Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2017-12-29 20:02
As Tom says, there are no absolutes, nor is there one single way to do reeds. The process Tom describes from Steve Williamson's masterclass must work for Williamson. There are other "systems" out there in print and in YouTube videos that must work as well, or the players that recommend them wouldn't use them. There are also very successful players who slap the reed on the mouthpiece and play without a long, multi-staged process.
Lowenstern's finding that flattening a warped reed destroys its heart in the process agrees with my experience. But that assumes you're completely flattening the back of a reed that has already warped severely enough to make it unplayable. For me, trying to save such a reed isn't worth the effort. The question with a really young student (I don't know what you consider to be a "younger student") is whether just making the reed easier to blow is all that's needed to make it more playable. For a student playing lines out of Rubank or an easier book of fairly undemanding etudes, that may well be enough, and the student gets another few days out of a reed that otherwise wouldn't have left the teacher's studio.
My experience differs sharply with Lowenstern's when it comes to using Boveda humidifiers, but we've had that discussion before many times and players have different opinions that are based on their own experiences. What Lowenstern doesn't mention that bears some notice is that those hygrometers don't come ready-to-go. They have to be calibrated (the very cheap ones can't be calibrated and you take your chances on their accuracy out of the box). I have a dozen of the things sitting in a drawer in my practice studio that, even after calibration, indicate relative humidity levels that vary by 5%-10%. Maybe that's not a difference that's significant for preserving reeds, but you in my experience you can't buy an affordable hygrometer that's truly and reliably accurate.
Karl
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