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Short scrape is interesting

Author: sylvangale
Date: 2012-01-21 22:44

I've been playing with short scrape for a couple of days and one thing I've noticed is that the extreme high range just speaks easily (at least highest F#-G). On American scrape F# can be a little problematic to speak directly, I can always slur to that, but the G won't speak for me most of the time.

I showed the reed to my teacher today and she was just shocked that high G came out with no effort on short scrape when with American scrape it's been extremely reed picky for me even on her reeds.

So now I get to practice on short scrape this week and work up to high A!

I don't know if I'll like playing short scrape long term, but my teacher sees value in using a different style when the piece calls for it since my current set up doesn't work up there... she even copied the dimensions to try and copy to test out on students.

It's a UK short scrape and the scrape is almost exactly like an American scrape without windows. The reed is just longer and bottom of the heart ends with a U shape rather than the slight w or straight line you see in American reeds... then just bark the rest of the way down.

The reed plays/responds as an American reed should except that the reed must be played at the extreme tip. The reed is dark, but not as vibrant as an American in the mid-low range (but that may just be that it's a bit hard), but the upper range is much darker than American reeds.

I was actually hoping to get a brighter, less dark sound, but I guess UK is dark too, though it's interesting that my teacher is supportive with this reed style as she is so against listening to non-American oboists in general. It probably helps that the reed is from the UK and she loves BBC television [grin]