Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-02-26 20:03
Wow, great, welcome to the world of the Oboe Obsessives! ![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
The holes are normal, not to worry. If you had a slightly more upscale oboe, those would be the holes that would be covered by long-stemmed keywork in order to produce low B and Bb. And some flexible and enterprising, or perhaps more desperate, oboists discover that they can produce those low notes by bending forward and covering those holes with their knees.
Be most terribly careful when cleaning so as not to dislodge the springs on the keywork. Since you said you were a clarinetist, you already know about Evil Little Springs, I presume.
Also, I'd advise against messing with the teeny adjustment screws. I personally wouldn't risk taking the keywork apart to polish it without a 40-hour course in oboe adjustment. Compared to the clarinet, the oboe has a LOT more keywork, and it's a lot more persnickety about how all the keys interact with all the other keys.
The Essential Elements DVD is different in that it has all (ALL!) the playalong tracks, all umpty-hundred of them, on there all together on one disc--but in MP3 format. Which means that they all fit on one piece of plastic--but that you can't use it on a CD player up in your bedroom, you can only play it on your computer (or TV, I suppose). It also has an assortment of training software that you can change the tempo on, which I personally never got around to fiddling with. There's a short video of a kid assembling his oboe, too, IIRC.
As for tuning, once you figure out how to get a sound out of the reed and oboe, just play along with the first few tracks, and you're on your way. There's no point in learning to tune single notes against a tuning device of some kind, because on the oboe, each and every note must be quickly adjusted for pitch to an extent unheard of on the clarinet, it's just the way it goes. You just have to jump in at the deep end of the pool and start playing, and while you're learning to play, you're also learning to play "in tune", in this case in tune with the Hal Leonard oboist and band. So don't fixate too much on getting an A in tune with a tuner, it won't be a relevant skill, because as soon as you start to play a song, you'll be right back to struggling to keep in tune with every note.
And I'll tell ya, don't practice the oboe alone without using the playalongs at least once a day (or someone else accompanying you on a piano or something) to continually test each note against, so that you're learning not only how to play, but also how to play in tune. This is because it's frighteningly simple to get your oboe to play in tune with itself. Oh yes, you'll be quite mellow and lovely--until you pop in the playalong CD and discover to your dismay that your lovely, mellow tone is a half-step flat from the rest of the world. Playing in tune is a constant challenge with the oboe, and until you get much, much better at it, you need to be testing yourself against an independent pitch constantly.
ETA: Be most awfully careful about pulling swabs through the top joint, the one with the narrow reed well where the reed goes. That tiny aperture is notorious for getting swabs stuck in them, and unfortunately once it's royally stuck, you have to pay an oboe technician to get it out. So the only swab you should ever even TRY to pull through the reed well is something made of extra-thin, gossamer fabric, like silk, which is traditional for oboe upper joint swabs. Whatever you use, it has to be about the diameter of a shoelace, which pretty much limits it to silk (nylon and polyester aren't very absorbent). For this reason the best oboe swabs have strings on both ends, so if it does get stuck, you can generally pull it back out again.
The plastic cover guard thingie is called a "tenon cap" or "tenon cover", the tenon being the "innie" part of the joint that fits into the "outie" of the other joint. It's meant to protect the cork and the edge of the tenon on wood oboes, and also keeps cork grease off the velvet lining of your oboe case. Tenon caps aren't a necessity unless you have a $5,000 grenadilla oboe and you really wanna protect those delicate wood turnings from cracking when you drop the oboe case in the street, or unless cork grease on your nice velvet really irks you. Me, I don't care.
Post Edited (2007-02-26 20:12)
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