Author: Bobo
Date: 2009-12-03 18:50
The expert repair people I've talked to about this say most of these issues involve either tradeoffs or, less frequently, procedures that don't lend themselves well to mass production instruments because they are tricky and take too much time to get right.
There are lots of amazing little tricks, probably differing by brand and model, to overcome some of these short-comings. One I recently learned (on my AK Loree) was to slur more securely from second octave (like a high G or B) to third octave Eb, instead of using the left hand low B key up there, go for the left hand Bb key. Works very well for me even though it's not clear to me why closing a pad at the bottom of the oboe should make that big a difference! Maybe this is a well-known trick, but I'd never heard of it! The pitch is oh so slightly flatter than the regular fingering but not discernible for short notes and can be lipped up easily.
The last time I had my instrument worked on, the repair person did some poking around in the half-hole and it really helped, but I agree you have to have a lot of faith in the person to just let them have free reign like that. He also gathered a pretty amazing amount of swab lint out of the tone holes (I use a pull through silk swab) which apparently was making it hard for the third octave to sound as easily as it should. I also think the reed scrape has a big impact up there.
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
