TromboneChat

2 months ago i took up a trombone as a hobby however as I live in an apartments apart from my private lessons I play with a mute exclusively.Until now i've been using Best brass junior mute but I'm considering a change.Currently looking into yamaha silent brass but its a bit too expensive for now.Has anyone had this mute and how does it compare to other ones?

Basically, ALL practice mutes suck!
Just some less than others.....

You would do yourself a HUGE favor to find someplace to practice without the mute!!!
A couple of people here use empty parking garages, a park, open field, etc.....

You might even find a community college nearby with practice rooms available!

I've come to the conclusion that practice mutes, at best, can only slow down the loss of your chops. If you use them to actually practice, rather than just see what your chops are feeling like in the hotel room, then they can be downright destructive.

And if you figure your chops start to crap out after only one span of three days off the horn if you're in peak shape (requiring a few days of focused practice just to get back), and WILL completely crap out if you start only playing every couple days, rather than several times every day, practice mutes really don't serve a purpose if you want to be serious about playing.

I really am always surprised by these very general opinions about practice mutes.

I have three small kids at home and a busy working life during the day outside the trombone.
Probably 8/10 hours of my practicing are with a practice mute, sometimes more. Of course I would like to have more time without a mute, but I get along fine. It's more than just maintenance. Basically developed a good level of small bore and alto playing within these years and substantially improved on the large bore.

I do a short mouthpiece buzzing routine practically every day and am probably quite specific about what and How I am practising.

Yes, it does take some adaption when playing without a mute, but not much more than changing from a small practice cabin to a large hall.

Some basics to consider:
- don't play too loud, that's where practice mutes really get crazy with resistance
- be aware and accept that intonation will be bad. especially high notes will be low. play them in center, do not try to push them up. not a big problem if you know it, accept it and are experienced enough to still play correctly
- generally practice mutes will make overall too high. push your tuning slide out accordingly

Practicing with a mute is far from perfect, but much better than not practicing. try to get some practice time without a mute as often as possible. tbh as a beginner it's more problematic.
But still no reason to not practice!

No experience on the best brass junior. I currently use the shhhhmute. it feels quite good and has a relatively pleasant sound.

I have/had two mutes that work a little better as full time practice mutes.

The first one was called "Peacemaker". It is a solid mute connected to a stethoscope. The stethoscope is equipped with a small valve that will adjust the noise level in your ears to sound like you are playing unmuted.

The second one is the Yamaha Silent Brass. I replaced the ear buds (I hate them) with a cheap pair of headphones from an old Walkman. Again, you have electronics that can make the sound you hear match you unmuted.

The key here is that you don't overblow because you sound like you are unmuted.

The problem is that the stethoscope is a bit clumsy and both make the instrument a bit unbalanced. Plus you still have the wonky intonation. But each was a better solution for me than most.

The Yamaha Silent Brass is head-and-shoulders above any of the other mutes out there IMO. I lived in an apartment for awhile and couldn't do anything other than that and it was fine for me to keep my playing up enough to play with some pretty good groups where I lived at the time.

The electronics are pretty good but I recall not using them very much. I was just using it to keep in shape though, not necessarily to improve. If you want to improve, it's hard to do that w/o adjusting to the natural acoustic feedback that you'd get live. So I do agree that it isn't optimal to do 100% of your playing in it, but if the choice is no face time or face time in a mute, I didn't personally suffer any ill effects from doing my maintenance in a practice mute for something like 3 years.