 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: mjfoboe
Date: 2009-09-24 13:27
Hi,
What a great discussion forum you oboists have at this site!
Thanks to all who have shared their experience and time both on the forum and by email.
Now .......................
I like to explore how to better use the rattle in a "crow" as a diagnostic tool.
I know what a good reed crow sounds like - rattle free - easy to blow - with a certain tone quality.
And although I am very good at reed adjustments with a back light and adjustments after playing the reed (and even physically touching the reed) -I am not as competent in knowing how to approach these same issues - by listening to the crow as a diagnostic strategy. I would like to learn to be more proficient at this skill.
All suggestions and comments as always appreciated.
Mark
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Author: HautboisJJ
Date: 2009-09-24 15:31
Now how interesting is that! With short scrape reeds, rattle free means your reed is not vibrating, and that is bad most of the time. Although, a good rattle has to have a certain quality to it....
Regards,
Howard
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Author: mjfoboe
Date: 2009-09-24 15:49
Well - I guess that question is what is an acceptable crow?
A ggod reed does have a good crow with vibrations and overtones. It is not dead or without character!
But the sound is "not out of control"?!? raucous - wild .....
However, too much rattle - in an uncontrolled manner is not good and indicates trouble in the reed construction.
Maybe someone else is better qualified to describe what I mean.
The below link - addresses the crow in reed making.
http://www.makingoboereeds.com/
Mark
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Author: johnt
Date: 2009-09-24 16:33
The reed should have a rattle; especially as the pitch descends. It's what makes the low notes speak. The rattle should be on pitch, C to C# If there is no rattle, that's a sign too much wood has been taken off, usually from the back (behind the heart or plateau)
Post Edited (2009-09-24 16:34)
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Author: JRJINSA
Date: 2009-09-24 17:19
I call this a wild reed. I correct it with an ever so careful snip of the tip. We're talking like .001 mm of a clip. If done right, pitch, stability and tone aren't affected. If response is affected, I thin the sides of the tip just barely. Key for me is the smallest possible clip of the tip I can do.
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Author: cjwright
Date: 2009-09-24 17:37
I believe in David Weber's book, he addresses this very issue and has a diagram as to where to scrape in order to adjust based upon the crow.
The crow for me is an essential tool, and in my own reedmaking I usually scrape the reed 90% with the crow, and 10% with the actual reed in the oboe. (The first 20 minutes or so is entirely by crow, the last 5 might be from the reed in the oboe). Getting a good crow tells me that the reed is inherently good, and not hiding problems that might appear later after the reed has dried or closed down. Also, when I crow the reed, I know there's no way I'm manipulating the reed with my air or embouchure to cover up it's flaws or make it sound better, but when I stick the reed into the oboe, my body is going to do whatever it needs to to make the reed better, so the crow is a truer test of the qualities of the reed, and thus gives me better consistency.
Cooper
http://cooperwrightreeds.com/
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Author: mjfoboe
Date: 2009-09-24 19:33
Copper and all,
How would you describe a "good" crow - from a "bad" crow.
What does a crow tell you about the reed besides pitch, flexibility, stiffness etc?
Can it tell you where the problem is located in the reed by the type of crow? etc................. Can you use it to to facilitate the scraping?
Mark
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Author: jhoyla
Date: 2009-09-24 20:41
David Weber and Ferald Capps wrote an excellent book called "The reed maker's manual", and IMHO it is still the best medium-sized text for reedmakers. Unfortunately, it has been out of print now for many years. I think there was also an accompanying video tape which may still be available. Chapter four describes the crowing technique in detail. How to crow, and what the results should be on a good reed. The rest of the book describes reed-making with continuous reference to the crow - how it changes as you scrape, what to aim for, and how the crow is affected. If crowing interests you then I really cannot recommend this book enough - try and get a copy any way you can.
David Weber's ideal crow will be pitched C, only the top C for low wind speeds, two octave Cs at medium speeds and three octave Cs at high wind speeds. Pitch should not sag or vary.
One thing I always listen for in the crow is if there are any high-pitched whistles or chirps. This is nearly always due to an unbalanced tip or blend - an area that is overly thin or too thick - and tip balance is critical in so many ways.
