Bringing Care and Joy Together in Harmony

April 19, 2023

It is a brass player’s dream to be able to play their instrument freely at any time of day. Yamaha’s long-beloved product, SILENT Brass™, makes this dream a reality. The product’s legacy was built by countless Yamaha employees who strived to respond to the struggles of brass players.

SILENT Brass is largely made up of two parts – the Pickup Mute™ and the Personal Studio™. The Pickup Mute fits inside the bell of the instrument and reduces the playing sound to the level of a whisper. The sound captured by the mic inside the Pickup Mute is then digitally processed by the Personal Studio and reproduced as natural sound in the player's ears. This two-part system allows musicians to play comfortably for extended periods of time without worrying about bothering the people around them.

A Dedicated Solution for Dedicated Players

SILENT Brass has its origins in its predecessor, SILENT Piano™. In 1970s Japan, the sound of children practicing the piano was considered a noise nuisance in urban neighborhoods. The SILENT Piano was one of Yamaha’s solutions to this social issue; it made it possible to play silently, all the while delivering the natural sound of an acoustic piano to the players’ ears.

Before the SILENT Brass was invented, most people thought that brass instruments were not meant to be played at home. Takayasu Ebihara, who is in charge of product planning and strategic planning of SILENT Brass, was no exception. Ebihara began playing the French horn in his first year of junior high school and has a bitter memory of disrupting one of his neighbors with his playing. “Over the summer break, I brought home my instrument so that I could clean it. My mother wanted to hear me play, so I thought I’d give it a go – but after only a minute of me playing, a neighbor called to complain.”

Brass instrument players would often use a practice mute when they wanted to minimize their playing sound during their practice. However, conventional practice mutes make it difficult to control the pitch, and players found them tiring and difficult to use. “Because the mute muffles their playing, musicians would oftentimes feel like they need to blow harder to make the sound,” says Ebihara.

It was therefore a novel idea to install a microphone inside the practice mute and replay the sound in the musician’s ears. In 1994, Yamaha’s Acoustic Electronics (AE) Development Group was trying to come up with an instrument that combines acoustic and electronic elements. The Group came up with the design for SILENT Brass, and with the help of a diverse and interdisciplinary team, the product quickly became a reality.

In October 1995, Yamaha released the first SILENT Brass, made for the trumpet. It was an instant success, and in just three months, the product had already reached its annual sales goal. Users wrote in to say that the SILENT Brass made their practice much more enjoyable, and many were thankful that it allowed them to play even in the middle of the night. Yamaha went on to develop and launch SILENT Brass for other brass instruments as well, such as the trombone, the French horn, the euphonium, and the tuba.

Improving Technology for an Improved Playing Experience

SILENT Brass has continued to satisfy users for nearly 30 years. This is likely because its appeal reaches beyond its sound-reducing capabilities. For example, the Personal Studio allows users to add reverb effects to their playing sound – the added echo makes it feel like they’re playing in a wide, open concert hall.

SILENT Brass was renewed twice since the very first edition, each new model bringing more enjoyment to brass players than the last. “We have always placed value on reproducing the natural sound of instruments, but our digital processing technology has made significant progress since our very first model,” Ebihara explains. “Our new Brass Resonance Modeling™ technology effectively cancels out the acoustic characteristics of the mute, allowing the instrument’s most natural sound quality to shine through.”

The electronic processing technology also makes possible additional features such as the AUX IN outlet, which allows users to enjoy a karaoke-like performance.

The mute itself has also vastly improved over the years. In addition to being much more comfortable to blow through, it is also significantly smaller and lighter than previous models. “When it comes to trumpets, the heavier the mute is, the harder it is for the player to keep the bell up,” says Ebihara. “This is why we did our best to make the mute as lightweight as we could. It is also more compact than previous editions, so players can store their trumpets in their cases with the mute still attached.”

Coincidentally, Ebihara was involved in the development of SILENT Brass even before he joined the company. In 2010, when Yamaha was in the midst of developing an updated version of SILENT Brass, Ebihara was still a graduate school student researching musical acoustics. During his internship at Yamaha, he happened to be tasked with balancing the pitch for the new Pickup Mute. “At the time, I had no idea I would one day work for Yamaha, let alone be in charge of the planning for SILENT Brass,” he reflects. “There’s certainly a lot of pressure to live up to customers’ expectations when working on such a long seller, but as a brass musician myself, I feel it to be an incredibly rewarding product to work on.”

Breathing Life into Sound

There is a lot of thought that goes into the fine-tuning of the Personal Studio. An integral part of the SILENT Brass, the Personal Studio is what reproduces the natural sound of the instrument.

“When I first play-tested a prototype of the current generation of SILENT Brass on the French horn, I was most surprised by how the sound was skewed to the right,” Ebihara says. “The French horn is held in a way that makes the bell come to the right side of the player’s body, so naturally the sound feels bigger in the right ear. The Personal Studio replicates this left-right balance when it processes the playing sound. Similarly, for instruments like the trumpet and the trombone, the sound is adjusted slightly to the left because the bell is offset to the left of the player’s face.” A high priority is put on accurately recreating the sound of the instruments to make players feel like they can practice exactly the way they normally do.

Meanwhile, it was equally as important to take into account how good the musicians could feel when they played. “When we asked professional musicians to play our prototypes, they told us they prefer their playing to sound crisp and clear. When we re-tuned the sound based on that feedback, however, the play-testers in Yamaha felt the sound was ‘too vivid’ for amateurs.”

The engineers struggled to find the perfect amount of sound correction to make the sound feel soothing to the players’ ears. “For amateurs, when the sound is too ‘raw’ it can feel different from what they imagine their playing to sound like. We touched up the sound ever so slightly on the current model so that it feels really comfortable to play. Our hope is that the refined sound will make people enjoy their time practicing more.

With a user experience that makes players forget that their instrument is muted, SILENT Brass provides users with the capability of playing comfortably anytime, anywhere, without bothering the people around them. This solution comes from Yamaha’s passion to place equal weight on the musician’s own enjoyment and their consideration for others. Listening Care, which we introduced last time, also brings together two seemingly opposing goals in harmony: protecting ear health while also delivering “TRUE SOUND.” Stay tuned for the finale of this series, in which we delve deeper into the “Key" that ties Listening Care and SILENT Brass together.

*Bio as of the time of the interview

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