 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2013-03-01 23:35
Here's some stuff I figured out or dreamed up about reeds. It may be mundane or malarky, but hopefully no worse than harmless.
Before using a reed, I wet it in a glass of water. The tip will warp, but after a few minutes it straightens out again. Then the reed is ready to play. This seems to get to a good sound faster than mouth wetting, maybe because the reed gets evenly moistened.
I forgot a good reed in a mug of water one time. It was there 24 hours. I took it out and it played fine immediately after that. It didn't seem to suffer any adverse consequences. I'm not advocating doing this, just mentioning it.
The height and alignment of the reed on the mouthpiece is picky. If reed tip and mouthpiece tip are not real close aligned, some notes or registers will have problems. I take time on this. Sometimes it's better to get the tip aligned right than it is to have the reed exactly straight on the mouthpiece. I'm not even sure exactly what I mean by that, but there you are.
If after playing for a few minutes I loosen the ligature, I almost always feel the reed move slightly, as if relieving tension or springing into a more comfortable place. Then I reposition again if needed and retighten. It's ok from then on. This always seems to make better sound easier. Which seems to laugh at the previous point.
Everything in your sound will be represented in vibrations of the reed. Discounting air hiss and key clicks.
After every playing, I wash the reed. The residue of spit, which hardens into something a dentist chisels out of your teeth with metal implements, will also harden and gradually build up in the fibers of the reed. That in turn makes the vibration stiffer and the sound becomes edgy. Water hot to touch but not unbearably so is fine. Immerse the reed and rub both sides with finger and thumb until you feel all the slime go away. Takes maybe 20 seconds. Doing this seems to extend the life of a good reed significantly - I estimate I get 6 to 8 months or more @2-3 hours a day. Maybe half that if I don't wash them. (To be honest, I didn't keep track before I developed the habit.) I believe I got 10 months out of one reed last year.
A good clean reed's life may then continue until pieces start falling out of the tip when playing staccato passages, from flex fatigue, I guess. This has happened for me on several venerable reeds now. (I don't *think* my tonguing is too violent.) If a resulting gap is smaller than the width of the tip rail on the mouthpiece, I can sometimes keep using the reed for days or more and it continues sounding good. But it isn't long then before more pieces fall out, and doom comes nigh.
Never put reeds in boiling water. Though it removes slime, the expansion of
gas pockets in the fibers jazzles them up somehow, and those reeds will never sound right again.
Even with washing, I've had good reeds that after 6-8 months seemed to start
playing edgy and inconsistent without apparent reason. In one case such a
reed had been so wondrous for so long, I was unwilling to part with it, so I set it aside. Some months later I tried it again - and it was back to wondrous! Why? I don't know. After a couple more golden months the tip fell apart as described above. Ah, my poor Golden reed . . . So, if a good reed goes bad, give it a rest and try it again after a time.
After washing, I lay the reed face down on a paper handkerchief to dry, and leave it there until next use. For some reason I've gotten to think it dries into a natural shape or something this way, and when I wet it next time it seems not to warp as bad or as long as reeds dried against a flat hard surface.
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Author: johng ★2017
Date: 2013-03-02 20:01
Interesting observations, Philip. I have not thought of rinsing off the reeds after playing on them. Does anyone else have thoughts about that? I have read on this board of people who dip them in some chemical or another, but I can't be comfortable about doing that to a good reed.
John Gibson, Founder of JB Linear Music, www.music4woodwinds.com
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