Author: d-oboe
Date: 2007-02-21 23:37
I take the advice of Maryn Leister -
Make a "shell" for the reed. That's to say, remove all the excess heavy bark, and surface cane, before you start doing the more delicate tip scraping.
If you just get the reed free and vibrating first, then scrape and clip it to pitch, that should take you about 8 minutes - less if you're more comfortable. The reed might even look like it has a heavy tip, but as long as it feels easy and is in the ballpark for pitch, that's fine.
From this point, there usually isn't that much adjusting left. Perhaps just a bit of seperating between the tip and heart, and maybe thinning various other areas of the reed depending on the balance.
Avoid hard reeds. Whenever you feel that the reed is bordering on being too hard, fix that before anything else, even if it changes the pitch. I can't tell you how much faster your reed will come together if you always make sure it is freely vibrating.
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