 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-12-18 05:53
Today I accidentally destroyed my reed. It was a very good reed, and I was sorry to lose it. It was a Vandoren, strength 5, that I bought as part of a large batch around 1975.
I started using this reed in February 2016. It was new, barely used at the time. I've practiced on it every day since then, between 2 and 4 hours a day. (I miss a day about every other week.) I didn't rotate; it's been just this one reed for the last 11 months. It has played essentially the same for that whole time. It was the longest lasting reed I've had.
I was going to post a clip of my playing on this venerable reed, hopefully to prove it was a good sounding one. I delayed in hopes of making it to a whole year - but then today's accident spoiled that.
The idea was to offer again my theory that reeds degrade primarily from residue and bacteria left on them and accumulating between plays. I carefully washed this reed after every use, and I don't think it degraded at all.
This is not the first reed I've lost to accident, as opposed to degradation. My last couple reeds also suffered accidental deaths. I believe if I can keep from accidentally wrecking reeds, and clean them after each use, there's no reason one will not last, unimpaired, for a year or more.
I know readers will be skeptical, and some perhaps less generous than that. Oh well. All I can do is start over with another reed tomorrow.
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Author: YT
Date: 2016-12-18 16:03
Hi Philip,
I only can support you with your statement that cane reeds don't degrade at all.
I've been a student at a music university which means I've been playing at least a couple of hours every day in the last years. I used to not work on my reeds at all for the first years of my studies and therefore needed a lot of them, I started to break in new reeds every two or three weeks as reeds often didn't work longer than 2 or 3 weeks before they started to get to soft or just feeling or sounding strange.
A few months ago I visited a course with Hanstoni Kaufmann, a very nice guy from Switzerland who knows really everything about working on reeds. Since I visited that course, I can use reeds that are several months old and still work great. I think a good reed just needs a few weeks to settle in and then works fine if you know how to handle it right.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-12-18 17:23
In my experience, reeds degrade because the vibration destroys the cane.
I can make a reed from a blank that sounds good, but I've tried cutting off, say, 1/4" from the tip of a worn-out reed and recutting the vamp. It always sounds and plays awful, just like the worn-out original.
Ken Shaw
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Author: TomS
Date: 2016-12-18 18:31
I suspect the life of a reed is largely mechanical fatigue, if the reed is good quality and the pores are mostly sealed. Being flexed back and forth millions of times, just like any material, will eventually weaken it. I would go so far to say that an open MP facing will destroy a reed faster than a close facing, due to the amplitude of the vibrations. Adding to that is the fact that a more open MP needs softer and/or thinner material ... the cane in a #3 is just not as strong as the cane in a #5.
Tom
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2016-12-18 21:03
I destroyed the reed while removing excess moisture with a tissue after washing it. An inadvertent jerk of the hand, and presto, the whole tip was folded over. When the accident occurred, I spoke to God about it; though my comment was brief, if the Old Testament depiction is accurate then I am doomed.
About flexion, the degree matters. Flexing cables in a machine will not degrade pretty much forever, provided the bend is not too tight - cables are specced with a flex radius. I don't think the distance a reed bends during play is enough to break the fibers, though it is repeated very many times. Again, I didn't perceive any degradation or weakening of the reed over its months of life, and a new reed today will not, if experience is any guide, feel significantly different in strength.
I'll add that I was never taught how to handle reeds, so I've never done anything special. No break in, no rotation, no adjustment except for clipping.
It may be I sound like crap and for good reason, as I've only my own ears to guide me. Therefore it would be natural to dismiss what I say as unsupportable nonsense. I question it myself. In fact, I wonder why I should be posting anything here at all. Maybe the isolation from other musicians gets to me. This forum is good to have.
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Author: YT
Date: 2016-12-18 23:07
In my experience it also depends on the mouthpiece and your embouchure how long a reed lasts, to comment on the point of "mechanical fatigue". A few years ago I used to play a very open mouthpiece on which I, in order to get a controlled sound, had to bite. In the meantime a great teacher in Germany who also plays in the opera taught me a embouchure that doesn't bite in combination with a mouthpiece that is still quiet open but still much closer than the ones I played before. The consequence of this is a better sound and reeds that last much longer, even without working on them.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2016-12-18 23:39
Philip -
Hold the reed at the butt between your left thumb (on the bark) and the side of your index finger (underneath).
Then swipe forward along the top and bottom of the vamp, lightly pinching with your right thumb and the tip of your index finger so that they go off the end. In maybe 10 or 15 swipes, the reed will be dry. I've done this for years and have never broken a reed.
Or use Ed Palanker's method to put the reed away damp in a hydrater.
Ken Shaw
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Author: donald
Date: 2016-12-19 02:22
A friend of mine performed the Copeland Concerto with a "big time" orchestra in the southern Hemisphere (not in nz) and then spent the next 10 years turning up for gigs and on the day of a performance pulling out the "Copeland reed" and bragging about how old the reed was, but it still worked!
Well, it sounded GREAT for the first 5min it was played, then lost all the body in the sound and no springiness in the articulation. And everybody in the wind section could hear this. I suppose this proves that an old reed can still work.
(for the record, the best compliments I ever got on my tone were when I was using an old Vandoren 4 from the 1970s... however I accidentally broke this reed after about 6 months of use, so I sympathise with the OP!)
dn
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Author: Wes
Date: 2016-12-19 03:53
A first real teacher for me in 1947 was Earl Handlon who played in the Minneapolis Symphony. He imported reeds with his name stamped on them and I used them on a 2RV mouthpiece, still having unused ones now. Recently, I tried one and found it to be very good, not much different from the Vandorens I use.
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Author: nellsonic
Date: 2016-12-19 09:28
I just had a reed die on me today that I'd been using since June as part of my regular rotation of 8 reeds, meaning it got played on probably every other day for about 2 hours. It still plays and can produce a good sound, it's just lost that solid predictable core to the response that it had had.
As Donald notes, reeds CAN be played well past when they should be retired, but that doesn't mean they should.
I wouldn't ever want to be playing on just one reed all the time no matter how good. Those slight differences between even very good reeds are fertile grounds for musical exploration and improvement of one's own flexibility and facility.
Anders
Post Edited (2016-12-19 09:52)
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