Klarinet Archive - Posting 000699.txt from 1998/03

From: "Kevin Fay" <kevinfay@-----.com>
Subj: Re: humidity and reeds
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:45:30 -0500

Yes. Humidity/weather changes will affect your reeds.

I keep 2 sets of reeds in my case. I used to think that I was just
having "soft reed" days, until I realized that what worked roughly
corresponded to the weather here in Seattle (little rain or lots of
rain--pretty much binary). On wet days, the Vandoren V-12s work pretty
good. On dry days, the Zondas get their chance.

kjf
----Original Message Follows----
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 13:24:27 -0700
From: david rothbaum <dmr@-----.com>
Subject: humidity and reeds

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.

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