Author: ThatPerfectReed
Date: 2011-07-01 03:20
I concur with CarlT--having done this before with Legeres.
I'd like to point out the the adjustment of synthetic reeds is pretty much limited to how the reed is placed on the mouthpiece (although some may tell you they've been able to shape such reeds, against manufacturer recommendation). The most subtle of changes left or right, or up and down, to the reed on the mouthpiece, I find, can make quite a difference. Don't be afraid to place the reed right at the level of the mouthpiece tip, or even a micron higher if you find it soft.
Also, consider giving Forestone a chance too--which I prefer (again, some will say otherwise). In which case I would recommend, given your situation, you try an F 3 1/2. http://www.forestone-japan.com/index.php/comp-chart/
I think each brand has strengths and weaknesses in different areas of playing. Others will disagree, or disagree at least on where those areas are.
Unlike Legere reeds though, Forestones are not, to my knowledge, exchangable. Personally, if you're like me, and willing to settle for an open "G" that may sound a tad bit like a gazoo if you're not careful with your embouchure, you may find the Forestone's, like I did, much better for staccato, and for the G- C7 range of the instrument.
Best of luck!
P.S. - Consider these synthetics practice reeds if your teacher has issue with them--so your teacher won't see them. Think of it this way. Technique comes with practice. Practice comes with adequate enough reeds to play on. Your synthetics will likely never approach the level of your best (NOR YOUR WORST) cane. The synthetics, many feel, are the Toyota Corollas of reeds: dependable, and useful for developing your driving skills on. Save the Rolls Royce (the 1 in every 2 boxes of V12's) reeds for special occasions/lessons/performances.
Also, if you're frustrated enough to try synthetics, may I suggest you give Tom Ridenour's ATG Reed Finishing system some consideration. I don't personally find that it turns 8 of 10 reeds in a box into winners, as Tom might be able at times to do, but it has made me more winning reeds than before I tried it, and more winning reeds out of what I was sure were losers before I tweequed them with this system. Certainly, Tom deserves credit for at least giving me more practice cane out of stuff that came out of the box as utterly unplayable.
Maybe your teacher needs to focus more on the end product: your playing, not, within reason, on how you get there--schools of thought perhaps more in line, respectively, with great pedagogues like the late Russianoff and Opperman--both though great teachers. (Watch that comment generate fireworks!)
Then again, I don't know your level or the areas you need improvement in as well as, I hope, your teacher. Some areas of clarinet learning aren't open to debate (e.g. right hand closer to the ground--always).
Then again, if your teacher is asking you to stay with cane, perhaps they can teach you their "magical good reed acquisition/adjustment techniques," or bank roll you with the "throw enough poop at the wall" method (buy enough reeds until you can find enough good ones) of good reed acquisition.
(Can you ask them if they'll share that with me?)
"Good cane reeds," I think, come when playing technique improves enough that mental expectation allows you to play on less than idea (but pretty good) cane reeds, while technique on shaping cane reeds simultaneously improves enough for better response FROM those cane reeds.
You seem to be from the New England area....is your teacher unfamiliar with what havoc summer humidity can reak on cane, turning a great reed into one, tomorrow, that will barely make music, or vice versa?
Yes--there is something to be said about teaching students to work around the fact that all reeds lack perfection, let alone over the long term--trying to give your instructor the benefit of the doubt on what may be one of the reasons they insist on cane (in addition to sound, etc.) Don't worry, you'll get plenty of that learning with synthetics too--which are also far from perfect. And rest assured, when you come across a lousy lousy reed, it's probably not you or your expectations, it's probably the reed. I'll bet MANY others will think that reed stinks too. Maybe adjusting it will help, but it doesn't seem like you're at the sandpaper and knife stage yet--which itself is not, I think, Emerald City.
Long ago, in High School, I assembled a plate of reeds, numbered them, and wrote down my expectations of them. I asked all the other pre-profesional orchestra players in the orchestra I was in (some famous today) to do the same thing with them. Okay, it's not a double blind trial for a new pharmeceutical, but do you know how similar our resullts were, despite countless differences in our setups? VERY.
