Author: Dutchy
Date: 2008-05-17 17:12
I admire the Fox reeds enormously. Their Renard reeds are a dollar cheaper than the Artist, but they're both equally good. They're very reliable, Fox evidently has rockin' quality control, and they are wonderful about fast shipping (if you order them through WWBW, sometimes there's an "out of stock" wait while Fox gets more reeds to them).
Get her a Medium-Soft; since she's been playing the clarinet, she may already have enough of an embouchure that a Soft would be too soft.
I was an adult beginner, not having any embouchure at all, and I found their Soft to be too soft right off the bat.
The thing is, for someone just learning to get a sound out in the first place, they play, without a lot of argument. And they sound okay.
Margaret Cassell's Goodtoneguild reeds rock; she offers a Rookie reed. Tell her it's for a child.
Edmund Nielsen Woodwinds makes decent beginner reeds.
Gower Reeds are very adequate. They have rather a thin tone, but for a beginner, like the Fox reeds, the attraction is that they play without a lot of struggle.
Remember that the lowest notes can be the hardest notes to play (outside of the "dog whistle" third octave); I'd stick with the mid- to upper range, like from low F and upwards to about a high G, and focus on things like proper tone production and pitch control for a few months, before I started asking her to struggle with the bugaboo of the Evil Low Notes.
Also, if she's focusing just on "getting the note to play in the first place", she's not really learning anything for the long-term. You can sit there and patiently make a low C sound, but if you can't get it to play within the context of a phrase, it's kind of pointless.
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