Author: Dutchy
Date: 2006-03-12 01:20
Honey, you can't play the oboe merely by grokking it. :D Put the thing into your mouth and honk on it a bit, fool around with it, get to know how it feels. Don't be scared. We all have to start somewhere. Besides, I'm flashing on the plot of The Music Man, where Professor Harold Hill hands out the band instruments to the unsuspecting youth of River City and tells them to "think" the Minuet in G?
Uh huh.
The biggest help for me, also a self-taught oboist, during the first couple of weeks, was the advice to "say the word 'home' " while putting the reed on your bottom lip and rolling it into your mouth.
This gives you the necessary roundness of the embouchure to keep you from the instinctive flat-down biting that most people do.
If the prospect of making unlovely sounds at first deters you, you'll just have to get over it, if ya really wanna play the oboe. It's gonna sound unlovely at first, that's just how any musical instrument goes, trumpet, clarinet, whatever.
I did my first week of oboe practice sitting in the car all by myself in the Wal-Mart parking lot, because I was so self-conscious about the unlovely sounds I was making.
But I got over it. And you will, too.
And, um, yes, the reed should generate a pitch when you blow through it, because, um, that's how it works, see... :D Otherwise, you might as well have a soda straw in your mouth like a little kid blowing hot air at people 'cause it's funny. The physical principle behind making the oboe make a noise is that your lips vibrate the two blades of the reed, so yeah, it's supposed to generate a pitch.
Try going ahead and sticking it in your mouth, don't worry so much about "proper" embouchure, just go ahead and get it in there any old which-way and clamp down on it with your two lips, make it make a noise, honk through it, get the feel of how the reed's blades are supposed to vibrate. It's actually pretty cool, IMO.
Question (very important question): what brand of reed have you got, and what strength? If it's a cheapie factory-made reed (as in, "The reed that came with it"), and it's a "medium", then chances are good the two blades of the reed are simply too far apart (the reed is "too open") and they are too stiff for your baby embouchure to be able to squeeze them together close enough to get them to vibrate, which may be why it's not making a noise when you blow through it.
Also, (you probably know this) you can't go all your oboe-playing life waiting for your teacher to come around while you progress to the "next step" under his/her direct tutelage. You ought to figure out how to make the thing at least make a noise before you have your first lesson. Teacher's not gonna hold your hand in this.
Anyway, welcome to the wonderful world of the oboe. You don't have to be crazy--but we find that it helps. :D
P.S. You can tell that we have some major basic disagreements here. :D But at bottom, we all agree that you're supposed to have a good time, and if it's not fun, don't do it. So if it stresses you out to have to wait for your teacher, then go ahead and play around with your oboe while you're waiting. It's not like "you should wait to have sex until you're married". Nobody's going to jump out at you from behind a bush and shout, "Sinner!" if you go ahead and try to play your oboe before Teacher is there to supervise.
And I have been playing for a year now, have still no teacher, because it all boils down to "What do you want out of it". I am not aiming at a college career, so I don't particularly care if I'm doing it "wrong". I'm just doing it as a hobby. So if you're not aiming at a professional career of some kind, don't stress about whether you've got a teacher on the premises. Just do it.
Somebody who is wanting to learn to play a musical instrument as a distraction to help stop smoking shouldn't be told, "Egad, don't do anything yet because you might get into bad habits! Wait until next month when your teacher gets here..." You want to stop smoking now, not next month.
Post Edited (2006-03-12 01:39)
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