 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-01 15:51
Does a reed have to be broken in for the altissimo and upper altissmo registers in order to play those notes it's best?
In other words, when breaking in a new reed, should one play the whole range of the clarinet?
Thanks...knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2009-12-01 16:00
For me it's not any specific performance characteristic, rather the whole reed is "changing" from day to day for at least three days of this process. You only get to the real playing characteristics of the reed once it has been broken in.
To belabor the point, I rank the reeds from the beginning of the process and many times the best reeds at the outset becomes number 7 or 8 in line while some of the "stinkers" at first play become the best once they settle.
...................Paul Aviles
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-12-01 16:25
The first couple of days you should mainly play mezzoforte and in the middle register and avoid much of the high register. But a badly balanced reed will be more difficult to play high up so you should rotate the mouthpiece in your mouth to see which side of the reed might be heavier and correct that. You should also do a pitch range response test c,g(with register key) e above and then finally high a. You perform it loud and softly and if you need to alter embouchure/air pressure a lot then your reed is unbalanced at the very tip.
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-01 23:12
Thanks a lot, seems my reeds are pretty well balanced side to side. I just thought maybe during the finishing stages of breaking in, regularly playing the highest notes might accustom the fibers to adjust to playing high. Just wondering aloud.
knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2009-12-02 01:25
I don't think there is anything written in stone about this. The break in period is just a period where the reed is changing. When it is stabilized then you can best make adjustments. Playing high notes might not make any difference during this process. If you perform on reeds that aren't broken in then you stand the chance of them changing during performance which might not be good.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-12-02 02:04
Arnold Strang said :
"If you perform on reeds that aren't broken in then you stand the chance of them changing during performance which might not be good."
In another words the reed will die on you and becomes useless.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-02 02:32
A good reed is a good reed is a good reed. Once it's broken in properly a good reed should play in all registers equally well, that's what constitutes a good reed. I agree, you should not break a reed in by playing it in the altissimo register until after a several days, and then not too much. Check the reed page on my website, you might get some good hints. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2009-12-02 02:42
Ed Palanker wrote:
> Check the reed
> page on my website, you might get some good hints.
Or, if I might tout my own "horn" for a change,
Search right here in the over 300,000 BBoard posts along with the 133,000 Klarinet mailing lists posts and get a variety of answers from all sorts of people with varied and sundry ideas - some good, some not, and some hilarious.
Checking both the Klarinet mailing list & the Clarinet BBoard and then typing
read breaking
into the search box brings up over 3000 entries, starting with Daniel Bonade's method. reed break-in brings back near 1800 entries.
Have (more) fun!
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2009-12-02 06:45
"In another words the reed will die on you and becomes useless" I think it will be difficult to play immediately. It isn't usually dead but just sick. Leave it overnight and try it again. Make sure you don't overadjust it ...ie take too much cane off at one time during this break in period or you will "kill it" for future use unless you totally rework the whole reed(clip and thin proportionally).
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-02 14:18
Thanks for more great info. I'll read Ed Palanker's site and use the search on this site.
knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-12-02 20:23
As I understand it, the whole point of breaking in reeds is to give them an opportunity to stabilize as you begin using them. Some reeds will change more than others during this initial period of use. Some kinds of reeds take longer to stabilize than others. In general, my experience has been that the thicker blank reeds take longer to stabilize, but as advice, my experience is probably worth no more than the price you paid for it. 
Someone has actually put together a website that talks about the general characteristics of different varieties of reeds, including some trends about how they break in--you may find it interesting. I did. Click the link below to view:
http://reed-help.com/research/profiles/
To be honest, though, I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference what exactly you do to break them in or what notes you play when you do, because everybody has their own way of doing things. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't--I really don't know. In general, I tend to be a little bit of a skeptic when it comes to the efficacy of rituals, so my feeling on the subject is that what YOU do is far less important than what the reed does itself during the break-in period. In other words, I tend to be of the belief that the only thing that really matters is that you wait for the reed to do its thing and "grow up," so to speak, before you start relying on it.
Reeds are rather complex from a scientific/engineering point of view, so as with a lot of things that we must deal with on a practical level but which are beyond our ken in a theoretical sense, when it comes to making reeds usable, we clarinetists do what we find works for us. We may not know why it works or how much of what we do really matters, but we do a combination of things (some genuinely useful and some entirely pointless) that experience tells us will work, at least when performed as a whole. After a while these things become ritualized.
That's OK, of course, but I think it's also important to recognize rituals for what they are. A ritual is something someone does because it's become habitual or customary for them to do so. When something becomes ritualized, the purposes and principles behind it often become obscure, as they've become largely immaterial to the continued practice of the ritual. So you shouldn't think that because someone else does something that works for them that it's necessarily going to the best solution for you or that it will even work at all for you. You may very well be adopting a solution for a completely different problem than the one you yourself are presented with. Different players and different reeds will necessarily require different solutions.
