 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: BGBG
Date: 2015-11-26 04:55
Now keeping reeds in plastic bags. Have inexpensive hygrometer in bag. Have sponge piece in open end pill bottle. Humidity runs around 61% in bag, 38% in room.
Wondering how many reeds people keep in one bag? I increased number so not to have so many bags. Have as many as 12 in a bag.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-26 05:25
BGBG wrote:
> Wondering how many reeds people keep in one bag?
0 (zero)
> I increased
> number so not to have so many bags. Have as many as 12 in a
> bag.
What are the reeds in, in the bag? Are you using the sleeves they came in? Some sort of reed holder? The number shouldn't make a difference as far as humidity is concerned. The just need to be protected from breakage.
Why are you humidifying 12 reeds at a time? Are you using (rotating) them all? I don't remember from the last discussion what you're doing.
Karl
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Author: BGBG
Date: 2015-11-26 05:44
Rotating 29 reeds. Reeds in plastic sleeves they came in. Takes 2-4 weeks to play them all. Play every day but not long and maybe 2-5 reeds a day. Just trying to develop a system so its not definite yet. Humidity up to 65% in bag now. I was just curious. Saw some videos where one person has 70 reeds in use. I have 3 bags which sit in a cardboard box. Soon will have a permanent analog hygrometer for each of the bags. Now am using some AcuRite humidity/temperature gauges normally used for monitoring house humidity. Havent read the 33 responses to a former posting yet but about to do so. Experimenting with humidity storage now. Read, think, search, watch videos, try things, post.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-26 20:22
BGBG wrote:
> Rotating 29 reeds. Reeds in plastic sleeves they came in. Takes
> 2-4 weeks to play them all. Play every day but not long and
> maybe 2-5 reeds a day. Just trying to develop a system so its
> not definite yet.
> Experimenting with
> humidity storage now. Read, think, search, watch videos, try
> things, post.
Well, of course we all do things differently and there are no rules except what works. But, since by posting, you're by implication inviting feedback, I just want to point out that rotating so many (29, certainly 70) reeds is eccentric. Most of the players I know keep far fewer reeds in their rotation at one time. And that's not even counting the ones who just play one reed into the ground and only then change to another.
What is the rationale for rotating so many reeds at once?
Karl
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-11-26 20:57
I probably keep more reeds in humidified rotation than I need too as well.
I suspect this comes from a combination of lessons learned, metaphorically skinned knees, bad luck and Murphy's law combined--which have found me on certain days finding bad results on multiple reeds I considered the best of my picks only yesterday.
But that said, I wonder the following:
There's something to be said about rotating your reeds. Perhaps on this nearly all of us can agree; where we differ being only on the needed extent of this rotation and the size of the reed pool from which we rotate reeds.
And I think we all do this under the belief that a reed will give us more useful play time when allowed rest.
This segues into exactly what magical processes happen during this time we call reed rest. Does it drying out somewhat from play allow it to more closely return to the state it was in before we played it, baring off course the wear and tear that thousands of vibrations have placed on it during its last time on our mouthpiece?
And if so, what is this magical amount of time we should allow it to rest such that its life is maximized?
Should these questions have answers--and I suspect if they do, they may differ for each of us, we can apply math to derive the optimal number reeds to keep in rotation, such that increasing our pool size does not increase the life of the reeds within it, or does so only so marginally, as to not be worth it.
Thoughts?
Post Edited (2015-11-26 20:59)
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Author: Jerry
Date: 2015-11-28 01:00
Mold much? Seems 70% humidity on wood in a sealed plastic band would grow mold.
Jerry
The Villages, FL
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Author: Agomongo
Date: 2015-11-28 13:59
I have a plastic bag with a hygrometer and a 76% Boveda humidipak. I have around... 40+ reeds in the bag? These will last me till next year, haha.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-28 19:32
WhitePlainsDave wrote:
> There's something to be said about rotating your reeds.
> Perhaps on this nearly all of us can agree; where we differ
> being only on the needed extent of this rotation and the size
> of the reed pool from which we rotate reeds.
>
> And I think we all do this under the belief that a reed will
> give us more useful play time when allowed rest.
>
I do rotate my reeds. but I rotate them not to get longer life from them but only to get the optimal response and sound from each when I use it. The size of my rotation varies - depending mostly on how many reeds from a single box I've been able to adjust to playability. I have no faith that a reed that plays well this week in this week's temperature and humidity will play as well a couple of months from now, so if they're playable now, I use them now. Longer reed life is to me a non-issue. They're just not that expensive.
> Does it drying out somewhat from
> play allow it to more closely return to the state it was in
> before we played it, barring of course the wear and tear that
> thousands of vibrations have placed on it during its last time
> on our mouthpiece?
That has been my empirical experience. It flies in the face of all the advice from other players about maintaining reeds' humidity. We all have our own personal witchcraft, but I've found consistently that my reeds play better when I've let them dry out as completely as the ambient atmospheric conditions allow (without deliberately added hydration).
