Author: vboboe
Date: 2008-07-26 21:48
Hey, howdy, welcome to another renewbie :-)
... A-445 ... and at cool 68F? What's the average annual temperature of your geographical location, would that be above 72F or below 68F most of the year? That's the temp your oboe's going to be playing in, will make a difference to the physical effort needed to make it play in concert pitch all the time
doesn't really matter being in concert pitch when practising on your own this early on, unless you've got a teacher, different problems there, and playing in tune isn't physically easy to do when starting out anyway -- just getting to the point you can play long tones, scales and folksy melodies in tune with the oboe itself for at least half an hour is a major achievement :-]
but, if your long-term hopes are to join a community band or ensemble, you will need an oboe that is *easy* to play A440 in tune with them, and already the fuss, hassle and additional expense is facing you with getting non-standard longer tubes and custom-cut reeds -- please note, specialised overhead reed expenses every year could change the restoration bargain of ye olde Kohlert into a consumer's money pit, but if money's no object why are you settling for a bargain oboe in the first place?
for first year focus on getting your embouchure, air and fingers back into some kind of shape, and when your fingers can move fluently enough in 2 flats, better yet 3 and 4 flats (or sharps if you've got your eye on a predominantly string ensemble) and you know you've got enough chops to go the distance of your community musicians' regular practice time and you're ready to join up, it would probably be a good time then to upgrade to a modern instrument tuned to A-440, and use this old one as a temporary backup instrument whenever your 'best' instrument is in for annual maintenance or periodic adjustments any time
while you're retraining your embouchure, why pay lots of good money for short-lived reeds? You can't manage enough lip time yet, so a soft cheapo reed will collapse about the same time you do, and as you get stronger and can hold on longer, increase the strength to medium-soft and gradually work up to medium
why not pay economy prices for those awful commercial reeds just to get started -- they usually play flat anyway, so that might compensate A445 a bit -- and when you're noticing a significant improvement in your tone (even on those kind of reeds you can hear your tone refinements) sometime in the coming year, upgrade to better quality (more expensive) reeds then
at our advancing age it's horse sense to choose ways to make oboe easier on yourself [:-}
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