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Re: good reeds

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2019-08-04 20:01

SunnyDaze wrote:

> kdk, If this is all well understood by people like Anthony
> Gigliotti, is there also a book somewhere with it all written
> down and illustrated?

I'm sorry if I misled you. I didn't mean to say Gigliotti was right - that was part of the witchcraft (a word I read once in an article by Mitchell Lurie, referring to all the idiosyncratic ideas players develop) that he believed in (or said he did) about reed selection.

Ed and Bob are absolutely right - you can't tell without play-testing a reed, and even then you don't know for certain what it will become as you play it and adjust it over a few days.

I did mean to say that reed manufacture has improved since the '50s and '60s when I was a student to the point where eyeballing reeds (with or without microscopy or even a light table) doesn't tell you anything definitive. The reeds today are just cut more accurately and they all *look* better than many did 60 years ago. Back then you could get reeds in a box with grain that ran diagonally, grain that was so dense you couldn't see light all the way across up to the tip or grain that was dark on only one side and nearly invisible on the other. It was reeds like those that kept a lot of players in practice with their reed knives and other tools, making their own.

Karl

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