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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000088.txt from 2007/06
From: "Ed B. Flowers" <flowerse@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Re: Elizabeth Koch, ASO Principal Oboe
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:03:46 -0400
Phil,
I'm not certain how exactly how long it takes the crispness to go away.
On the AK that I recently traded, I had played it for about four months,
and it had already mellowed out enough that it sounded better than the
new AKs I compared it to.
I like the mellowed-out tone. Having listened carefully to how oboes
blend with the instruments in my chamber music groups, I concluded that
the oboe sounds better with other instruments when they have settled
into their long-term sound which includes this mellowness. The crispness
doesn't help them blend, but it's not really objectionable.
Margaret Noble says that good players "play a good sound into the oboe."
I'm beginning to agree with her. Part of the mellow sound is determined
by the tone that the player gets when he plays the oboe. The other part
of the mellowness probably comes from the oboe bore gradually absorbing
a certain amount of moisture as you break it in.
I don't think it's necessary to trade an oboe every 3 years. I do,
suspect, though, that if you played it five hours a day, every day,
without frequent swabbing you might get some bore distortion.
Following the suggestions of the Sawicki repair manual, I have formed
some habits to help my oboes last: (1) I swab frequently (this solves
the water-in-the-tone holes problem almost completely and protects the
bore from excessive moisture) (2) I let the oboe stand on the peg for a
while before I put it away (Marsha Heller says this lets excessive
moisture evaporate), (3) I use my most problematical oboe to make reeds
(reed making involves a lot of time and moisture), and (4) I play my
oboes in rotation, giving them a chance to dry slightly while keeping
the cases humidified with a dampit and a humistat.
I don't think the mellowness that comes from breaking in a new
instrument is the same thing--at all--as an oboe getting "blown out." As
I understand it, when an oboe becomes blown out, the individual notes go
out of tune and assume weird timbres. The 70-year-old AJ Loree that I
had reconditioned, although its A = 442 had a very even scale. I
concluded that (1) it was not blown out, (2) that after being played
through Juilliard, this oboe had spent most of it's life in a closet,
and (3) that this AJ's bore was reamed for the European market.
Notice, that I have come around to your way of sussing out the oboe
tone--concentrating especially on how the high and low notes sound. When
you're playing dramatic solos, you often end up on a high note, and if
that note isn't pretty, and doesn't blend nicely with the flute, the
climax can be disappointing.
Edward B. Flowers (ob, EH)
New York City
philfrei@-----.com wrote:
>
>
>> From Ed Flowers:
>>> The new Lorees all had a crisp sound
> that the broken-in oboes didn't have. You'd have to guess as to how they
> would ultimately sound once broken in, but still, you could get a pretty
> good idea of how they would end up sounding.<<
>
>
> Perhaps this "crispness" which you describe, which eventually
> disappears, is what some pros are missing when they call an oboe
> "blown out." How long does it take, in your estimation, for an oboe to
> "break in"? A week or two? Months? A year? If a year or more, then
> that is starting to get in a range where it might have some sort of
> correlation to the "blown out" phenomena that so many of us are having
> trouble accepting as being more than a figment of imagination.
>
> - Phil Freihofner
> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's
> free from AOL at AOL.com.
>
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