Oh Sweet Harmon-y / Listening 11- All Blues by Miles Davis

My best friend plays trumpet.  When we were in Jazz Band together in High School, I loved playing my cup mute, as I have said, but his pride and joy was his Harmon Mute.  The Harmon mute, unlike straight or cup mutes, has a circular cork around the stem.  When the stem is inserted into the bell, it completely cuts of air flow so air can only go through the mute.  It resembles a kind of bucket mute.  The sound comes out the fat end.  There is a cup on a tube, that circular thing in the fat part, that can pull out letting more air flow, or you can take it out completely.  Harmon mutes effect is best described as a high pitched buzz.  I've only seen them for trumpets, but apparently trombones and most other brass instruments can use them too.

Harmon mutes kill a lot of the sound though.  Because it restricts air flow so much and doesn't allow air outside of it, the harmon mute can dampen the softest of sounds by 8dB and can bring down the loudest (fff at 30dB) down 21dB to 9dB.   Thats a loss of 2/3rds of the sound.  So playing as loud as possible with a harmon mute is like play piano or metso piano without a mute.  This is why harmon muted players, like Miles Davis, play into microphones, because otherwise, a crowded room wouldn't be able to hear him.  One of Miles Davis' better known pieces, All Blues, has him playing with a harmon mute.  Lets watch.

As you can see, Miles liked to play a harmon without the cup-tube on it at all.  This would get him the loudest sound.  It starts out with just the bass, drums, and piano playing.  Miles comes in with the harmon mute on and immediately starts playing the blues.  Its quiet though. If you look at his cheeks, you can tell he is pushing as much air as possible through the horn, yet it pales in comparison to an un-muted trumpets normal playing.  After the first part, he takes off the mute and lets it fly.  The back bass is fairly simple up and down, the drums is doing what I used to call "shooting the breeze".  Meaning he had his standard snare, high hat, and bass drum hits that he would do, but he would add flair here and there if he thought it sounded good. The piano is keeping the blues chords for Miles to play off of.  After Miles is done, it is the tenor's turn to tear it up with a solo.  Then after his solo is Herbie Hancock's turn.  He wails on ivory keys, playing a very melodic jam.  at around the 6:30 marker, he starts in on a lick that I think someone later took and put into a Sonic the Hedgehog game as the background. Then Miles comes back in with the Harmon and plays the first part again.  They end on a fermata and fade out.  The overall format is IntorAABSSSAAOutro.

I couldn't tell how many bar blues it was (maybe it was a combination of All Blues), because Miles never seemed to come in on down beats.  But I could tell it was in 3/4 time.  At first I thought that miles on the harmon and the first part without the harmon were unscripted cause they sounded so genuine and soulful, but then he played it again after Herbie's solo, and it blew me away.  Not only did his solo have feeling, but he gave the whole song his soul.  That's special.