Getting Up to Speed

I am merging back into the present. Revving up and returning to highway speeds.

I have on my desk eleven unread issues of the New Yorker magazine, and four Runners Worlds, and two Double Reed quarterly journals. I have just finished reading the January 18 New Yorker, and have been patiently working my way through the stack in order as new periodicals continue to arrive at their normal rate. I am not one to skip ahead. The result, of course, is that I have interesting, in depth knowledge of lots of things that were important four months ago and no idea what's happening in the actual real world of today. I can't talk to anybody about current events.

I'd just been assuming that eventually I'd catch up. That there would someday be enough leisure time in my life to read the New Yorker faster than one issue per week, on top of being a mother and a busy professional musician, maintaining my reed business, teaching twenty students a week, and training for a half marathon. Not that I ever put it to myself in those terms till just now - that looks ridiculous even to me. Honestly, now I can't believe I was keeping up with the New Yorker even before Zoe.

Here and now I reclaim the present day. I am opening my April 19 magazine. I am recycling the older ones, shamelessly sacrificing all of the articles, reviews, and works of short fiction contained therein. I admit it - I cannot catch up and life is too short. February and March are over. They are dead to me. I am back in the now. Give me a week and ask me what's new - I dare you!

Comments

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies. Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked. I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel. If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance. Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street. She makes us sing along. She loves it when we clap at the end. When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later. Her immediate interest is in

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable. You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time. Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, and tu

Knife Sharpening

I've gotten a lot of questions on this topic, and the most recent querent prompted me to make a video to demonstrate. You can find that HERE . Knife sharpening seems to strike terror into many hearts. And it's little wonder. Many famous oboists have gone on record as saying that a sharp knife is the most important aspect of reed making. People have entire systems of stones and strops and rods set up to sharpen their knives. And it is important, of course it is - but I don't believe that you need your knife to be razor-like, or objectively the sharpest blade of any in your home. The reed knife has one job - scraping cane off in precision ways - and it has to be sharp enough for that, and sharpened optimally for that purpose. More than that is overly fussy for my taste. This is not to say that I allow my knife to be dull. A dull knife forces you to put too much pressure on the reed and can cause cracking. Obviously it can lead to terribly inconsistent scraping, an

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