How to Mute a Vibraslap

Video Transcript

"I want to talk about muting and dynamics of the vibraslap. First of all the mute. The best way to get a good mute or just totally cut off the sound is to grab this bell shaped apparatus like so. So I'm going to play the vibraslap and, depending on the duration, I'm going to cut it off whenever I want to. There's your basic muting. Now I found that if you bring your hand in front of it, you can also mute it that way. But you end up getting like a kind of a frog sound out of it because you're playing around with how the sound waves are propelled out of this instrument. So listen carefully as I bring my hand around this. The last time I did it a little bit slower so you can actually get that kind of sound out of it. But if you want just an even mute, I just grab right on to the front of it and I keep it from vibrating. As far as dynamics on the instrument, the easiest way I think to play the dynamics is to hold it steady like this and, depending on how hard you hit it, it's going to ring out for different lengths of time or at different volumes. Hitting it very softly will give you this kind of a sound. And as you hit it progressively harder, you can get a whole range of durations and volumes basically out of the same instrument. And there you have it."