Author: cjwright
Date: 2006-10-12 23:14
The reed only exercise originally comes from Tabuteau, who used to stick a reed in a tube and in many of his students such as Joe Robinson and MAck, he'd show them the correct embouchure, tell them to go play on it for a couple weeks and come back to him later.
The reed exercise is for two basic purposes:
1. For a student to concentrate on blowing correctly using the diaphram only
2. For the student to get used to playing without trying to correct their tone or pitch with their embouchure, as many beginners do (and consequentially develop biting habits)
The technique is very basic. A student uses the reed or a reed in a tube of cane (which creates more resistance) and plays on the reed. One example might be:
(all beats at 60bpm)
day 1 - 5 beats on, 1 beat exhale, 1 beat inhale, repeat 4 times before giving longer rest, repeat 5 beats on, etc. (for 2 or 3 minutes)
day 2 - 6 beats on, 1 beat exhale, 1 beat inhale, repeat 4 times before giving longer rest, repeat 6 beats on, etc...
After gaining some strength to where the student can play for 10 beats on and 3 beats off, you'd add dynamics, rolling in/rolling out for pitch adjustment, etc.
Again, this exercise isn't for everyone, and I don't know how it'd work for other scrapes other than the American scrape, but it's very effective for basic oboists, and to reinforce the basics.
Many oboists would be surprised at how much we change (unneccessarily) our air, embouchure, and other items in our playing unconsciously which interrupts the musical line and a perfect legato. One exercise Joe Robinson would always do to show me would to make me play the oboe and him finger the notes (He'd be holding the oboe almost upside-down while I blow into the oboe.) This way I wouldn't know when he'd change the notes, so I'd just blow one consistently long tone and he'd play the exposition of the strauss concerto or something.
Don't discredit this exercise. It could your students quite a bit of good. I developed a terrible biting habit before I found a good teacher, who made me do reed exercises for a week, and made me do them for a couple minutes every day afterwards. It taught me how to blow and form a correct embouchure, with or without a perfect reed.
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
