TromboneChat

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I went through a period of time where I had to use a practice mute (same one you have) quite a bit.

I also noticed what you describe above. In my experience, it was more of a phenomenon than something you can build part of a consistent routine around.

My best guess was that, because of the additional resistance, I would focus more on conscious aperture control and air efficiency. Without doing so, for me anyway, the resistance would be (even more) unbearable and in fact detrimental to my non-muted playing instead of helpful. In even more ambiguous terms: because of the mute resistance I would back off on the overall effort of sound production and think about keeping a focused relaxation in the center of my lips which led to the aforementioned efficiency. I think the mute resistance can make things like that easier to feel-out, but you can and should work on those without the mute.

All that said, if a little bit of practice mute work is something from which you're seeing consistently good results - by all means - don't stop!

Brad Edwards made a post or two on his “Trombone Tip Tuesdays” series about the benefits of using a practice mute as a tool, especially in the low register. He has some good thoughts.

FWIW the upper register on my tenor (and only) Sshmute is pretty out of tune, which is to be expected. Resistance aside, the change in intonation makes it harder to play in that register because my ear and chops are working so far against what I’m used to. I think I remember Peter Steiner saying he avoids practicing solo rep with a mute for that reason.

That said, the little bit of extra resistance in the low register helps me center a bit more when I find I don’t have the core I’m looking for down there without the mute.

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