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Re: reeds - which side?

Author: mschmidt
Date: 2006-07-20 18:19

This is one of those Questions Which Cannot Be Answered.

Why can't it?

Because reeds are so different. It's quite uncommon in the US to wire reeds, but apparently not in other countries.

Some reed makers may make one side deliberately thicker than another, though I've never heard of it before.

Some reed makers deliberately make one side of the reed shorter than the other (by trimming with a razor blade) while others insist that one should *never* use razor blades for trimming, lest one side of the reed end up longer than the other!

I think one of the most instructive aspects of this B-Board is that we learn how varied people's "rules" about playing the oboe are. It took me over a decade to discover that my different oboe teachers had contradictory "rules" and that I had to just figure out what worked for me. I don't know if it's good or bad to expose very new oboe players to such a diversity of opinion. It may be good because, ultimately, everyone must become their own teacher and figure out *on their own* how to advance the art of oboe playing. But it may be bad because so many of the variables of oboe playing are interlinked, and you may be best off starting with one set of rules that work well together--which presumably one gets from a good teacher.

It's probably best to work with just the rules from one teacher until one finds that one can improve by ignoring some of the rules.

Mike

Still an Amateur, but not really middle-aged anymore

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reeds - which side? new

lucyw

2006-07-20 16:04