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Re: Players, oboes, and reeds

Author: mschmidt
Date: 2017-08-19 20:58

The initial post sums it up--you have made seventy reeds, and you admit you have to make more to get good results. But I would disagree that you "haven't put a dent in the number" you will have to make.

The number you will have to make depends on your strategy. If you are always trying to make reeds exactly the same, you will tend to get similar results. You need to sacrifice reeds to some radical experiments. You will make some truly godawful reeds, but you will get a better feel for the relationship between scrapes, pitches, and sounds. Try making reeds that DON'T crow at a C--because professional oboists in major symphony orchestras play reeds that don't crow at C.

People who do "optimization" calculations on a computer often use what is called the "simplex method." They start with a set of trial parameters (numbers) which are widely separated--all the numbers are very different--and they get a sense of in which direction in parameter space they need to move in order to get better results. And they move in that direction, but still with quite varied parameters. Only after they start to get close to where they want to be do they start to do just "fine tuning." I don't think anyone has ever developed their reed style by true simplex optimization--there are too many parameters!--but the idea of trying radical experiments before doing fine tuning is a step in that direction.

This advice is, by the way, not just pulled out of my head, but is the advice I got from a professional.

Mike

Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore

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Players, oboes, and reeds new

Jim22

2017-08-17 06:17