Author: vboboe
Date: 2006-03-16 18:01
... quick google finds K-Ge Reeds home page (Australia) and they supply pro & student reeds in Euro (U scrape) and US (W scrape) designs, they have good backlit illustrations of the two different types
Commercial taper scrape (or clarinet scrape as i dub it) work OK as student starter reed, but contoured hand-made reeds are so much better when embouchure gets stronger and student physically capable of getting fussier about intonation details
The U-scrape method i first learned in UK had several stages, the first being basic taper scrape like the commercial variety (except it was shorter, just below midway) and next, contoured in the heart, and later on contoured in the back. These progressive stages of learning the reed style seemed to tie in with the range of notes student was learning, we didn't do comprehensive learning method 'way back then, we worked in middle register, extended downwards, then extended upwards gradually. By the time i was on 2nd octave (3rd year!) and hit high C (second half of year 3!) and doing deep rollover that's when we did more contouring in lower back of reed, and by then the reed was debarked to two-thirds down the cane.
That meant that when we had to clip off a frayed tip, we could still rework the shorter length reed to within 3 mm of the thread as a taper scrape (sacrificing all the contouring) and use it as a retired practice reed.
Don't know if this reed style is still used in UK since globalisation, feedback please?
Fully developed U-scrape (old style?) Brit reed was a three-zone affair, somewhat similar to hand-made american scrape, only base of the back is U shaped, and tip is U-shaped. Also hump (or as it was called there, the bridge) is narrower (about 3 mm) and thinner (less woody), so it's more flexible at that part of the reed than the american scrape. Top (head) of spine, about 2-3 fibres below base of U-tip, has a tiny rounded off & blended knob on it. That was 'neutral embouchure' point, like a home key ridge or dot on keyboards.
Whole reed was finished off very smooth, remember teacher saying, leave that until tomorrow, see how much wood's grown back on (raised grain) before sharpening knife very fine and smoothing reed surface like silk. Nowadays i'm using fine emery paper instead, eyes not wot they used to be. Anyway, this method only works really well on fine-grain cane, lots of coarser grain around nowadays.
This reed style made the complex brighter sound prefered in UK at that time, and entire reed is very responsive & flexible (when struggling student gets it right!), whereas the american scrape is darker sounding with the tip being the most responsive part and the rest of the reed more supportive.
The big difference with the fully contoured U-style reed is the lips have to be more mobile, nibbling the reed a lot more to play the tip, heart or basement windows more effectively. This is actually less tiring for the embouchure as muscles are constantly twitching, changing, adjusting ... hm, this concept is very marine, Brits live on an island surrounded by the sea, eh? The american reed requires a comparatively static embouchure with roll-over & roll-out as needed, and hey, N. America is a big continental land-mass. Guess geographical environment really does shape our different styles more than we think?
Commercial U-scrape tapered reeds just aren't the same as contoured U-scrape reeds, so are Euro U-scrapes (Dutch, German, etc.) more like the commericial taper scrape, or are they contoured types?
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