 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: GBK
Date: 2005-09-26 07:57
I was recently rereading Robert Willaman's classic book, The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing (Carl Fischer Inc. 1949, revised 1954) and came across an interesting passage:
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"...Professionals use quantities of reeds in proportion to the artisitic standards and number of hours of the jobs they play. One well known player is reputed to have run through as many as 10,000 reeds in one year in order to provide himself with good reeds at all times with his exacting work with one of the major orchestras. This is an extreme case..."
"...The average professional player probably uses 500 reeds a year..."
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Have you ever added up how many reeds you go through in a year? ...GBK
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Author: OpusII
Date: 2005-09-26 08:12
10.000 reeds... he must have been a very hungry fellow???
I'm not a professional but I think that I use about 100 reeds in one year... thanks to the atg system. In the past I used about 240 reeds in one year
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2005-09-26 09:36
10,000 reeds in one year?! How could he afford it with a clarinetist's paycheck?
500 a year sounds reasonable, assuming they throw a lot of them away.
I probably use between 20 and 50 reeds a year, and buy about twice than that. If I find a great reed I keep playing it until it develops life forms never seen before  Some reeds I play for a day and throw away.
It is very different for professionals I guess, since they need good reeds almost every day for concerts, while I've been practicing with the same crappy reed for 3 days now.
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Author: ClariBone
Date: 2005-09-26 11:24
10,000!!! With the atg system, I managed to crank mine down to a rotation of 10 pretty good reeds and still have a couple boxes left over. So...3 or 4 boxes anually/
Clayton
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Author: Matt Locker
Date: 2005-09-26 12:02
10000 reeds per year = 27.4 reeds per day. I personally think it's a bit of an exaggeration.
MOO,
Matt
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Author: OpusII
Date: 2005-09-26 12:08
Quote:
10000 reeds per year = 27.4 reeds per day. I personally think it's a bit of an exaggeration.
Unless he loves to eat them at his dinner....
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2005-09-26 12:39
How many reeds do I use?
Just one.
That's why it's called a single-reed instrument.
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Chris P
Date: 2005-09-26 12:56
Mind you, I'm getting through quite a few boxes of Vandorens a lot more now (on everything), I don't think they last as long as they used to.
But that leaves me with a good supply of glue spreaders with all the duds I've collected.
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2005-09-26 13:12
10K reeds in a year means that the guy had no clue how to adjust his reeds..........
Even 1k would mean the same I feel.
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Author: susieray
Date: 2005-09-26 13:33
I am certainly far from a professional; I only play maybe 2-3 hours
a day on the average......so probably 30 reeds per year would be
my estimate although I have never really kept track. I use every
reed in the box (Grand Concert Evolutions and Gonzales FOF, both
in # 3 1/2 strength).
Sue
P.S. I break in ten reeds at a time; playing on them only about
5 minutes per day at first, but after a few days of this they are
nicely broken in and I end up with ten good reeds...there are
always a few in each box that I like better than the rest, but
I find that (for me) all of them are playable.
Post Edited (2005-09-26 13:54)
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Author: allencole
Date: 2005-09-26 14:36
Hmmm...I rotate 12-16 reeds through normal use, so I'm not sure if it would amount to even 100 a year.
As for 10,000 per year, this sounds like Benny Goodman with reeds spread out all over the floor of his den...or someone on a high fiber diet.
Allen Cole
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2005-09-26 14:44
and they did call their big bands "orchestras" back then.........
I would have figured it for B.G. too
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2005-09-26 16:08
I use 3-4 reeds per year 'cause I use Legeres...
If I used cane I think I'd end up in a loony bin cause of the humidity differences month-to-month here. I'm not far from the loony bin to begin with, of course...
:)
Katrina
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Author: BelgianClarinet
Date: 2005-09-26 16:09
susieray wrote :
"I am certainly far from a professional; I only play maybe 2-3 hours
a day on the average......"
If you're 'just' an amature then this is pretty much !!!
I'm really back into business since about 1 year (on a non - pro level, playing in 2 wind bands, 1 symphony and one woodwind quintet + back to school ! ), and if I average 1hr/day it would be great. Some days I simply can't practise, on other days rehearsels take 2 hrs, so ...
Anyhow I buy about 4-5 boxes a year, and knowing that only 3-4 reeds/box I actually play on, I hope I'll live long enough to use 10.000 in my life ;o)
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Author: John O'Janpa
Date: 2005-09-26 16:10
I keep 10 in playing rotation. Break in and adjust 5 new ones per month. I use about 60/year.
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Author: RodRubber
Date: 2005-09-26 16:23
I generally go through about a box of reeds every week to ten days, so i guess I use between 400-500 reeds a year, of them, maybe 50 - 70 become performance quality reeds.
I heard a Rumor that Baltimore Principal Steven Barta took a suitcase with 50 boxes of Blackmaster reeds for a three week european tour. So - he could perhaps hit the 10,000 plateau if he kep that pattern up.
Cheerio
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Author: ajhogan
Date: 2005-09-26 16:54
I use about 70-to 80 reeds, which about 15 to 20 are performance level. Many of my reeds go soft fast.
