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Re: Grain direction in reed cane

Author: mschmidt
Date: 2006-07-29 01:47

I agree with you that the direction of the vascular bundle structure doesn't matter. When planing or scraping wood, the direction matters because the grain is almost never perfectly parallel with the surface. With our reed cane, the vascular bundles are almost always parallel to the surface.

But I've got to say that your explanation of why reeds are clipped with one blade shorter than the other sounds somewhat fanciful. It sounds to me like an after-the-fact rationalization of a phenomenon that has its roots in the mechanics of reed-clipping by razor blade. As we have discussed before on this thread, perfectly good and clean articulation can be accomplished just by touching the very corner of the reed with the tongue, so I don't see what the point is in "hitting" both blades at the same time. What's more, people who clip their reeds with the blades the same length and those who clip them different in length can both achieve good articulation--I would guess that the difference between tongue dexterity is much greater between players than the difference in response between flush-clipped and stagger-clipped reeds.

As for "octave cracks," I assume you mean the "chirps" that occur upon tonguing some reeds. Often this is a one-side-of the reed phenomenon--even for those of us who clip our reeds the same length. The solution is usually a more gradual blend with the heart; frequently it will be found that the blend is different on the different blades, or the tip is thinner on one side.

I don't understand all the physics of reeds and their relationship to tone production. What I do understand, though, is that almost nobody does, including a lot of the world's best oboists. They understand what to do to make a reed work the way they want it to work, and they come up with a plausible explanation for why it works, but if you listen to enough different explanations from enough different oboists, you soon realize that they can't possibly all be true.

Sorry to be such a persistent champion of ignorance, but I really feel that we benefit from understanding just how little we understand. We keep an open mind and observe more and learn more that way.

Mike

Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore

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