OTOH, there are excellent reed makers (Kerry Willingham is a fine example) who can scrape a reed start to finish with hardly a crow, so your mileage will almost certainly vary.
J.
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Author: oboedrew
Date: 2009-09-24 21:11
I've been away from the forum for a few days, and I see we have several interesting new threads. Good topics, Mark!
I crow my reeds a bit, and I take note of patterns in the crow, but I never discard a good reed because of a peculiar crow. Reeds are meant to be played, not crowed.
Sometimes a good reed crows oddly, and sometimes a bad reed crows perfectly. Similarly, sometimes a good reed looks odd, and sometimes a bad reed looks perfect. Crow and appearance can both be useful diagnostics, but we shouldn't get carried away with either. It's a mistake to make reeds primarily seeking a certain crow or a certain look. Those things are just means to an end. Reeds are meant to be played.
Cheers,
Drew
www.oboedrew.com
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Author: cjwright
Date: 2009-09-24 21:32
The reedmaker's manual is in print. A year ago the warehouse which had the copies burnt to the ground, but they are being printed and sold again.
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Author: johnt
Date: 2009-09-25 15:52
Cooper, it's that gnarly, growly, raucous sound when you crow at a fortissimo strength on the thread near or at the top of the cork. The lows win out against the highs. A roar combined with a high pitched scream might be one way of describing it. With your superb & highly refined reeds, I don't know if that is something you shoot for, but all my reeds have it to one degree or another. Bottom line is, it's a most obnoxious sound & and as has been indicated on this forum & in the literature, only one of many indicators in the quest for a perfect reed. Joe Shalita has a recording of the "ideal" crow in his online reed manual; David Crispin markets the hard copy book including the CD which contains same.
Best,
john
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Author: cjwright
Date: 2009-09-27 17:17
Quote:
Copper and all,
How would you describe a "good" crow - from a "bad" crow.
What does a crow tell you about the reed besides pitch, flexibility, stiffness etc?
Can it tell you where the problem is located in the reed by the type of crow? etc................. Can you use it to to facilitate the scraping?
I've been thinking about this ever since this post first came up, it just took me several days to process it so that I could put it down on my computer screen
For me, a "good" crow is a reed that has the correct response and continues to respond correctly while taking in different speeds of air, correct tone which does not distort at different dynamic levels, and is at a correct pitch for my oboe.
Before I write any further, let me state that the way I test the crow is by putting my lips clear down to the bottom of the string (where the string meets the cork), and begin to slowly increase the speed of the air. I do not put my lips anywhere near the bark of the throat of the reed or at the top of the string.
Response
Regarding the correct response, it varies for everyone but the reed has to begin making noise at the point of which one expects (and wants) it to. There is no magic number for everyone; the response point is different for everyone and that is perfectly fine. I know Martin's taste is at a much higher point of resistance than mine, so he knows where he wants the reed to begin speaking. It's just a personal preference.
Another topic related to the response of the crow is to test to make sure that the resistance is correct so that when I blow faster suddenly, it will give me more volume suddenly! If the reed doesn't give enough vibration back when I increase wind speed, it will probably make me blow harder than I'm comfortable with which can cause all sorts of tension, and therefore is not deemed efficient.
Tone
For me, the crow I shoot for is a soft subtle one, even at the top ranges of dynamic. Blowing from the lightest of pianissimo's to the strongest of fortissimos, the crow should produce a clean, clear pleasant tone, with pitches spaced in octaves (and sometime oddly Perfect 5ths, although I don't know why). If the reed doesn't, I usually need to go back into the reed and define the parts of the reed more or clip the tip a bit. In fact, I believe I clip the tip down so that the "rattle" that has been previously described no longer exists. I don't like a rattle in my tone, and therefore don't want a rattle in my crow either.
After I've scraped in the tip a bit, along with the heart and the back, I begin clipping until I get the crow up to at least a sharp B, and to the point so that the crow isn't a bunch of miscellaneous multiphonics but rather one decipherable pitch, usually with an octave or so. (The trick to this is to have already started your tip in approximately the correct location as when you're going to end with it, usually around 66 or 67.)
