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Re: Reed response question

Author: d-oboe
Date: 2006-01-28 21:51

"If you play on the same reed for a month and find you need to use another reed. The reed you adjust to match that reed will be a match to the pliability of a month old reed... and then that other reed ages a month... and you adjust yet another reed to match THAT reed you are sliping down a slippery slope of dysfunctional reed adjustment."

What I was trying to say was that the reed has to be adjusted to match the EMBOUCHURE - not another reed. It's impossible to match one reed to another, anyways. In adjusting, we are going based on what we feel through our lips, not by scientific measurements of the acoustic and resonating properties of the reed. (those are difficult to actually measure at home anyways)

For breaking in reeds - of course! I always leave a reed slightly unfinished, and then play on it. But after one or two playings, I adjust it to where it is comfortable in my *embouchure*. I wouldn't ever continue to play on a poorly vibrating reed, simply because it was "crowing" up to pitch. Why? There are a few reasons:

A harder-than-normal reed, while it may play in-tune, is useless because the notes don't respond properly. It makes it impossible to influence a phrase, or play musically. Playing on a reed like this will not "soften" the reed. What REALLY happens, is that the embouchure gets trained to clamp together to get the blades to vibrate better. This pinches the cane together to get a smaller opening (so that the notes vibrate). In turn it also causes the reed to wear out faster (become more pliable as you say) because the embouchure has to be aggressive. This puts excessive lateral pressure on the reed, which then causes it to weaken.
A reed made soft enough to respond freely but balanced (thinning in the corners) so that is stable and has body, will last 10 times longer than the above-mentioned reed, because it doesn't have to keep being adjusted, and the embouchure hardly has to exert any pressure in order to control the reed.

Pitch and response....

These are not as hard to achieve, at the same time, as it may seem. Given a purchased reed, that doesn't quite seem to vibrate right, the steps to correct this should be:

-Check the oboe
-Play the reed in the oboe, on different notes, with articulations.

-Scrape the extreme edges of the tip: if careful scraping is done here, one can achieve better response without affecting the pitch, and without sacrificing dynamic capabilities in the reed.

The Slope of the too-soft Reed...Sylvangale
The slope you speak of - of reeds just getting softer and softer - happens when too much wood is removed from the wrong places. If the middle of the tip is scraped along with the edges - as mentioned above - the reed will still generally do what it should do, but because the center is softer, the reed will feel too weak.
If it's any consolation, the adjustments I'm talking about aren't huge: It simply means adjusting a reed so that it is flexible enough to do what is necessary for the music (which is what it's all about!)

D

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