Klarinet Archive - Posting 000685.txt from 1998/03

From: david rothbaum <dmr@-----.com>
Subj: humidity and reeds
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:58:28 -0500

can humidity or lack thereof cause drastic changes to normally well
working reeds? i had just prepared a new reed and it was sounding
fine. the following evening i tried to play the same reed and found it
almost impossible to produce a good tone on. i then went through 3 of
my other working reeds and they produced the same bad quality's i.e.
very woody and breathy sounding. as well as being prone to
squeaking/unwanted mulitphonics. the only thing that had changed in the
12 hours between sounding great and sounding awful was a drastic change
in humidity from rainy to hot and dry. needless to say it is very
frustrating. is this common? is it my imagination? and is there
anything you can do to solve this, save playing only on rainy days?

thanks in advance.

david

p.s. i wanted to thank all of you who responded to my other questions
about reeds as well.