Banjo Newsletter Review
The Fielding-Cutler Banjo Mute.
By Richard Sparks
Five Strings, three fingers, four beats to the bar... The banjo is a confusing instrument.If you want to learn to play it, you have to practice. A lot.
But not only is the banjo confusing-it is also loud. And, quite often, other people have to listen to you practice. We all love the banjo; but the sad fact is that listening to someone struggling towards it's mastery is not everyone's idea of a good time. Even the most accommodating of loved ones can turn nasty surprisingly quickly. Indeed a recent Time-Warner Poll showed that it takes on average no more than sixteen minutes of repeated manglings of Cripple Creek to place the beginner in serious physical danger.
Well, we don't want to be anti-social, do we? So we compromise - and one of the compromises that beginners often make is to play without picks. This is a mistake - as Pete Wernick points out in his book "Bluegrass Banjo" - "Playing without picks is like playing golf without clubs."
They say you can't have too much practice. But this isn't true if what you are doing is practicing your mistakes. We all make mistakes - but why practice them? You should practice with a metronome/drummachine, and with your picks on. And, believe it or not, you can do this virtually in silence. The drummachine can work through your headphones, and with the Fielding-Cutler Banjo Mute you can pick loud and hard and make very little sound.
The Fielding-Cutler Mute is an ingenious development of an old idea. I used to practice with a simple, antique metal mute which worked fine - two slender metal bars joined by screws and dampened with felt. This fitted in front of the bridge, so it altered the length of the strings and thus also the banjo's pitch. It was also awkward to get on and off the banjo.
The Fielding-Cutler is simplicity to use. It is a solid bar of brass that is clamped on top of the bridge. The banjo's pitch is not affected at all. Nothing actually touches the strings, except on the very top of the bridge. It doesn't in any way take away the feel of the banjo; but what it does do is take away almost all of the sound. It does this because - unlike my antiques mute - this is a sizeable lump of metal; and, because it is clamped tight on the bridge, it soaked up virtually all the vibrations your right hand can produce in strings.
The tonal quality is, of course, altered. The unmuted banjo clangs, barks, pops, - the sound you get from one muted with a Fielding-Cutler is a soft, bell-like hum. Another advantage of this mute is that it makes you listen to the notes. You can hear, quite clearly, how you are sounding on each string. I have a 'weak' first finger; so my rolls can be uneven when I'm not picking with the thumb or second finger. Playing with this mute on, I can't 'get away with it' so easily, and I can work on smoothing out a tune; on getting accent and rhythm right.
When I remove the mute, I hear the improvement immediately. So it's not just your unwilling audience who benefit from this device. You can practice your good habits, and can do so while the world sleeps undisturbed.