Klarinet Archive - Posting 001115.txt from 1998/12

From: Mitch Bassman <mbassman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] To Oboe or Not to Oboe....
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 15:48:31 -0500

All of these oboe doubling messages have made me consider trying the
instrument again. I write "again" because I tried long ago. About 34 years
ago, during my senior year in high school, I found myself sitting first
chair clarinet (and piano soloist but that's a different story) in the
band. By then I had already decided that I was a doubler, having at various
times found myself performing on trumpet, horn, flute, sax, percussion,
string bass, and even conductor's baton. That year we had no oboist(s), and
I was playing the oboe solos that were cued in the solo clarinet parts.
Well, you guessed it, I decided that they should be played on the proper
instrument. (I noticed that a couple of flute players had piccolos on their
laps; I figured that an oboe would look good on my lap.) So I borrowed the
school oboe, bought a few commercial reeds, and "mastered" the instrument
in six weeks -- without a teacher! :)

I actually played the oboe solos on the oboe in all of our concerts that
year. I cannot imagine how awful it must have sounded. Anyway, I decided
that this particular double was going to be very difficult to maintain
without a lot more work, so I haven't played oboe since then.

As the real oboe doublers have already reported, the most difficult aspects
of playing the oboe as a doubling instrument will be finding decent reeds
and developing the embouchure. It's true that the fingerings are different,
but the reed and embouchure will determine the quality of your sound.
Learning a new set of fingering is much less troublesome.

This leads to my question(s). A couple of years ago, there was a reference
on this mailing list to playing the oboe (and bassoon) with a
clarinet-style mouthpiece and single reed. (I even met someone in a musical
show pit orchestra last year who claimed to own a Kaspar bassoon
mouthpiece. He wasn't using it; his part didn't call for bassoon.) I've
never seen one. Has anyone on this list ever used such a crutch to double
on oboe or bassoon? Are such mouthpieces still available anywhere. Is the
resulting tone acceptable? The value of "acceptable" may, of course, depend
on the circumstances; a doubler in a musical show may be willing to accept
much less than the principal oboist of a symphony orchestra. Did such
mouthpieces fall out of favor because the result was not acceptable to
anyone? If so, why? It has also been stated on this list in past years that
the physics of the oboe is equivalent to that of the soprano sax. Does the
oboe with a single reed and mouthpiece simply sound too much like a soprano
sax to satisfy the need for the oboe sound?

I think I've just talked myself out of taking up the oboe again after so
many years.

Mitch Bassman
Burke, Virginia, USA

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