Author: vboboe
Date: 2006-06-12 05:15
... hey, yes, i've trended towards reed cases for sorting (batching?) my reeds and i keep my very best three in my oboe case, slot's not big enough for a larger reed-case, and these three reeds only get played for performances (hey, wow, i've done 7 this season up from 4 last year!)
Colour sorting by thread doesn't work for me, but it does help identify individual reeds. I've tried dotting or coding systems with marker directly on the cork, but that's fussy and messy to clean off the cork afterwards. Now i'm using little strips of masking tape and mark that instead.
For band practices, i use a couple of reed guards (2 reeds each) and keep them in my pockets, one is 'jazzy' for anything in that genre, one is sweet for numbers on the soft and mellow side, one is good and loud for pieces that only use fp's to separate ongoing ff's (and that means i can just about hear myself when the brass are strutting their puff) and another is everyday average for 'mechanical' passage repeats at rehearsals. This rotates reeds by the type of pieces we practice, rather than 'every 20 minutes'.
(well, that's what i try to get anyway, reeds which play like that at last week's band rehearsal don't always respond the same next week)
Then i have a 6-reed case for retirees, past their prime, but worthwhile using for home practice (they're usually soft toned and mellow), and i wrap the thread entirely in white tape so they're easily identified as oldies.
Now that i have a reed-making teacher, i've had to branch out into another 6 reed case, to keep my 'lesson' reeds in one readily accessible place, at the moment two are playable, one is 'wot the heck do i do with this ?!' and the others are waiting for me to start or do more work on them. I keep tied blanks in little boxes at the moment, until my lesson reed case has a vacancy, so I'm thinking about getting a 10 or 12 reed case for blanks and use the boxes for overflow of tied blanks.
As soon as any reed is blown out, i break it at once if it isn't frayed or split already, and when i have time and tool to cut the thread off, i salvage the tubes right away. I usually nick the thread and that unravels easily enough, the knotted part slides off the tube's narrower end. Usually i check and reshape the tube on the mandrel if necessary, sterisol the tube, clean and regrease the cork, and buff up the brass before storing in a tin for retying at some future date. That way when i'm in the mood to tie one on, the tube's ready to use.
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