Author: HautboisJJ
Date: 2009-11-03 12:31
I have recently been caught up with the question of staples and their effects on pitch as well, from my own experience:
Size in the opening of both the neck and the bottom seems to determine 2 things, 1) the ease of the 2nd octave key notes in terms of sitting on it or having to need lip pressure, and 2) the intonation of the middle C, low G, and octave E-G, i.e. the smaller the higher these areas and the bigger the flatter. This has to corespond to the size of the shape of course, and whether one overlaps their reeds or not.
Regarding the length of the reed vs the length of the staple, i tend to prefer more cane than more staple, meaning, if a reed needs to be shorter with 47mm to be up to pitch, i would rather prefer to make a reed longer (meaning more cane) with a shorter staple, achieving identical reed length but with similar results in pitch.
Having said that, i make very long reeds, 72-73mm of short scrape. There is a logic to that. Play your reed at full blast (rationally of course, without sounding like a duck), putting maximum air speed and support and see what pitch level the reed will allow without adjustment the louder it gets. If it goes sharp, see how much leeway you can get by adjusting the embouchure or mouth cavity. Basically, my method forces the embouchure to be more covered but because the opening of the reed is not terribly big, there is no biting involved. The real advantage is the allowance of big dynamic contrasts without having to adjust a terrible amount for pitch. More bark also means more warmth in the sound but i do gouge much thinner than most people do, 56-58 depending on cane quality.
I was told that Alex Klein gouges around 56 and has extremely thin sides as well! This to me sounds absolutely untypical of the American style, anyone knows more details?
On a side note, with my new Buffet Greenline, at the moment i am having problems with the middle C being flat which i never had before in the past, anyone have any ideas what staples or shapes works best with this type of oboe?
Howard
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