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Re: Reeds not consistent

Author: oboeblank
Date: 2005-04-02 19:09

With practice you will be able to take very un-noticable breaths and learn that a really large gasping breath is not going to fill you lungs up as a very quick and controled breath.
Imagine someone jumping out from behind a tree. Now try to think of that quick intake of air. Notice [maybe] how your lungs fill quickly and near the waist band or belt of your pants.
The other thing that I have often seen with my own students and went through it also as a student was that oboists, in the words of Marcel Tabuteau, are always suffocating from TOO MUCH AIR! Think of this; the reed opening is so small that we never adequately expell all of the air in our lungs and we often have a back up of stale air that needs to be exhaled before we can take a 'nourishing' oboe breath. You could be, as Tabuteau says, suffocating from too much air and you feel as though you need more air, when you probably need to get rid of some air.
Experiment with getting rid of some air before you play a phrase and see if you can still play and are not gasping at the end of the phrase.
Joe Robinson, the now retired principal oboist of the New York Philharmonic wrote an article entitled "Exhale before playing". Perhaps it is somewhere out there in cyberspace.

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Reeds not consistent new

hearnp

2005-03-24 04:10