The Oboe BBoard

The Oboe BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Dark reeds?

Author: d-oboe
Date: 2007-11-29 12:16

I feel like I had to start a new thread on this...based on a lot of "reed color" discussions.
To be honest - of all the really good oboe players out there, I don't think any of them have a sound that I would call "dark". What is dark anyway? Non-reedy? Focused? Clear?

Whenever I hear someone who says they have "dark" reeds...I don't understand. How can a reed be dark? (other than dark cane..maybe..) Perhaps I, myself, have a dark tone and don't know it...I dunno. What irks me, as of late, is the obsession of many oboe players with getting a dark tone...but when people are asked to describe the dark tone they wish to achieve, no one, in concrete terms, can!
First of all - and I know I am going to start a controversy - sound cannot have colors that are attributed to the light spectrum. I'm sorry. So, unless someone has some new physics to prove otherwise, I stand by that. So by saying someone has a darker/brighter sound in relation to someone else is meaningless.
The reason it bothers me this much is that SO many oboists I talk to say that they make adjustments in their reed to "darken" the sound. What????

The tone of a particular piece of cane is set from before you even make the first scrape on the reed. The type of cane and the quality of the gouge - that's it. So why make an adjustment to "darken" the reed? Why make reeds xyz-fashion so that they come out "dark"?

I believe that the reed should function optimally to allow to most refinement in the musical expression - that's all! That usually means 5 things:
-in tune
-stable
-responsive
-flexible (derives from the above 3 things)
-resists correctly to the breath (derives from first 3 things)
It also happens that those are the only 3 things that a reed maker can CONTROL. So why go looking for something (i.e. some quality of tone) in the reed that is out of one's control?

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics

Author

Date

Dark reeds? new

d-oboe

2007-11-29 12:16