Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2006-01-08 13:04
Any reed by any maker will work! Provided it's balanced, for your mouthpiece and embouchure and it's the right strenth. Too many times a brand or type of reed is judged by how many reeds will kinda work right out of the box. What you end up finding is what brand of reeds has a grading system that gets you sort of in the "ball Park". The net result is you get more reeds that "almost" work out of a box for one brand than another.
Learn to balance and test your reeds, I highly recoment Tom Ridenour's ATG system. It's very inexpenive, easy to use and after watching the DVD and reading his book, you problably will know more about reeds than your teacher does.
I've done the routine, making reeds from tube cane, doing the blanks, the whole magila, you still have to be able to custom tailor your reed to your mouthpiece. One day, years ago, I was out on tour with the US Army field band, doing a solo that night and having one of those I don't have a reed meltdowns. My roomate, who was a very good bassoonist who was tired of listening to me Kvetch, asked me to open a new box of reeds and soak them. I got them wet, he stuck each of them to the big window of a Holiday inn room and examined them. After his exam he said, " These look to my eye to way more consistant than I get off my profiler machine, you just don't know how to balance them" He was absolutely correct. Years later, lots of money spent on equiptment to make reeds, and lots of questions to some very "knowledgable" teachers. I found Tom's ATG systmen. It's not magic, but you can work magic with it. Before I had the ATG I used the Reed Wizzard. I found it would improve all the reeds I used it on, but wasn't able to balance my reeds as finely with it. I use it on all student reeds before their lessons, if they are not advanced enough to do the play test of a reed. It (reed wizzard) was about $300, the ATG about $70. Any way I think the device is not the important part it's the knowledge about the reed and how it's reacting on your mouthpiece that's the most important.
Tom Puwalski, former soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&Vodka, and Author of "The Clarinetist's Guide to Klezmer"and most recently by the order of the wizard of Oz, for supreme intelligence, a Masters in Clarinet performance
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