Skip to main content

Traveling With a Reed Business

Summer is about vacations, and breaks, and relaxing.  But people who rely on my reeds and services can't always wait while I ogle national monuments - if you need a reed you need me to be sitting at my desk!

When the orchestra and teaching season dies down, and school gets out, Steve and I like to travel, and we hope that as we move into fuller ownership of our happy middle age we will do more and more of that.  But you can't just up and leave a business for months at a time.  I've been reading about the lifestyle of "digital nomads", and I want it - but I can't quite be as nomadic with a reed business as someone whose entire income happens in cyberspace.  Which is not to say I can't be nomadic at all.

I'm in Peoria this week, performing with the Peoria Bach Festival.  It's a busy, active week of rehearsals and concerts, and I'm living in a host's home, and I couldn't truck my entire reed studio down here.  But I'm using this gig as an experiment - how little can I get away with carrying for a week away and still mail reeds on time and keep no one waiting?

So far I have the STUFF down to one small tote bag and my regular oboe case. The bag contains my gouging machine, which packs small. (It's in the lunchbox pictured here!). A small bag of shipping supplies.  My collection of shapers and a bag of staples and a bundle of pre-gouged cane. The minimum number of tools I could function with - knife, plaque, small block, mandrel.  My tiny diamond sharpening stone.  A small C clamp and some shelf liner designed to protect the surfaces I work on.  And I think it's going to work!   So far this week I've not gotten any orders I couldn't fill - though finding the time during this busy festival to work is a separate challenge!

If I were out camping in the wilderness, or in a motel or Airbnb, then printing labels and packing slips might be a challenge - I want to look into tiny portable printers for our future trips - but for now I feel pretty well equipped to travel lean and light and STILL serve my customers.


Of course, this all slightly negates the idea of a VACATION, which I still need and am committed to. It's unclear at this point how much of our three week break will actually be spent out of town, and I'll update the info on my website as things evolve - but as I travel with my family to the Grand Canyon this summer I will NOT be making reeds.  Everyone deserves a few days off!


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
2 comments
Read more

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, a...
6 comments
Read more

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 inc...
7 comments
Read more