Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-07-26 04:12
I got some very good advice about embouchure and tone production from the oboe clinician at the workshop I attended this past week.
I was asking her all sorts of questions about air and embouchure, projecting the air down into the instrument, etc.
She told me that she used to worry a lot about those things, too, until she had a lesson with Joe Robinson. His suggestion to her (and hers to me)was simply to "play against the resistance of the air." (I think I am quoting that correctly -- definitely the gist, if not the exact words.)
As I experience that, it means that you don't "control" your embouchure or your reed, but rather you have to interact with the air as it feeds back to you from the instrument.
I think this is pretty much what d-oboe said earlier, that it's more a matter of "feeling how the embouchure acts as a complement to the air, rather than 'developing the embouchure' abstractly."
Once you get this, it is surprising how easy it is to get a REALLY nice tone and sustain it consistently over the whole range of the instrument. It also gives me a fresh perspective on what it means to have "responsive" reeds: the reed must respond fairly readily to the air you provide, but then YOU must respond to it. It's the air that is doing most of the work, not your lips.
Susan
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