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Re: Blending in, in France?

Author: ceri
Date: 2013-05-14 15:24

You can do various things to make a French scrape reed easier.

If you want to make the whole thing easier, lightly scrape all over the reed (including the spine). The aim is not to change the balance of the reed but to make the whole thing thinner. This is what beginner oboists' reeds are like in France. If you put too much air-pressure down this sort of reed, it will close up and you won't get any sound out.

Less drastic (what I would do to a reed I found a little too hard), make the ears (corner tips) lower. Don't scrape the very centre of the tip as this will change the pitch and make the higher notes impossible to play but make the inverted crescent more pronounced. This makes notes easier to start and makes tonguing easier as well.

If it has a very pronounced hump just below the tip (this is not the case of all French reeds), you can reduce this in size a little. But proceed with caution as if you take too much off, you will make it unplayable.

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