I'm curious, would, for example, your teacher find issue with my neck strap, even though Manasse wears one, and that I use one b/c I have tendonitis?
All I'm saying is note the things your teacher considers negotiable or not about your playing. Where this person is firm, contemplate why. There may be good reason, there may not be. There's good and bad reasons to wear a neck strap. The neck strap itself, for example, shouldn't categorically be eliminated, I think.
Why is this person saying no to synthetics? Ask. Accept only a good answer, not "well that's the way it's always been done," or "I tried synthetics, and..."
If they tell you they don't like your sound on synthetics, show them what you sound like on an all but unresponsive cane, or get them to help you acquire good cane reeds nearly all the time through purchase/manipulation.
What's that I hear about us all having different preferences when it comes to reeds? OK, find a good cane reed you like. THEN ask the instructor who doesn't allow synthetics to help you approximate its consistent duplication.
And if they show you the latter trick, would you share it with me? Devices that duplicate reeds to 1/100 mm STILL work with DIFFERENT pieces of cane--even from the same split cane tube!
Yes--I am bullish on synthetics. Not so much because I think the science has yet made better synthetics than the best of cane, but because synthetics, where nearly every aspect of the manufacturing process can be controlled and duplicated, I think, allows us the best chance eventually at good reed consistency that mother nature never intended for Arunda Donax. Things that are alive or suppose to vary--that's how the species adapts to change over time. So ironically, what's best fo the survival of the plant itself, is worst for the consistency of cane reeds made from it--despite all the most well intended efforts of reed manufacturers to improve uniformity and consistency.
Were I the only 1 finding 1 or 2 decent reeds in a box from top manufacturers, I'd say my standards were too high. But as long as many others concur, I'll consider my conclusions reasonable.
I leave you with the following thought. To all the reed manufacturers of the world who hire great marketing people, who would turn a "negative" (the fact that consistency in a box of reeds varies widely b/c such consistency is only minimal enforcable) into a postive ("we at reed company X seek to provide a...(here it comes)....RANGE of different reeds in a box to please the most number of players) I respond as follows.
You don't seek it. You seek to avoid it but you pretty much can't. And I don't blame you--reeds and people do vary--but don't turn that which you can't avoid into something you strive for. It's happening because you can't help it. If you could help it, it would NOT be your goal. To me, tt's like marketing an elevator, whose cable breaks, as a "new high speed elevator."
If such "variety" of reeds in a box were what the marketplace truly desired, synthetics and their consistency--even if that consistency doesn't yet produce reeds that are better than pretty good, WOULD NOT SELL.
People would stay with cane. Synthetic manufactures would (have to) sell their reeds with more than 1 to a box. (Once they've spent millions on creating them, do you know how little it costs to produce the marginal reed? Why do you think Legere, as a business, is willing to do this--generous though it is in the reed business?)
If reed manufacturers could control consistency, reeds would come with a money back guarantee.
Ever wonder why reed strengths can be so much more granular in the synthetic market? Because factories can control consistency better than living things, which have been engineered by evolution/diety/other--pick your favorite--to vary, so as to maximize species survival in an ever changing environment.
There will always be enough about this instrument we call the clarinet to make it challenging, just like the piano, or trumpet, or french horn, or violin, or flute, that aren't so dependent on this lousy tongue depressor (depressor has double meaning here) we call a reed, that we should shy away from developing better synthetic consistency. (That isn't to say these beautiful instruments don't have their own set of obstacles to virtuosic play. This isn't to say that the clarinet, reed aside, doesn't also have its obstacles to virtuosic play.)
When computerized electrodes make normal fingers move, when robots play clarinet, I'll say we've homogenized and taken too much humanity out of clarinet playing. Until then, viva la reed innovation!
And yes, I did come off a day where most practice time was spent doing my imitation of Mark Nuzzio's reed selection methods...brilliant player though he is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y0Zv3EZ-Ms
That's precious time lost to not being able to practice. Opperman always appreciated the value of time, and how it can never be recovered, or applied to rehearsal, once lost.
Again: viva la reed innovation! Cane or synthetic--even though I think our best chance lies with the latter. Clarinet innovation, like the law, should be stable, but definitely not static.
I'll climb back under my shell now.
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