Klarinet Archive - Posting 000420.txt from 2000/04

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Adjusting reeds
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 16:07:08 -0400

There was a little bit of a discussion about choosing reeds, and
someone wanted tips on how to adjust reeds.

First, notice you've got the same problem adjusting reeds as you have
choosing them. You need a good idea of what you want it to behave like
when you play it.

So in order to know what you want to do to a reed to make it better, you
have to play it -- and moreover, play it on the mouthpiece that you want
to adjust it for. Every reed has a slightly different characteristic
response on a given mouthpiece -- and with a given embouchure address --
that can't be predicted from looking at it. Then, when you've played it
on the mouthpiece you're going to use, and experimented with different
addresses -- and if you're experienced -- what you have to do to the
reed physically in order to make it play better just 'springs to
mind'.

Then you do it:-)

Clearly, therefore, knowledge of what you have to do to make reeds
'better' is unlikely to be puttable into words, in general. An expert,
after trying a reed, might tell you, rightly: I think you should scrape
it a bit just *there* -- but he wouldn't be able to explain to you why.
This is because adjusting reeds requires the same sort of skill as
playing on them, in that what you do at any given point depends very
much on the context. And because there isn't really a vocabulary to
characterise this context -- because the context consists of all the
details of one of the infinite variety of ways in which a reed may
respond, or fail to respond -- then the only way to learn how to adjust
reeds is to keep practising adjusting them until you get better at it.

I bet Stradivarius was the same.

You can of course provide better or worse contexts in which either
yourself or a student may learn how to adjust reeds. Being able to use
a sharp knife or other implement precisely is a helpful skill to
acquire. And there are some general rules about how to change reeds so
that they respond more or less readily to embouchure pressure and air
pressure without altering their other characteristics, that can be
stated more or less precisely. (This is usually called 'making the reed
harder' or 'making the reed softer'.) Wrinkles include crosshatching
the surface of the lower part of the reed with surface scratches, or
scratching longitudinal lines.

But beyond these remarks, and perhaps a few other tips, about where to
scrape reeds that have a weak response in particular registers, there
isn't much to say. You can develop some probably half-baked theories
that lie behind these rules-of thumb: one of mine that seems to be
roughly true for me is that if a reed has 'too many' upper partials, or
is too strong in upper partials relative to how strong it is in lower
partials, then you can think that the tip is vibrating too independently
of the rest of the reed. This makes more plausible the fact that
scraping the lower part of the reed may make the sound proportionally
richer in lower partials, and thus *less* bright, by making the reed
vibrate more 'as a whole'.

But in my experience, there's not much more than that. You have to have
a feel for knowing when these generalisations don't apply.

Oh, one other thing: you can *split* the reed, once or more times, at
the tip, down about half a centimetre or so. I tried this about 10
years ago for a few months, but find that I use it relatively rarely
now. (There used to be a gadget that did it for you.) It can help with
some reeds.

And try lightening a 'too reedy' reed right at the tip.

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE www.gmn.com/artists/welcome.asp
tel/fax 01865 553339

... No man is an island. But some of us have long peninsulas.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org