Author: vboboe
Date: 2009-03-05 21:41
general principle ... when any note is reluctant to come out this commonly means the reed's not vibrating freely enough, that is, reed's too resistant for you
but first, make sure you're blow-testing your reed between scrapes outside of the oboe with a bit less oomph than you usually use to play the instrument
if you crow the reed too vigorously between scrapes outside of oboe you can end up with a reed that's too stuffy in the instrument, most instruments usually add some extra resistance, so i find it works better for me to crow the reed mp - mf rather than f - ff outside of oboe and that encourages me to take enough wood off so the reed will vibrate freely at normal playing pressure in oboe
if that isn't an issue with you, then most likely it's too much wood still left in the wrong places -- do the usual check-list of zones
wet your reed, hold up to strong back-light and check relative translucency and opacity of the entire tip -- especially the sides & lower corners of the apex -- make sure all quadrants are similar translucency, ease out excess opaqueness (woodiness) in the tip section so it all looks similar -- remember to use very sharp knife with lightest hand for fine scraping adjustments
how wide is the tapered blend area? not there? (less than 1mm = sharp drop off from heart to tip), narrow (1mm), moderate (2-2.5mm), wide (3mm), very wide (3.5mm) and does the blend grade evenly with similar opacities next to the tip and next to the heart?
If not, adjust that (wider blend is less resistant than narrow blend)
try these adjustments first
after that's all fixed should have some improvement, but if not enough check the heart's resistance next
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