Author: RobinDesHautbois
Date: 2010-07-08 18:43
Ooooh I'm actively trying to get my cane as long as I can: with my technique, the tone gets warmer and "goosey-er": I can't find a word for this, you know how the baroque oboe (e.g. Taffelmusik, Academy of Ancient Music) has this gorgeous open and resonating quality?
Well, it's not possible to get that goosey-ness from a modern instruments for a truck-load of reasons, but long cane seems to lean a little that way. With a very short scrape (true French), I had gotten 74.5mm reeds to play at A=438Hz.... no good, of course, but reeds as long as 72.5 mm have played up to A=442Hz
Problem I've found with long cane - I'm hoping a better choice of staples will help with that - is that the reeds get much more open (pivot points at work). Another problem is stability of the trouble-notes (![[E5]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/e5.gif) to ![[C6]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/c6.gif) ). With thinner cane, less scraping is required and this allows for less open reeds and more stability (because there's less scraping). My reeds with thinner cane are truly French.
This being said, the Laubin house keeps harping on how the best oboists who play on Laubins (Ted Baskin in Montreal and Liang Wang in New-York) play on reeds shortER than 70mm; both using American Scrape.
I just got my Loree back from re-voicing, so I'll be able to resume experimenting with length.
Robin Tropper
M.A.Sc., B.Mus., B.Ed.
http://RobinDesHautbois.blogspot.ca/music
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