Brass
A variety of mutes have been used on brass instruments, all of which either squeeze inside the bell of the instrument, or are hung or clipped to the outside of the bell. These mutes are typically made out of aluminum, brass, or copper metal, but more economical plaster, cardboard, and plastic versions exist. Each material produces a distinctive sound.
Mutes will usually make the instrument play sharp. High quality mutes try to reduce intonation issues while maintaining the characteristic sound. Even so, it is often necessary for the musician to accommodate by adjusting the tuning slide.
Read more about this topic: Mute (music)
Famous quotes containing the word brass:
“You could almost see the brass on her gleaming,
Not quite. The mist was to light what red
Is to fire. And her mainmast tapered to nothing,
Without teetering a millimeter’s measure.
The beads on her rails seemed to grasp at transparence.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat
convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)