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thoughts on reeds, mpcs and getting started

Author: gigaday
Date: 2009-08-29 18:53

Erm, sorry this is so long ...

I have been looking up bits and pieces on this BB for a while, finding a lot of useful info and thought I could put something back by writing about my own limited experiences. Let me stress, I am an almost beginner; but what I have found out as such may interest others.

I am 64 years old, English and living in Spain. I played oboe very badly as a teenager, couldn't ever really really master the breathing and the embouchure and had a poor sense of rhythm so never got very far - I didn't like my teacher at all and she never inspired me.

While I was clearing out the house in England to move to Spain I came across a clarinet that I had had for several years with the unfulfilled intention of the realising a longterm ambition to learn to play some musical instrument to a reasonable standard before I die. (I may have left it a bit late, it's a great regret that I didn't start 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago.) The instrument is a Boosey and Hawkes wooden clarinet made in the the 1950s, I believe it to be of reasonable quality.

I bought a couple of books on jazz clarinet and got started learning Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey and after 6 months I could almost play it, but only almost. I also could just about play Careless Love including a written improvisation. I was quite pleased with my progress and really enjoyed having the instrument in my hands and just fooling around as well.

When we moved to Spain I thought I might join the local town band but realised when I heard them that I had a long way to go to get remotely to their standard. In the summer of 2008 they were advertising beginner lessons for free so I went along to the music academy to see if I could enroll. Antonio, the 35 year old teacher and leader of the junior bands, spoke to me and showed me the repertoire book for the band asking me what I thought I might be able to play, which was basically nothing. He told me that the beginner classes were full but that maybe he could give me private lessons (for a fee) and would I come back with the instrument and play him something. I played Petite Fleur and a bit of Mozart that I used to play on the oboe - not too bad really; so he said he would take my money.

Antonio is not a clarinet player nor is he a brilliant player at all, trumpet isn't great, piano is pretty good but not amazing (I hope he doesn't read this). But he is a really great guy and a very good teacher especially for kids from 8 to 18 - which is my standard! He knows quite a bit about playing clarinet although he doesn't himself, I guess he has it from the players in the band as he needs to teach it to the juniors. He introduced me to some books called Lenguaje Musical Ritmico (The Language of Musical Rhythm), there are 4 elementary and 2 medium - I am still on book 2 after a year. I have never seen these or anything like them anywhere else but they are brilliant; about 150 exercises of 12 bars in each book all fun to play and very carefully graded so that you can actually make some progress - even an idiot like me with a poor sense of rhythm.

Antonio then informed me that my tone was awful. So I read everything I could find about embouchure, reeds and mouthpieces and tried very hard to improve but Antonio told me I still sounded crap and he thought the instrument probably needed overhauling, I was convinced that it was not the instrument and bought another mouthpiece to see if that helped. Eventually I was convinced that the instrument should be looked at when Antonio managed to borrow a brand-new Yamaha for me to try for comparison. Mine was a lot better after the overhaul but of course I still need to do a lot of work on embouchure.

In the meantime I had bought a VD 5RV Lyre mpc as it was their recommendation for students and had rendered my old (probably perfectly good) Yamaha 5CM Custom unplayable by sanding the facing. At one stage while sanding the Yamaha mpc I got a wonderful mellow tone out of it except that it wouldn't play any high notes, that was before it became unplayable. I didn't find that the 5RV Lyre made anything any better and started trying to adjust reeds to improve matters - it was very hit and miss and very time consuming. I decided to have another go at the Yamaha mpc as there was nothing to lose and I might learn something, I wanted to get back to the great sound I had once had and see if I could get the top end to play. In the end I managed it, I had an mpc that played a wide variety of reeds and sounded pretty good. I did some measurements and it had a very narrow tip opening and a very long facing. I sold the 5RV Lyre on eBay. After a while of playing the re-customised Yamaha mpc I realised that if anything ever happened to it I was completely stuck as I wouldn't be able to replace it, so I bought a VD B15 as this was the smallest tip and longest facing I could find in reasonably priced off the shelf mpcs. It's great, nearly as sweet as the Yamaha and reed-friendly.

Of course, even with a reed-friendly mpc one still has to fiddle around with reeds a bit but I found the VD Trad 3s mostly played out of the box and some VD V12 3s as well. Even so I felt I was wasting too much time on fettling reeds to thought I'd try a Legere - 3 1/4 is about right, doesn't have all the sound of a wooden reed but is pretty consistent and gives a good range without squeaks. After some weeks of playing the Legere I thought I try some wooden ones again and also bought some Rico Thick Blank Concert Select which have a great big fruity tone - nice.

I came across the youtube video of Tom Ridenour fettling a reed blindfolded and thought I would have a go at that (without the blindfold). His kit sounded expensive and I couldn't find an European supplier so made up my own block with double-sided sticky tape and 400 grit wet-and-dry paper. I used an upturned pyrex cooking dish for my flat glass surface. I had a box of VD Trad 4s which I couldn't play and no-one in the band would take them off me so I set about them with the wet-and-dry block. After about 3 hours I had ruined 1 reed, had one that just about played but was all wrong and 4 that played reasonable well. The good thing about this method is that it is very controllable and even, unlike trying to use a blade to scrape. A small rolled up tube of wet-and-dry makes a very simple and cheap scraper for when you need one.

I found this diagram useful: http://web.me.com/palanker/Site/Reeds_files/Reed%20Diagram%20IMG_0004.pdf

What have I learned?

Well my playing is improving slowly, I practice with the 14 to 18 year-old band who are mostly better than me and Antonio says that I should be able to practice with the adults by Christmas - many of the 14 to 18s perform with the adults.

Those books are wonderful! My reading is steadily getting better and I am try to read-ahead as much as possible.

The longer facing, narrow tip mpc suits me, especially as it is so reed friendly.

It's useful to have the Legere reeds, I have 2 off 3 1/4s and they do get softer quicker than you might think, I have trimmed the oldest one twice with some benefit.

I like to play a variety of reeds just to get different sounds and to exercise my embouchure which got very lazy just playing the Legere.

Fettling reeds is OK as long as it doesn't take up too much time and the block sanding method seems to be quick and fairly easy.

I hope this may help someone and that I haven't bored the rest of you.

Tony

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