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New products are always of interest at Horn Matters. Recently I heard of a new type of stop mute made of wood, the Woodstop, and Ion Balu has also introduced a new stop mute with a unique bell design. Both are very innovative designs about which we have not yet posted.
Stop Mutes in General
Most players would think of a stop mute being something we use more or less interchangeably with hand stopping. I would tend to use a stop mute instead of the hand in the following situations:
- Low range stopped notes not very obtainable by hand stopping
- Very loud hand stopped notes
- Any situation where I have time to put it in that I feel it might help with accuracy or with articulations or intonation
In all of these above situations with my average to large hands I would use the stop mute with the same fingerings I would use for hand stopping. That is, the fingering ½ step lower than the printed note and on the F horn for intonation. If a horn with a stopping valve is available I would use the normal B-flat horn fingering but with the stop valve held down, which adds approximately the same tubing as an F horn second valve (so no transposition is necessary). [With small hands you may need to alter your normal stopped fingerings, as described here, but with a stop mute or a stopping valve the standard fingerings should work.]
The Woodstop TM
From the quotes in the advertising I thought it should be an interesting mute:
“What a great mute. Wow… the colors, articulation, the sound, pitch.” Gail Williams
“It is an excellent aid to performing stopped horn by its ease of production, and by allowing the performer to achieve more flexibility and variety in colors and dynamics. That it also works well on descants is invaluable.” Paul Navarro
That last part of the Paul Navarro quote kind of caught my attention. I don’t think of stopped horn on a descant to be an issue, it is actually easier to my mind than on a double horn with the stop valve on the typical descant. In the materials with the Woodstop mute the maker Kevin Warren explains further that this mute was
…designed to be played primarily on the B horn, [but] the relationship is close to that of the F side. Also the high F side works just fine as well.
With standard hand stopping I think of it raising the pitch ½ step on the F side, ¾ step on the B-flat side, and a whole step on the high F side. Does this mute behave differently?
A purchaser offered to let me try one of these and it is in short a very interesting mute. The first trials were done in our weekly horn studio class. We set up a brief trial that compared hand stopping to my trusty old Tom Crown stop mute to the Woodstop. I think we agreed in the studio on several things:
- The Woodstop is a loud stop mute, perhaps 10% louder but we did not have a decibel meter to quantify it exactly
- The Woodstop has a GREAT tone color, very much like hand stopping but more focused and solid sounding with crisp articulations in the mid and upper register
- The Woodstop is beautifully crafted and finished, almost worth buying just as an art object
On the negative side, the player doing the test (a graduate student) felt that the low range was not as easy to stop as on the Tom Crown and I would also tend to agree with that assessment. The notes are there but at least on this example were not as easy to produce. The Tom Crown mute I should also note was observed by all to have a more metallic tone color than hand stopping or the Woodstop.
I enjoyed trying this mute (which I have to send on to another who is in line to give it a trial), it is a product to consider highly.
Interlude: What Stop Mutes do to the B-Flat and High F Sides
In further tests on my own I have explored the fingering/intonation question raised by the Woodstop. For my trials of the Woodstop mute I used several different horns including horns with a stopping valve. From the text cited above it seems like the Woodstop is supposed to allow stopping on the B-flat horn with fingerings a half step below, but honestly for me the pitch shift with the Woodstop is really close to the same as hand stopping or the Tom Crown mute. On every horn I have tried with bell sizes ranging from an Alexander to a Conn 8D on the B-flat horn I feel the pitch goes up about ¾ step. On descant and triple horns the high F side it goes up about a whole step. I can use the stopping valve just like normal with no problem on horns that have a stopping valve using the Woodstop mute. So I am still a little puzzled by the point about it being designed for the B-flat horn. But then again it could be a quirk of the mute I tried that it plays more like a standard stopping mute. [I address this topic in relation to descant and triple horns further in my publication Playing High Horn, available from Horn Notes Edition].
The Ion Balu Stop Mute
I have not yet had the chance to try one of these but the other innovative stop mute mentioned at the beginning of this post is by Ion Balu. This mute is another approach toward solving the eternal question of how to be heard on certain excerpts in an orchestral context. The bell is very large and mounted on a longer tube than normal that angles outward. The major selling points given for this mute are:
1) It takes the sound from the bell and projects it TOWARDS the audience. This way, you will never have a distorted sound or a loss of safety due to overplaying in order to be heard. The S-shaped tube is a Ion Balu invention.
2) It works great in ALL registers, and especially in the difficult octave bellow middle C, (C3-C4) (The stopped low C in Tchaikovsky 6th WILL be heard like never before.)
3) Our “mute bell” is the biggest one on the market; 2.5″ and in this case, bigger is better.
4) We make the mute with one bell size only. In order to change the colors, you only need to change the direction in which the bell points. This saves hassle, and you can create color changes in a matter of seconds.
5) The bell detaches from the body, for easy storage.
6) We are the first and only one to use a synthetic material that sticks and seals your mute in the bell impeccably.
I especially like he notes in point 2 that “The stopped low C in Tchaikovsky 6th WILL be heard like never before.” If you have performed this work you can relate. One other note, on bell size, the Woodstop is actually nearly 3″ in diameter (but obviously of a different material).
There are several endorsements of this mute given in the Ion Balu site, including one from Jeff Nelsen (IU/Canadian brass), who offers this poem that also mentions the innovative synthetic cork material used on this mute.
Ion’s Dr. Seuss stop mute is born.
Finally, all the Whos Hears a Horn!
While sounds of beauty they do tell
Balu’s great cork stays in bell
Again, I did not have a chance to try this mute and I would welcome comments from those that have, keeping in mind however this final thought from Ion Balu,
We’ve been asked to compare our mute with other brands. We’ve been asked this in the past with our straight mutes, and we believe that this would be in bad taste. Our intention is to make the best possible mutes, and we can do this without insulting our competitors, whom we respect and have good relations with. We believe that there is a place in the market for all mutes, and our products are targeting a specific performer: the professional musician. If you already own a Balu Straight or Practice mute, you will find the same difference when comparing the stop mute with other brands, and it will be your decision where to rank our stop mute. Thank you for your understanding.
To Conclude a Very Long Post…
For sure both of these new mutes have their place on the market! I salute both makers for their innovations, and I look forward to seeing how these products impact the market, each one offers a new flavor of loud stopped mute to consider.
Speaking of the market, to purchase both will set you back a bit. According to the receipt with the Woodstop mute it is currently priced at $185 and the Balu is priced at $149.95. It may seem a bit steep to a student but for a fine, handmade, newly developed professional quality mute it seems pretty reasonable to me.
In closing I have one final note. While Balu has a website, so far as I can tell the maker of the Woodstop does not yet have a web site. I am hesitant to put the E-mail address in this post for privacy reasons but it is published in his advertisement on page 15 of the October, 2009 issue of The Horn Call. Balu also has an advertisement on page 21 of the same issue. If you don’t know about The Horn Call, it is a publication of the International Horn Society. Check out their website and learn how to join here.
UPDATE: Please see comment # 3 for more on the Woodstop and contact information to purchase this product.
ALSO: Would note I’ve tried the Balu now, it produces a lot of sound! Perfect for certain passages.
