the elephant wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 10:56 am
For really quick changes on programs where I only have like one or two muted notes I just use my folder. It works perfectly and costs me nothing whatsoever, save for the loss of some Man Card points…
I've looked at muted passages on some pieces (imagining whether-or-not it would made any difference) and and decided to ignore them.
Otherwise (as I use the F cimbasso on so many later-era pops arrangements designated as "tuba" parts (as they're obviously written AS IF 4th trombone parts yet "alas, no 4th trombone, so..." - I might actually USE mutes on the parts written with the muted trombones (whereby the pops arranger didn't ask the tuba to mute, and - maybe...?? - they didn't know that tuba players have mutes).
yet another view regarding yet another aspect of this issue:
I sorta look upon it as fairly presumptuous for someone to release a statement out of their mouth such as "In the blah-blah Symphony Orchestra, 'we' don't use mutes on blah-blah passage in blah-blah tone poem"...which means absolutely nothing more than - a long time ago, during a break - one of them asked the music director whether he cared if blah-blah passage/section (65-77) was actually muted - to which the response was "I suppose not"...which was then interpolated - by a handful of individual players - into "policy".
bloke "If one studies the tuba writing in regards to particular tone poem to which I obliquely refer, it seems fairly obvious that it was written to be played on a 4-valve E-flat tuba (the instrument of this type pictured below manufactured during the very same era as the particular composition), whereas the player to whom I refer was playing it on a jumbo C tuba - a bell size for which there weren't really any particularly good mutes, certainly not through the 1980's."
