Author: Dutchy
Date: 2005-08-27 03:43
I too am an older self-taught (50) adult starting out on oboe, after playing recorder and piano, been doing it for five months now. I have had a good time with the Essential Elements Plus books, mainly because they come with the playalong CDs, which are tremendously helpful in telling me whether I'm flat (I am). It's awful easy to play flat on an oboe, especially if you're using Soft or Medium Soft reeds.
But also they have nice tunes, are not so simplistic as some of the "methods" I've seen which seem to consist of nothing but arpeggios and scales, and are not written so as to be insultingly stupid. Since you already know about things like "cut time" and "eighth notes", you'll progress quite rapidly through them.
The best advice I can give you is Google under things like "oboe technique" and "oboe playing", and print out everything you can, and read it.
Also, Robert Sprenkle's book was a great deal of help when I was just starting (my library had a copy). But the thing I found most helpful, in those first crucial weeks, was the Fox "Oboe Playing Guide" which was a PDF brochure that was on their website, but which unfortunately no longer seems to be online.
www.foxproducts.com/pg_oboe.pdf
If you can get hold of a copy of that, it would be helpful.
The most valuable piece of advice they gave me was, "Say 'home' as you close your lips around the reed."
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