Author: d-oboe
Date: 2004-07-03 06:12
Well, if you tie on longer, then your reed opening will be larger, when you get down to the finished length. Sometimes when you tie on longer it seems when first clipped open that it's too small, but once you clip a bit, the opening should be fine. As far as tie-on lengths, you have to find one that works and stick to it, and in my opinion I try to keep my tie ons longer, just so the opening isn't too small. An alternative could be to make shorter reeds. But you'd need to relearn your scraping so I'm not sure that's a great idea. Also, I don't think that the tie on length has such a huge effect on "pitch placement and depth" because that would assume that every reed is made exactly the same, on the exact same piece of cane, which is impossible! However, all said and done, some of my best reeds are 69 mm instead of 70. Sometimes when I have to remove a whole pile of cane, I bump the heart down to occupy 60-64mm (so I can clip my reeds to compensate for all the wood removed), and consequently I have reeds that work at 67 mm long. One of my past oboe teachers plays on 67mm reeds, and he removes a LOT of wood out of the heart and back (I mean it's actually frightening- the back is almost as thin as the tip) and his reeds have no pitch problems, and have an amazingly dark, rich and complex sound. And I bet you he probably ties on at 71mm! So the moral of all this rambling? Reeds are not bound to orthodox rules! If you find something that works, then use it! If you can tie on a Jeanne reed at 77mm and make it work without leaking, then do it! It make no sense to churn out hundreds of hopeless reeds simply to stay in the "boundaries" that are injected to you by the great institutions. Make reeds that blow, not reeds that suck. :P
D-oboe
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
