Their range now covers eight different brass instruments. More than 95% of their orders go overseas, selling to over 35 countries. Bremner, now aged 80, has retired and the business is currently in the safe hands of Betty and their son, Fraser, with Scott Susans looking after the assembling of the mutes. The workload soon reached a level where he and his wife, Betty, left their Brisbane-based jobs and moved back to New Plymouth to start producing the Sshhmutes in large quantities. Bremner sent mutes out to professional players around the world and was overwhelmed by their enthusiasm. He started assembling the mutes by hand from his home in Brisbane, Australia, while he was still teaching music in the local schools. At first he used the materials at hand, such as pieces cut from suitcase material and solid brass, then these were later swapped out with different grades of plastic to make them lighter. I took all of these factors and applied them to the Sshhmute.”įinding a solution took three-and-a-half years of trial and error. A mute that is free-blowing does not alter the muscles in the embouchure. The other is having a free-blowing action and making sure that when you are playing it doesn’t feel like you have a mute in at all. “One is that it plays in tune – if you play out of tune, it has an overall effect on the quality of the music that the performer is trying to project. “There are two main aspects to a practice mute,” says Bremner. A few years later, he decided to design one of his own. However, the mutes on the market didn’t work well for him. When he settled in New Plymouth to raise a young family, he realised how essential it was to have an effective mute to minimise disturbing his wife and children. Trevor Bremner has received awards on both sides of the Tasman for his cornet playing. Sshhmute designer Trevor Bremner and his wife Betty, with musicians from Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra. This creative attitude extends to local inventors and entrepreneurs, who have come up with some innovative gadgets to aid and inspire music makers in their creative process. This list attempts to capture some of the broad range of musical products that are designed, and often built, here in Aotearoa. New Zealanders are known for their ingenuity and many local musicians have taken novel musical approaches to achieve international success.
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