Austin
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Author: ron b
Date: 2005-09-26 17:05
During my eleven or so years as a 'working musician', when the major portion of income was from playing five to six hours a day, I think I averaged less than one box (25 reeds) a year. One reed, if I 'take care' of it, will last a couple of months of between 20-30 minutes and three/four times a month one to two hours. That's not a lot of play time, I know, but based on my own history I'd guess I could play one reed for about 5/6 weeks before retiring it, keeping in mind that I'd also be rotating the reeds.
If I had to manage more reeds than that I'd be playing cards with Kat down at the 'Bin
- r![[cool]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/cool.gif) n b -
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Author: William Hughes ★2017
Date: 2005-09-26 17:36
I bought one last year and another one this year. Legere. Contra Alto. Works for me.
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Author: Ralph G
Date: 2005-09-26 18:03
I'm notoriously stingy and get by with about 3 or 4 boxes per year. I prepare some good ones and use them until they sound like wax paper on a comb.
/"stingy" = "cheapskate"
________________
Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.
- Pope John Paul II
Post Edited (2005-09-26 18:11)
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Author: Katrina
Date: 2005-09-26 18:03
"I heard a Rumor that Baltimore Principal Steven Barta took a suitcase with 50 boxes of Blackmaster reeds for a three week european tour. So - he could perhaps hit the 10,000 plateau if he kep that pattern up. "
If you're traveling to a place where the humidity and weather and altitude are continually different for each night's gig, this does not seem unreasonable to me. All of these climactic elements affect the reeds.
Katrina
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Author: John J. Moses
Date: 2005-09-26 19:16
HI GBK:
As most of you know, I play many woodwind instruments, and currently use my Eb, Bb, Bass Clarinet, and Soprano Sax at WICKED on Broadway.
I try to have 6-12 reeds ready to go for each horn...24 to 48 reeds available at all times for the performances. I play in about 400+ concerts a year, so reeds are very vital for my professional life.
I have about 400 boxes of aged reeds in my closet for use on all my horns. I certainly do not use or need 10,000 reeds per years, but I do use a lot of reeds!
Having studied reed making and reed adjusting with Joe Allard for many years, I can assure you that most of my aged reeds play quite well, and very few get discarded. Out of a box of 10 Clarinet reeds, I usually get about 8 to play well. They often last up to 3 weeks each.
So, if anyone is using 10,000 reeds a year, please send me their discards, as I have lots of students that could use their reeds to work on.
JJM
Légère Artist
Clark W. Fobes Artist
Post Edited (2005-09-26 22:48)
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Author: Clarinetgirl06
Date: 2005-09-26 20:16
I think I use around 6-8 boxes a year, but I'm in the process of switching equipment and so the whole finding which reed and what strength works is making me buy more reeds lately...
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Author: donald
Date: 2005-09-26 20:22
i know a principal clarinet who refuses to do any work on reeds- he/she just opens a box, plays them, "this one bad, this one good" etc, and literally throws out reeds he/she doesn't like.
I imagine (especially considering that the reeds in question are Vandoren Blue box) that this could result in at least 4 or 5 boxes of reeds being opened every week. But here's the rub- his/her family owns a music retail store, and so he/she has only ever needed to pay the wholesale price.... the player in question commented once "i could teach for an hour or work on reeds, if i teach then i earn more than enough for several boxes of reeds, whereas if i work on reeds i might revive one or two reeds and probably not to performance standard"
each to his/her own eh?
donald
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Author: Grabnerwg
Date: 2005-09-26 21:28
I was told, years ago, that the "well-known player" was Robert Marcellus. I was also told that his students were allowed, even encouraged, to fish through the discards for reeds that worked for them.
I however have no credible authority or eyewitness to quote, so it may be apochryphal...........
Walter Grabner
www.clarinetxpress.com
Superb Alto Clarinet and Contra Alto Clarinet Mouthpieces
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Author: mnorswor
Date: 2005-09-26 23:02
As a professional player in solo, chamber music and freelance orchestral settings, I play about 60-80 concerts a year depending on how the work is coming in that particular year. I have about 25 boxes of reeds sitting here aging and I crack open a new box about once a month. With regular rotation, my reeds last on average from 1-3 months depending on the reed. I do a lot of practicing on the ones I wouldn't play in concerts because I figure if I can do it on a bad reed, I can certainly do it on a good reed.
Question about this player and his 10K reeds... where the hell does he get the money for all of em??!! Must have had a pretty great job to be able to afford that many reeds!!!!
--Michael Norsworthy
www.michaelnorsworthy.com
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Author: Miyoko Clarinetti
Date: 2005-09-27 01:12
Hm...I think I have used about five boxes...forty six in total (one of the boxes I bought had six in them) eversince I began last year in september. Though it can vary how much one uses, if they take care of their reeds well sometimes and sometimes they won't take care of them as much...
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Author: DAVE
Date: 2005-09-27 01:34
Larry Combs once told me in a lesson that he orders 20 boxes at a time and that they are usually gone in two weeks. I also heard from a former student of Greg Smith that he, GS, has a HUGE pile of reject reeds in his studio. I never saw any pile of rejects from Combs, but I sure could have used some.
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Author: GBK
Date: 2005-09-27 01:39
DAVE wrote:
> Larry Combs once told me in a lesson that he orders 20 boxes at
> a time and that they are usually gone in two weeks.
That would be 200 reeds every two weeks, or about 5000 reeds a year ![[whoa]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie10.gif) ...GBK
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