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Re: How long before my tone is decent?

Author: Craig Matovich
Date: 2007-03-24 20:44

You see why I like this board and the contributors so much... great answers and good guidance.

I used to teach a lot of oboe students, both conservatory and community students. In the community I worked with Jr. High and High School band students and some adults as well, usually returning to oboe after a long break.

I noticed they learned in very different ways and the adults tended to be a bit slower picking up finger dexterity but quicker on the uptake of the more essoteric aspects of the oboe.

Your concern for tone is consistent with that difference. The scales and long tones and dynamic ranges mentioned should help a lot. Getting a good tonal concept in place is important, too.

It also helps to realize beyond the basic aesthetics of good and bad tone, there is a very large pallet of great oboe sounds and you will have fun learning how to make the subtle differences to color and express your intentions with the music.

As we age (I am now 52) certain things tend to happen naturally with our hearing. A slight and progressive loss of high range accuity called presbicusous sets in... and we tend to want more highs in our sound to compensate. Couple that to the bone convection of sound from the reed vibrating and our player's perspective of the sound is pretty different from how the audience hears it.

Using your recorder and at different distances and placements as CJWright suggested is fantastic feed back and you can learn a lot from it.

Also, stand very close to your teacher while he/she plays and then move around the room. Listen carefully, and you will hear some of the sound evolving and changing with distance. Some players tend to get darker with distance but others get brighter.

All this comes together eventually, and you learn how to offset the player's perceived sound from the audience's perception and the pallet of tonal variety becomes a tool for you to use.

One aspect of tone color and expressive playing comes with the vibrato. As a singer, I'd bet you have a big head start with this on oboe. Learning vibrato will also teach you a lot about how to control your tone.

(Please, check with your teacher first... I don't want to step on the learning plan or get you doing something prematurely that will impede your learning. But...at least sing a long tone, add vibrato...change the rate as you crescendo, etc. Add vibrato at the end of a tapered note just to make it dissipate like a wisp of smoke. And then do all that while going from a bright tone to a very dark tone. Notice the concept precedes the action?.... its really the same with oboe.)

take care, play on!

-Craig

Post Edited (2007-03-24 20:46)

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