One of the first things both Martin and Mr. Weber test in reeds is whether the reed holds it's tone together, or whether it needs any manipulation from the embouchure to hold itself together. Martin calls this "trying to make the reed sound bad". One way of testing this is playing on the tip, putting the reed in the corner of my mouth (where there's no muscle to control the reed), and blow a forte to test whether the tone spreads or not. I find that a loose crow produces loose tone, and thus requires more muscle and embouchure (i.e. endurance) to hold together and I consequentially tire out faster.
Pitch
The level of the pitch of your reeds depends on what the oboe is pitched at, in conjunction with the oboist's embouchure and blowing ability. I do find that wider shapes need to crow a little higher in pitch for me, and narrower shapes need to crow a tad lower for me. My magic number with my main shaper tip is C-30 cents, where as my number with the RDG-2 is closer to C+20 cents, and with the Weber 1-B it's B+30 cents.
The importance of the pitch in the crow for me is to make sure it's
1. Correct, so I'm not constantly lipping up or lipping down.
2. Constant, so even when I blow faster, the crow doesn't instantly change pitch for some reason
3. Relatively stable, so that when I vary the wind speed, the pitch might rise and fall a bit, but never dramatically so that it changes pitch. The closer the pitch remains while blowing from a pianissimo crow to a fortissimo crow, the more stable the reed is going to be in the whole range.
Summary
I write all of these points of a crow not because I have extra time (believe me, I don't), but because I hope it will be beneficial for some reedmakers to think about the feedback they hear from the crow and how it relates to what's going to transpire when that crow becomes an "oboe sound". Too often I'll hear a student play great, and then when I go to crow their reed, I get a mess of something (not even sure if it's an oboe crow), and before even trying the reed, I realize how much manipulation they're doing in order to get the sound in their head to come out of the oboe. Just imagine how much happier students are when they play on reeds that accomplish all of that manipulation for them so they don't have to physically hurt themselves to sound "dark" or whatever they're shooting for!
Regarding the question as to whether the crow can help facilitate the scraping, I would most certainly agree with this idea. As a commercial reedmaker who makes 100+ reeds a month, using the crow to judge how the reed needs to be scraped is much more time efficient than testing the reed in my oboe, and is a truer test of what really the reed is doing, and perhaps will do a day down the road. After having made reeds by using the feedback heard from the crow for over a year now, I can hear a crow of a freshly scraped reed and have a good idea of how it needs adjustment, how it will sound differently tomorrow, and possibly what adjustments it will need the next time I choose to adjust it.
Finally if something is not coming out of the crow that you're pretty sure should be there, then it usually translates into a lack of something in the reed, and forces the oboist to accomplish it by other means. Besides the example of the crow being too "loose" stated above, one common symptom is the lack of a 2nd octave, which usually implies there's not enough "depth" or "bottom" in the reed. As a result, oboists usually find themselves straining to blow harder and tighter to get more resonance out of the reed, rather than trying to fix the crow. Of course this extra strain limits flexibility, as well as hinders overall comfort.
Cooper
http://cooperwrightreeds.com/
Edit: cleaned grammar, clarified terms.
Blog, An Oboe In Paradise
Solo Oboe, Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra
Post Edited (2009-09-28 01:29)
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Author: mjfoboe
Date: 2009-09-27 18:53
Quote"
"If something is not coming out of the crow that you're pretty sure should be there, then it usually translates into a lack of something in the reed, and forces the oboist to accomplish it by other means. One common symptom is the lack of a 2nd octave, which usually implies there's not enough "depth" or "bottom" in the reed. As a result, oboists usually find themselves straining to blow harder and tighter to get more resonance out of the reed, rather than trying to fix the crow. Of course this extra strain limits flexibility, as well as hinders overall comfort."
Cooper,
A wonderful exposition on the subject. I agree with you one hundred percent.
I feel players struggle unnecessarily to control a reed and make it play. The reed needs to play itself -with the Oboist needs to create beautiful music. The emphasis in playing should be on the musical line - not the poor reed!
Mark
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Author: GoodWinds ★2017
Date: 2009-09-27 23:53
that was a Fantastic reply.
you could publish your own book, Cooper, with all the practicality you've picked up through the years at the bench. You could use the nom-de-plume 'Tweeter Pan'...
GoodWinds
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