Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-03-12 04:26
I would NOT advocate using an oboe stand--because it is GOING to tip over. Especially on carpet. Every time. All it takes is one little brush with the hem of your bathrobe, and...over it goes.
Oboe stands are designed, as mentioned, for an oboist sitting in an orchestra who is going to have to play the English horn at some point during the proceedings. He doesn't want to lay his $5,000 Loree down on the floor where his neighbor will kick it, and he can't lay it on his lap because it will roll off onto the ground. And he can't stand it up all by itself because the bottom of the bell isn't wide enough to support it, and the keywork makes it top-heavy. So--the oboe stand. He very, very carefully puts his $5,000 oboe on the oboe stand, and puts the oboe stand where he's reasonably certain his neighbor won't kick it. But he doesn't leave it on the stand for longer than it takes to do his English horn solo, because it's just tempting Fate, being a matter of time before the second flute rams his chair backwards into it.
The Baby Rule means that the best place for your oboe, like your baby, is in your hands. And if you have to go off and leave it, you leave it somewhere absolutely safe.
Not on the bed, or the sofa, because someone will come and flop down on it. Or it will roll off.
Not on the dining room table, because someone will impatiently pick it up and move it, and put it down hard and break something on it.
The best thing to do is to stand it up in a well-protected corner, out of the way of household traffic, leaning gently against the wall, making sure the keywork isn't taking any of the strain. I do my practicing upstairs in my bedroom, and when I have to step out, I lean it up in the corner formed by the dresser and the wall, which is where my husband won't trip over it, or put a laundry basket down on it, or slam the bedroom door on it. It's a quiet backwater where nothing ever happens.
So when Anne needs to go to the bathroom, she's much better off standing her oboe up in a quiet, out-of-the-way corner. This also has the benefit of allowing the "water" (well, okay, "spit"), to drain out, whereas when you lay your oboe down horizontally, frequently the "water" gets into the toneholes, and then when you pick it up and try to play again, you get bizarre gurgles instead of music, and you have to take the thing apart and swab it all out.
And when Anne gets to the point where she's playing her oboe in Band, she'll need to remember that the best place for your oboe, like your baby, is in your hands, and you don't lay a baby down in the music stand tray like a pencil.
Since you are in slight financial straits, and since you are dealing with a kid who left her clarinet on the bus, I would seriously advise you to do what we did in the same situation, when my daughter started clarinet, and take out a small insurance policy on the instrument, protecting it against loss or theft. Contact your homeowner's insurance agent; it should run you about $30 to $50 a year for complete replacement of the instrument. And well worth it for the peace of mind, I thought.
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
