 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2025-11-14 18:27
Do stiff reeds inherently require more air capacity? If one wanted to work up to using a stiffer reed, what changes to technique should one expect to develop?
Recently, I was using an extra-stiff reed for practice (all I do is practice.) It allowed me to produce excellent fortes and louder tones, and it let me noodle reliably up to B7. But! I kept running out of air during normal play. On reflection it appeared that some air was escaping through my nose(!); if I focused on not allowing that I could block it, and presumably those muscles could be trained and strengthened over time. Ok.
However, it also seemed like air was blowing past the reed into the instrument without it adding any sound. The air wasn't escaping out around the mouthpiece, it was going past the reed and being lost, pretty much at any dynamic. If I (over)tightened my embouchure with my jaw muscles, I could lessen that problem, but doing so was counterproductive in other ways.
I've switched back to a less stiff reed now, and those problems went away, but so did the magnificent full-bodied fortissimos and high-end altississimo.
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Author: Alexey
Date: 2025-11-14 19:47
Life's too short to play stiff reeds. You need to bite more and blow more.
I have several questions, though.
First one is "why?"
The second one is what is your stiff setup (mouthpiece and reed)?
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2025-11-14 22:40
Hi Alexey. I'm currently playing a BD5 and Vandoren V12 reeds. The reed in question was from a box of 3.5+ strength, but it was an outlier well on the high side - the other reeds from that box have been in the expectable stiffness range.
There's no pressing need for me to move to stiffer reeds, but I'm interested in the different qualities that seem inherent in them. Not "better" necessarily, but different enough to at least experiment with.
Bite more: it seems so, but it's not clear to me why that is. Normal jaw pressure on that reed seemed associated with lost, or ineffectual, air. Is the resistance of the reed proportional to some degree of, what, "startup air" that's ineffectual, with additional air actually vibrating the reed? What does jaw pressure change?
Life's too short . . . I have nothing better to do.
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