Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-07-18 16:55
Quote:
You have quite an opinion of clarinet players.
Well, I watched both my sister and my daughter learn, and both of them sailed through it PDQ. And I had a few lessons myself, back in the day.
Quote:
Maybe I'm just a freak of nature, but I actually think the oboe is easier than the clarinet.
I'm talking about the difference between learning to play the clarinet and the oboe. I too would say that simply playing the oboe is easier than the clarinet: no register jumps to worry about, no masses of hard-to-read ledger lines reaching up and down off both staffs.
But.
Numbers don't lie. The vast majority of fifth-graders, when presented with their school's "Do ya wanna play an instrument?" program, choose the clarinet or flute or sax, not the oboe. This is because the clarinet, flute, and sax is easier to *learn*. You can get a decent sound out of a clarinet, flute, or sax on your very first lesson, whereas it can take days or even weeks for the average 10-year-old to get a non-dying-duck squawk out of the oboe.
And so, because market forces speak louder than words--because there aren't millions of fifth-graders taking up the oboe every fall--we do not have inexpensive, good-quality oboes widely available the way we have inexpensive, good-quality clarinets, flutes, and alto saxes widely available. If most kids found the oboe as easy to learn to play as the clarinet or flute, we'd have more cheap oboes around.
|
|
The Oboe BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