Getting back to reeds and what to do when breaking them in, I think the most important thing to do is not to make a whole lot of adjustments to the reed until the reed stabilizes. The reason for this is simple: You can take wood off a reed, but you can't put it back. If you take too much off too soon and the reed softens up before it stabilizes (as often happens), you will have ruined your reed. (You can always use a reed clipper, of course, but that comes with its own set of problems, and you can't get back what you had with a reed clipper; you can only try to recreate it yourself as best you can.)
In fact, I think that's a big part of why people say that breaking in your reeds will make them last longer. After all, if you get a reed working perfectly without breaking it in, but then it stops working a few days later, how can you tell if what you have is a "child star" of a reed whose career ended at puberty or if you have a reed that's met an untimely end due to being "overworked" in its early life? I'm not sure there's a way to know.
Why play on a reed for only a short period each day until it's broken in? Is it really because it will wear the reed out if you don't? Or is it really because that's all you have to do to break it in, and you really shouldn't be practicing with bad reeds or trying to fix them prematurely? I'm not sure anybody really knows. My impression is that people just do what they've seen other people do (as with other things clarinetists do out of habit).
So my advice on reed break-in is this: Wait until the reed becomes reasonably stable, AND ONLY THEN decide whether it's usable as is, needs work, or is hopeless--that way once you get the reed working the way you want, it will stay that way until it dies a natural death.
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-03 01:42
Thanks mrn for the link and info. It's funny, I was searching around the Internet and came upon a site interviewing Julian Bliss and he made the comment below,
Julian: "I think the only thing I dislike about the Clarinet is finding Reeds. Sometimes they work, but most of the time half of them are no good!"
knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-12-03 14:15
hmmm is Julian one of those players that take a reed out of the box and if it doesn't work he toss it away. Expensive behavior.
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Author: Iceland clarinet
Date: 2009-12-03 14:37
Unbalanced reed will break-in in a uneven fashion and your embouchure can only work for one giving vibration pattern. You need to bite to a degree on an unbalanced reed so it will break down and wear out much more quickly.
That being said I want reeds that are a bit too hard to begin with so I can balance them and leave a little bit off more than I'm fully comfortable with so I can break-in the reed in a uniform fashion and it will feel comfortable after the break-in process.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2009-12-03 14:37
Iceland clarinet wrote:
> hmmm is Julian one of those players that take a reed out of the
> box and if it doesn't work he toss it away. Expensive behavior.
Not at all if you're a professional and it's your job. For "casual" players, sure, it's expensive.
But comparing the two kinds of players when one makes their living at playing and the other plays for just pleasure is a useless exercise.
I don't waste my time with software tools that "almost work" in my professional life, either - I toss them out even if they were expensive. The cost of my professoinal time quickly exceeds the cost of a bad tool.
But ... on my own time, they might be perfectly useful.
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Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2009-12-03 14:44
"Sometimes they work, but most of the time half of them are no good!"
Are you sure this wasn't Yogi Berra?
Best regards,
jnk
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Author: mrn
Date: 2009-12-03 23:03
Iceland Clarinet wrote:
Quote:
hmmm is Julian one of those players that take a reed out of the box and if it doesn't work he toss it away. Expensive behavior.
I was that way for a long time, too. I didn't really learn how to work on reeds until I was a senior in high school and took a lesson with a professional clarinetist who made his own reeds, and even then I probably butchered more reeds than I fixed. Of course, when I'd find a good one, it would usually last me a long time, so it wasn't all that expensive to do what Julian apparently does.
It wasn't until relatively recently (last few years) that I started actually getting decent results fixing reeds.
Post Edited (2009-12-03 23:05)
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-03 23:18
OK, did I do this right and found a good reed? I'm such a newbie at this.
Two, three weeks ago, I started to break-in a reed. Played it for the prescribed very short amount of time and put it away til next day. At first the reed was very stuffy with lots of resistance.
Slowly over the weeks, it slowly became slightly easier and easier to blow and the tone cleared up a lot. Today, it's almost too easy to blow but produces a nice, clear dark tone. (started with a 3 but feels like a 2 now)
* Does this sound like a successful break-in?
* Should I have started with a reed one step or more stiffer?
Thanks...knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
Post Edited (2009-12-03 23:20)
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Author: knotty
Date: 2009-12-03 23:54
Iceland Clarinet:
Did you test if the reed was unbalanced ?
Yes, I test each reed from side to side as Michele Gringras shows on Youtube.
I should have added, on a couple reeds, there was unbalance so I took a 5/16" dowel and wrapped it with fine sandpaper and took the heavier side on the reed down until it was balanced.
knotty
~ Musical Progress: None ~
Post Edited (2009-12-04 00:18)
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