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Re: Reed working video?

Author: sylvangale
Date: 2011-11-28 09:11

Here's a good detailed video showing blend (triangle corner) scraping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAcgeN2wIu0

To make a reed easier to play you can try scraping the triangle corner areas this person is scraping at the 20second mark. Soak a reed, scrape a few times on all the corners and play test the result.

Play with old reeds and see how it works for you to bring in more life if they're dull.

I haven't seen any good heart area oboe video's, but if the heart and rails of the heart are too thick that could really choke your sound. Scraping the outer edges of the heart and/or thinning the rails could help. The problem with the heart is you can easily make your oboe reed... ducky. Don't scrape the rails off and avoid the center of the heart (unless it really is crazy thick).

There is also a sort of balance between the blend and heart where they interact, by making one softer than the other the reed could get worse, so if blend adjusting does not improve response, heart adjusting can help, but if you go too far on the heart and it gets worse, adjusting more blend may bring the reed back into balance.

As far as pitch goes... the side effect of heart adjustment is slightly lowering pitch, but when a reed is really too sharp you can't really do much other than pulling out the reed in the oboe (a no no).

To make a flat reed sharp you can shorten the reed by clipping the tip.

Reeds may be too open (flat) or closed (sharp) which affect pitch. Open reeds will close with playing and you can gently pitch them to help. Closed reeds could possibly open a bit with blend/heart adjustment.

You can also use brute force by taking pliers and squeezing the tube (with mandrel in place) to open or close the reed. I don't go there, my teacher does, but I think it makes my reeds too wonky.

♫ Stephen K.

Post Edited (2011-11-28 09:14)

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