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Re: What are reed windows?

Author: d-oboe
Date: 2006-07-16 18:19

"When you remove cane from the windows,
you make it flatter and darker. When you remove cane from the
> heart, you make it sharper and brighter. You could probably
> whittle away at a reed forever, trying to get a perfect balance
> -- and by then, there would be nothing left to blow into."

The one thing that I would say is that heart scraping is probably the fastest way to *drop* pitch, rather than raise it. If the reed is really out of balance, then perhaps it might raise it, but in the final adjustments, it will almost always go down.

"You have to have light windows to get dark tone." I think that is only partially true. I think the reed must be stable (important) and must resist comfortably (more important!) to the breath in order to sound and feel dark when played. In following that principle, I keep relatively thick windows. I find that if I thin the tip way down, and balance the heart to that, I only have to scrape the back enough so that it is proportional to the heart, and so that low notes open up and resonate. In doing this not only do I have better control when adjusting reeds, I get better response, without sacrificing resistance, or pitch. Reeds with bad resistance (too soft or too hard) generally have:
-difficult attacks (thuddy and hard) or,
-unreliable attacks. (soft and squawky - like when you go to play a low C loudly and it jumps the octave. The reed should be built so that one can play low notes both softly and loudly)

I do like what you said about the constant whittling, and then "having nothing left to blow into." I have a few colleagues who will continue adjusting and adjusting their reeds, just so they can play a perfect pppppp, but then they can't play any louder than that!

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