Silence Must Fall

Tried out Yamaha Silent Brass for the trumpet. Not bad. Not bad at all.

On the "silent" side, it lets through more noise than the LotFancy trumpet mute I had been using. Still good enough for practicing in a small apartment, though. The other half of the Yamaha, however, is the built-in mic and pocket amplifier, with Yamaha's touted "Brass Resonance Modeling."

Which works to a point. The sound is clear and removes the major problem with a practice mute; that you can't hear yourself. There's enough there to work on tone, and the back pressure isn't too bad. It's good enough to be scary; over the first run with it you'll find yourself pulling off the headphones just to make sure you aren't blasting the neighbors with a full-open horn. It isn't quite the true trumpet sound, however. More like a cornet. Or maybe a straight mute.

Still, it is good enough to record with, and that makes my tin whistle the instrument most in need of a rehearsal space. Err, and the violin. I just realized I effectively no longer have an e-violin. Not that it mattered, as what I needed to progress was the acoustic violin. And the same objections to trying to practice with a mute, or when I can't open up and play out, are still there. So I may be renting rehearsal space yet.




A thought for Yamaha; if they can do acoustic modeling of a trumpet, putting back in what is lost to the mute, they should be able to do the same for an e-violin or chincello. It isn't so bad on the violin, but cello suffers from that lack of body resonances when done with a solid-body instrument and piezo pickups.



Tin whistle and guitar are coming along. On the guitar, I'm slowly managing to get just enough of the tips of my fingers between those tight strings (3/4 scale guitar, remember) to finger-pick properly. It looks like it will come, with more time. On the tin whistle, starting to get the ornaments, and the breath control.

And sight-reading. That was unexpected. On literature written for the tin whistle, there's few or no accidentals and with some exceptions the hole pattern even matches up with counting bar lines. I'm getting to the point where I just play whatever is on the sheet music without going through the usual mental gymnastics of figuring out which note it is, what the fingering is, etc.



So with the chincello and a little octave-shifted trumpet I can fill out my symphonic resources. I've pretty much got the instrumentation to move forward and do some music. Now it is all about practice. Or more to the point, working up some new pieces and getting the experience I need (which very much includes practice in reading, writing, and transposing) that way.



The Feadóg and the Vorson showed up today as well. Now I've really got some tonal options. Unfortunately the work week just caught up to me so today's accomplishments are going to be sprawling on the couch under a quilt reading schlock SF.

And when I feel better, I need another set of strings and a new pick.