 The Oboe BBoard
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Author: JRC
Date: 2012-01-23 19:09
The conical shape of the bore is cut at the top for the staple and the reed to complete the cone shape to represent the correct acoustics of an oboe, theoretically, that is.
However, there are several major deviations from the theory in real oboe. The wall is not without thickness. Natural acoustic response of an oboe in C needs to deviate from natural scale to live with un-natural tempered scale world and different scales in music. A reed is not a point source of sound. It has width, length, and volume. And so on and so on.
So... the reed and staple needs to roughly represent to complete the theoretical conical shape of the bore at the first cut. The volume and the length of the staple+reed become a major issue. Otherwise the relative pitch from all closed notes to open notes get out of whack. How much depends on how far off you are with the theoretical design point.
In real life, reeds with many different ways to scrape them has larger influence overall than the staple itself. Obviously length of the staple does matter. The volume of the staple does matter. The material, shape, and other details of the staple should not have much influence in relation to the length and the volume. Those are the major consideration in designing a bocal for English horn.
Fussing too much about staple may not be time well spent. Obviously one should search and find the correct length and volume of the staple that go well with one's particular oboe, the reed style and the way of playing the oboe. After that, everything else and details should be more of of one's psychological satisfaction.
If you believe something does help you to be a better oboe player, it would definitely help you become a better player regardless how illogical or how scientifically baseless.
For instance, I always imagine all the musicians I play with and all the audience being naked and get big smile and laugh out of it before I get into a trans with the music and sound I produce. There are countless impure thoughts one can indulge with to initiate a big smile and laugh. That is my routine. I always seem to perform better during performance than I do any practice or rehearsal sessions. There is no science or logic to this. But works every time.
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WoodwindOz |
2012-01-23 03:04 |
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jhoyla |
2012-01-23 05:13 |
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JRC |
2012-01-23 19:09 |
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The Clarinet Pages
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