Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-07-10 14:38
Quote:
I've bought them all in a hardness of Medium
Well, there's 95% of your problem right there. Generally speaking, "medium" is way too hard for beginners, especially for children. Their mouth muscles just aren't up to the challenge of squeezing the reed properly in order to produce sound. So first of all, he needs Medium Soft reeds.
And as many oboe/clarinet doublers on this forum will tell you, the embouchures are different; just because he may be able to handle a 2.5 on a clarinet doesn't automatically mean his clarinet embouchure will transfer over and enable him to immediately play on a Medium oboe reed. They're two different beasties.
Quote:
He always finds something wrong with the reeds and claims he cannot play them.
He's right. They're too hard. Imagine if, when you were beginning on the clarinet, you had been forced to play on 2.5 reeds right off the bat.
That said, I have found that Fox reeds are excellent quality. Go back to them and get him some Medium Soft reeds, it doesn't matter whether they're Renard (green thread) or Artist (red thread), which is a dollar more. Their prices are excellent, too, whether you get them from Fox directly (which I do all the time), or whether you get them from an online purveyor like Giardinelli or Woodwind and Brasswind, both of which are highly reputable and are easy to deal with.
Gower reeds are good quality, too, but their Medium is definitely way too hard for beginners.
Margaret Cassell's Goodtoneguild student reeds are excellent quality, but they tend to run $13 per reed, as they are handmade and not mass-produced. If you order one, send her an e-mail and tell her it's for a child.
ETA: I would NOT recommend that you allow him to continue with the plastic reed. The sound produced is intrinsically so ghastly that he'll never get a good sound out of it, and he'll never learn to get a good oboe tone fixed in his head as something desireable to strive for. Also, it produces the sound too easily (such as it is (:: rolls eyes ::), and he'll never learn to work with a reed to modulate the tone he's producing. Put it away, I beg of you. ![[grin]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/smilie5.gif)
Post Edited (2007-07-10 14:45)
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