ProneOboe

In Reed Club last Monday, we took a moment before we started scraping to set some intentions.  We each said one word - an adjective to describe what we WANTED our reeds to be.  An aspirational adjective. Efficient was a word that came up, and Consistent . Dark and Mysterious . Mellow . Predictable .  Trustworthy .  Honest .  BIGGER . Reed affirmations actually felt helpful - both in the moment and in the results we found as we worked.  I don't know why that surprises me - I set intentions at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of a run, in the morning before I work.  I love a good affirmation.  I love WORDS.  But I'd sort of forgotten about the possibility of applying one to the mundane work of reed-making.   You don't have to know exactly how to GET to that result.  But having clarity in your mind about what that result is?  Helps you to stop going down unhelpful rabbit holes...

I recently met with a former student who proudly described THE reed she was working on to me.  She’d gotten it to a point where it made a beep, but it didn’t really play on the oboe yet, but it HADN'T CRACKED!  I celebrated with her - but I limited my glee.  One slightly successful reed - in the past month - is a good start.  It’s further than she had gotten before.   But that is no way to be abundant.  If it takes you a month to sort of make one reed, where’s the incentive to even start? No one has that kind of time, and you can’t make your living on one reed a month even if it’s a perfect reed.   More to the point - the learning curve at that rate is basically a flat line.  Reedmaking is an art as well as a craft.  I can teach someone to construct a reed in a single session, and we can get to a beeping reed in that time. But the next part? The part where you finish it to your comfort and then go out in public and play on ...

I've been seeing so many complaints among my friends and colleagues about the quality of their Skype, FaceTime, and Zoom lessons. I have to say that while I acknowledge the limitations of the media, I actually really LOVE teaching online. 1. Lesson transitions are better. Sometimes when we are live, our chit-chat can take a fair amount of time, while people get their instruments out at the beginning, soak their reeds, and put everything away again. Online no one calls in before they are ready, and we can end the call at the end of the content and let everyone take care of swabbing in private. We use ALL of our allotted time efficiently online. 2. My personal focus is better. I have to listen hard to hear the details through the medium, and it keeps my mind from wandering. I think the tighter transitions help me with that, too. And I perceive the same from my students - it could be that my focus directs theirs, I suppose, but either way we’ve gotten a...

In our dress rehearsal Saturday morning I became aware of just how GREAT my reed was. It felt so EASY to play the oboe.   I could come in perfectly softly, with or without a strong attack.   I could enter loudly and in tune, with or without accent.   My pitch was centered, my tone was attractive.   I could taper right off the ends of notes EXACTLY as I needed to.   And all of these things just felt RIGHT.   It’s so unusual to have a reed that I didn’t have to MANAGE, that I didn’t have to keep an awareness of in the back of my head, that I didn’t have to massage in certain registers or dynamics.   I could just THINK a musical gesture and then DO it, without compromise.   It was a fantastic feeling. RIGHT IMMEDIATELY behind that awareness of my great reed came anxiety.   How terrible would it feel when I inevitably had to return to a lesser reed?   When this one died?   How could I ever make something THIS GOOD again? ...

How do you change your reed making habits?    Even if you feel like a reed beginner,   I can promise that you have developed some habits, for good or ill.  This is how our bodies work, right?  If the way you hold your knife on day one gets you close to the scrape you want, you’ll hold it that way again.   After even ten minutes the process feels a little less foreign, and you are apt to keep repeating the same tricks.   But if you remain aware of what is going on, you can start to make decisions about how that increasing consistency is helping or hurting your process!   I’m thinking specifically of two students I have, with easily identifiable reed issues. One consistently leaves a moat, or a thin region immediately north of her rooftop, between the heart and the rest of her sloping tip. The other allows the center of the tip to be thin, especially while working on the left side of the blade.  We’ve identified the problems...

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...

Here's a thing that happens ALL THE TIME.  A student misses something - a low attack, a slur, a high D.  People miss things, no problem.  But then they miss it again.  Immediately, I stop and say, What's happening there?  Is it an oboe problem, a reed problem, or you? Almost without fail, they say it's them.  Their own personal failing that made the note not speak. And bless their hearts, it's in a broad sense true, right? When my Tough Love Hat is on,  I have to point out that every reed problem is your own fault - you made it, or selected it for today's task, or let it get to this decrepit state, right? And not paying attention to your instrument's adjustments is a lapse on your part, too. But in the immediate sense,  it nearly always turns out that that problem was NOT the student being careless or sloppy. Very often, it's the mechanism of the oboe or the construction of the reed that is sabotaging things, and THAT is a screwdriver or a k...

