Читать книгу Banjo For Dummies - Bill Evans - Страница 40

If you're one of those folks who lives in a crowded household or a college dorm, or if you have to catch your practice time late at night or very early in the morning, you need to find a way to ramp down the volume of your banjo. Try these quick solutions to temporarily tame your savage banjo beast:

 Place a mute on the bridge. A banjo mute fits onto the top of your banjo bridge and soaks up the musical energy that the bridge normally transmits from a vibrating string to the banjo head. (See photo a in the accompanying figure.) Mutes dramatically reduce your banjo's volume and can change the tone quite a bit too, lending a sweet sustaining sound to your banjo that makes it sound almost like a harpsichord. You can buy a banjo mute at an acoustic specialty store (but don't let them talk you into believing that a ball-peen hammer is a real mute — that's a more permanent solution!). In lieu of a store-bought mute, you can also use a couple of clothespins, snapped to either end of the bridge (as shown in photo b). This solution works just about as well!

 Just stuff it! Cram a hand towel or a T-shirt into the back of the banjo, in the space between the head and the closest coordinating rod or the dowel stick (take a look at photo c). If your banjo has a resonator, you need to remove it first to get to the back of your instrument. The more firmly you position the cloth against the underside of the head, the more it absorbs the energy of the head and the quieter your banjo becomes.

Photographs by Anne Hamersky