Klarinet Archive - Posting 000417.txt from 2001/10

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: [kl] Water
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2001 13:20:32 -0400

Inspired by the little pot that the first oboe in front of me uses to
wet his reeds, a thing I've been doing recently with some success is to
wet the reed *on the mouthpiece* from time to time, by dunking it in
plain water. You can do that very simply just by inverting the
instrument and poking the mouthpiece, up to the top of the ligature,
into the water. I've found that the sort of white opaque plastic pot
that is used as a container for pills of various sorts, with a snap on
lid, is quite convenient for this. You can carry it around in your
case, replacing the water at regular intervals.

I've always found that keeping my current reed on the mouthpiece works
best for me, though of course I have 'hopeful' replacements in various
storage cases (and sometimes those even work:-) This on the fly
'dunking' technique seems to go very well with on-the-mouthpiece
storage, though I don't quite know why.

You can wet the reed more or less thoroughly, of course, by varying the
period of immersion, and the playing of some reeds is almost immediately
improved by such wetting -- at any rate after a few seconds recovery
time. Mostly, you wouldn't want to do it in a concert just before an
important or delicate passage.

If you want, you can also take the mouthpiece off, and by sucking the
end of it, wet the reed further up, perhaps even under the table.

It occurs to me, in a rather unscientific way, that more frequent plain
water wetting may delay the effect of saliva deposits, by opposing the
penetration of saliva into the reed.

Whether or not that's true, I recommend it as worth a go.

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

... A clean disk is the sign of a warped drive.

---------------------------------------------------------------------