nice Dennis Wick metal Straight mute.

Any tricks? I suppose we could double the trombone part if necessary.

Thanks
Randy

There's no dynamic change marked in the part, but I've never head this where the muted passage isn't considerably quieter than the unmuted duet that came just before. Perhaps the trumpet player could dial it back a bit? "Blow really loud" gives a totally inappropriate sound.

You might be able to get more sound by building the corks up a bit. That pulls the mute away from the bell, and would give a less buzzy sound, but would probably louden things.

Listening to the Army Field Band, I think the trumpet could hold the sustained notes full value, and the trombone could sneak out a little early to catch a breath. (Also, notice how quiet they are! Definitely not the fortissimo marked in the part.)

Some mutes project better than others. Maybe you could ask your section mates if you can try their straight mutes out?

You might try shaving the corks down. The conductor might be asking for more volume when when they really want is for the trombone to match the tone with the trumpet part.

I've noticed that a lot of trombonists don't really shave the corks down enough on their mutes -- the mute should be drastically changing the sound, by design.

A good rule of thumb is to have the joint ring where the throat of the mute mates to the "bottom" of the mute line up with or be just flush past the edge of the instrument's bell.

One of the best sounding straights I've ever owned is an all aluminum Tom Crown with shaved corks and the opening above the corks was dented in a bit, like the shank on a mouthpiece after you drop it. Don't recommend trying to recreate that, but the mute does have a kind of magic sound. My Ullven triple plate mute is a close second, albeit overall a much more versatile mute.

*Since we're talking about shaving corks...

https://s-mute.com/products/adapter-set ... bone-mutes

So...the OP has been told to build up the corks and shave the corks down. Hmm...

In my experience, the corks on Wick mutes are exactly as thick as they need to be. Wick mutes are very well-balanced but not necessarily the loudest available.

I don't know where you are, but if you can get to a music store that has a selection of mutes, you can probably find one inherently louder than a Wick. I'm thinking a Jo-Ral, maybe with a brass bottom. Aluminum bottom Jo-Ral sounds pretty similar to a Wick if maybe slightly louder; copper bottom tends to be darker, which will probably not be perceived as louder.

Ilan Morganstern's Morningstar mutes blow very freely and can be quite loud, but I don't know if you want to spend that much money to make a conductor happy for one piece. https://imbrassworks.com/products/morni ... 0216017169
With these the aluminum is probably the way to go. And the handle is cool. I've got one I love for bass trombone, but I don't use it when the rest of section is playing all-metal mutes.

Actually, looking at the Hickey's page - https://www.hickeys.com/music/brass/tro ... _mutes.php - mutes have gotten expensive! Morningstar is not as much more as I thought...

The caveat on my suggestion is that I mentioned perhaps the conductor really doesn't want "volume" per se, but "bite". If needed, shaving the corks down gets you that (until you go too far and regret it -- it gets better and better until it's suddenly not good at all...). You certainly get more overall volume with thicker corks but in my opinion the sound will be more of an apologetic "the part says mute, but you don't really want mute on the trombone, do you?" kind of sound. The sound should change a lot from the mute.

The only Wick mute I have is for my alto, and I shaved those corks down considerably. Gabe is probably totally right about the corks on the Wick "normal" mutes -- I missed that detail.