Author: vboboe
Date: 2008-01-15 07:10
have you had water problems in air temperatures 70-72F and up? If so, then some of the other sage advice could be very appropriate, if not, then it's probably cold oboe waterworks, very common problem in winter
you might like to get scientific and take along a thermometer to the cold rehearsal room, so you know exactly what you're warming up against, and it would be good to note how long your oboe needs warmup at that temperature for future reference
hautbois has said it, echo repeat, warmup oboe very well in lower & mid register *before* opening either octave key, once lower joint feels warm, top joint is usually hot enough to discourage condensation there
raising and nodding the playing angle is a practical trick for cold playing conditions in that rehearsal room, raising the playing angle would increase gravitational pull on droplets to the bottom side of the pipe, and nodding would shake them off thataway
or more discretely you could do body drops -- one ball of foot under chair, raise that hip, get in synch with any wide dropped interval, suddenly drop hip, jars the oboe, shakes water loose too (do this with elevated playing angle), you could also do this in warmups when you move along to octave leaps and drops (while concentrating on perfect octave intonation :-)
ye olde old woodwind teacher taught me a trick for warming up, run wet fingers inside the bell to start where you want the dripline to exit the bell, warmup until you establish a continuous drip-line -- then drop long silk swob from the top and draw out at the bottom, once only, to remove excess water in the exit direction
i find many short tootle tunes in books 1 & 2 band methods just perfect for warming up oboe in mid register (that's up to half-hole Eb) and it's really good for morale to play these easy tunes so much better than in earlier years :-)
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