Klarinet Archive - Posting 000697.txt from 2004/11

From: "Larisa Duffy and David Dow" <duffyl@-----.ca>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sandpaper vs. Reed knife
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:43:35 -0500

For quite a long time I used to rub the reed and buff the reed with my
hands.
Harold Wright asked what I was doing to my reeds during a Private lesson
in my first lesson with him..
after explaining that I used my finger to polish to the front of the reed he
stated "Only do this when you are at the end of trying everything to get the
reed to work.."
Shortly afterwards I adopted using a knife only and became convinced that
all hand polishing does is heat up the reed and impregnate it with more
grease
and gunk on top of the saliva. I also found my sound became fuller and
somewhat
less airy than before.

I also noticed that Wright tended to rotate his reeds rather than playing on
the
same one day in day out...I found this to work well for me to. It keeps
reeds working
longer than just blasting away on the same one for an eternity.

David Dow
Symphony NB

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