Author: mschmidt
Date: 2006-06-10 16:41
I don't know if this will be useful to anyone but myself, but I thought I'd share it just in case it was. It's probably not applicable to really dedicated oboe students or professionals, but I know there are a few amateurs like me out there, and maybe my experience has some applicability to such folks.
I have been trying, for the last 4 months or so, to make reeds regularly--maybe three or four a week. I'll tie up a few on the weekend, then scrape one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, one or two on Saturday, etc. Results have not been good--much of my practicing has been on rather old reeds I made back in January, when I made a WHOLE BUNCH.
So last week, I was in Oregon visiting my parents, with not too many demands on my time, and I made a WHOLE BUNCH of reeds. I had a really high percentage of good reeds come out of the bunch. I'm thinking that "batch reedmaking" has some distinct advantages for the amateur who has lots of things going on besides oboe playing. For one thing, devoting, say, two hours at a time to just scraping reeds is good for concentration--much better than scraping a reed before work or after dinner, when my mind is anticipating the day or is too tired to function. Also, taking several reeds through the process in parallel helps me to see what I'm doing wrong, because I have several reeds to compare with each other at each point of the process. Such comparisons are good for reminding myself of what works, what doesn't, and how to fix what doesn't. When I make reeds one-at-a-time, I end up comparing a half-finished reed with an old tried-and-true wonder of the past. In that situation, it's hard to see how to get from here to there. The result is that I try and find the shortest distance between the two points, and end up impatiently ruining the half-finished reed before it has much of a chance.
I'm not sure that my recent success can be attibuted to the batch process or just luck, but I think I'm going to shift to devoting a few hours on the weekend just to making reeds, and not try to fit in one reed here or there. I'll see if that doesn't improve my yield of good reeds.
Mike
Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore
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