> And if so, what is this magical amount of time we should allow
> it to rest such that its life is maximized?
I think a day off is enough, again empirically - a rotation allows even more probably unnecessary time. But a rotation also provides for some variety in my available supply. The rotation order isn't sacrosanct, and I often wet more than one especially before a performance so I can choose the one that seems to work best under the circumstances du jour.
>
> Should these questions have answers--and I suspect if they do,
> they may differ for each of us, we can apply math to derive the
> optimal number reeds to keep in rotation, such that increasing
> our pool size does not increase the life of the reeds within
> it, or does so only so marginally, as to not be worth it.
>
> Thoughts?
>
If reed life is the primary or sole goal of rotating, then you're probably right that there are optimal parameters. They might be different depending on the quality of the cane used for the player's favorite brand. But a bigger source of variability would be the player's demands in reed performance - how much degradation of the response and tone is the player willing to accept before declaring the reed dead or at least ready for retirement?
Karl
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Author: Tony F
Date: 2015-11-28 20:19
I used to follow a routine of rotating reeds, but I realised after a while that I was spending too much time on reeds when I could have been playing. I've now refined this to a basic process. I open a new box of reeds, play test them for a minute or so each. Any that need scraping for balance or stiffness I do at that time. Then I just use them as needed, discarding them as the quality falls off. I'll generally allow them to dry overnight, but at the first sign of degradation I throw them away and use the next one from the box. I may spend a little more on reeds, but I spend more time playing and less time worrying about them, and I always have a reed that works for me.
Tony F.
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Author: Jerry
Date: 2015-11-28 21:51
I like that approach. If I wanted to spend more time on reeds, I would have been a carpenter or wood sculptor.
Jerry
The Villages, FL
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Author: WhitePlainsDave
Date: 2015-11-29 00:52
I like what you had to say Karl.
I'm not sure we are even that far off in the difference between the metric we seek to maximize...your's being optimal performance, and mine being optimal life.
You see, I probably should have clarified my definition of life. Defined more as "that period of time that a reed plays optimally," (which yes, in fairness, differs from "life"--which can include the desire for so-so reeds for practice) are goals dovetail nicely, even if our personal tolerance to reed imperfection may differ.
I think your saying that given the inherent lack of predictability in a reed's play over time, and that one reed's performance doesn't affect another, that like an insurance company, one pools together enough reeds (customers) of differnet ages such that their independent unpredictabilities tend to cancel each other out enough such that the pool has high probablities of containing adequate amounts of well performing cane (funds to pay customers experiencing insurance covered losses), as you personally define well performing cane (acceptable profit levels and risk.)
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-29 03:14
WhitePlainsDave wrote:
> I think your saying that given the inherent lack of
> predictability in a reed's play over time ...adequate amounts of well
> performing cane (funds to pay customers experiencing insurance
> covered losses), as you personally define well performing cane
> (acceptable profit levels and risk.)
The metaphor seems a little forced, but, yes, that's the basic idea.
Like you, I have found from bruising experience that one or two reeds that play well on a given day are too fickle to trust the next. But reeds are inherently different enough that of five or six or even ten (the contents of two of my reed holders), something will work. Beyond ten (to get back to the original post) I honestly cannot keep track of how anything felt the last time I played it, so the process becomes too much of a crap shoot. That's better for insurance writers - fewer chances in a larger pool of an individual's getting sick or hurt and needing coverage. It's not so good for clarinet players - each reed in a very large rotation is less likely to have been properly adjusted or broken in.
Karl
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Author: Una
Date: 2015-11-29 05:20
We all have our own way of dealing with reeds and whatever works is great. You can't argue with success but I would not be a clarinetist whatsoever if I had to mess around with reeds as much as others seem to do. I have about 4-5 reeds that I rotate and that seems to work for me. No plastic bags, no humidifiers, no smoke coming out of my ears. After seeing so many people carry on about making a reed as perfect as possible, I tried all the gri-gri and voodoo on reeds to see if I was missing something but when all is said and done and after 45 years of searching and trying to find correct humidity, the best thing I have found is to train myself to be able to play on "not that great" of a reed once in a while.
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2015-11-29 07:45
I have to point out Karl that "as dry as possible" will vary quite a bit between your Summer dew point in Pennsylvania (around 60% or so) vs. your in-door Winter dew point (perhaps around 30%). So I would think that you have different methodologies for those disparate conditions (or wildly differing results).
................Paul Aviles
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Author: kdk
Date: 2015-11-29 16:56
Well, as I've already acknowledged, it takes longer wetting to get a reed up to playing condition. A well-used reed may need a couple of minutes. A brand new reed only a few seconds. Otherwise, I don't change anything.
Karl
Post Edited (2015-11-29 18:01)
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