I haven't shared anything about my playing work for quite a while.  These past two weeks have been overwhelmingly busy, filled with driving and performing - three different organizations, seven venues, six separate programs, very hard music - all this to say, I've been drowning in repertoire and putting in hours behind the wheel for the privilege, and I have not been able to sit and write as I normally would. Heck, I haven't even been able to lie down and sleep for seven hours as I normally would.  Late nights and early mornings should not go together like this.  Here's to the return of a civilized schedule soon! The most fascinating bit of this craziness is a snippet of music I play from offstage at Lyric Opera's production of Siegfried.  I've written before about the stunning experience of being behind the scenes at this fantastic organization - the attention to detail, the care and integrity from everyone I see, from the amazing and hard-working musicians t...

My Five Minute Reedmaker Season Two seems to be largely about experiments.  People ask me how LONG, how THICK, how SLOPED, etc - and I'm running the experiments for them and for you. I've been posting these videos on YouTube, and sharing them from my Facebook Page, but haven't totally kept up with sharing here on my blog. Here are the ones you may have missed: Length of the Heart Fallacy of the Long Tip Moldy Cane And here's the new one: Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until I run out of ideas this season. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

OMG the Five Minute Reedmaker is Back! Here’s what I’ve been up to:  I have a few videos ready to drop - I think I’ll put them out on Fridays.  I don’t know if Season Two can take us all the way to the end of the year, as Season One did before.  There may not be that many more topics to consider.  But I love you guys so I’ll try. The playlist is still up on Youtube , but I’ve ALSO curated Season One onto my own website .  I never can figure out the best way to organize things in a Youtube playlist and this way you can see all of the videos really easily on one screen.  I think this will be helpful.  Perhaps you will let me know if you like it. Now onto today's video... I say this all the time - DON’T choose a reed for its tone.  DON’T keep scraping for sound, scrape for function.  Get the reed to work.  The sound will follow.  But the sound is not UNIMPORTANT, right?  Tyler wrote to me:  Your videos are great...

In my new mini-series on tools, I guess I'm working my way through the relatively straightforward ones first - while I build up my courage to tackle knives and shapers, which EVERYONE has strong opinions about. In this episode I tackle the truism that all of your tubes must fit your mandrel (MUST? Really?  REALLY?), I show the distinctions between a few different styles of mandrel, and I offer a cheat so English horn reedmakers can save themselves a little $$. Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until the end of the year. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

I thought, sort of, that I had said everything that could possibly be said about making oboe reeds.  Had done all the deep dives there were.  I posted TWENTY-SEVEN videos between August and New Years, and loved doing it, but I was done.  I thought. But then people kept asking questions!  There are MORE questions to answer!  I love it.  This one, from Caroline, felt particularly fertile for me:  Hello, I absolutely love your videos, thank you so much for doing them. I was wondering if you could make a video explaining all of the reed making tools and how they differ. Different knife shapes, different plaques etc... and what they would be good for. So I'm working on a new series for you. Analysis of the different things I have on my reed desk, the different tools, the different shapes and functions of them. Today: The Plaque Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe r...

Commercially made reeds - those profiled-cane, shinily-wound Jones and Lesher and Emerald Reeds - have their place. They are designed for beginners, or for young players, or for players that don’t have reed-making skills of their own or a private teacher where they live.  And there are thousands of people who fall into that category.  These reeds are designed to be relatively affordable, and they are designed to WORK, immediately out of the box. But they are not meant to sound GREAT, and they are not 100% conistent, and they are certainly not meant for an advancing player to make beautiful, nuanced music on.  The ideal answer is to make your own reeds, or work with a good teacher who can help you by supplying reeds at the appropriate strength or by working on what you have - but there are plenty of scenarios in which you might find yourself holding a store-bought reed AND possessing high oboe standards, and wanting to make the one thing match the other.  Maybe yo...

After you get to the point where your reed has structure, symmetry, and balance, and you still don’t quite like it, what then?  What can you do to fix problems like Too Hard, Too Easy, Too Sharp, and Too Flat?  The Five Minute Reedmaker offers tips and tricks.  (My favorite ones are at the end!) Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until the end of the year. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

A student asked me as we were making reeds together whether I use a U or a W scrape.  I didn’t immediately know the answer, so I quickly ran the experiment and discovered that it makes a BIG difference! Today I’m going to talk about this distinction - which was not one I’d given any thought to before it solved my own problem this past month. UPDATE: I was asked for a quick video demonstrating this technique more thoroughly, and it is  HERE .  Thanks for the request, Sameer! Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until the end of the year. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

If you live in a place with seasons, you will notice dramatic changes in your reeds a couple of times a year.  (I'm sure I write about this twice a year, EVERY year - but I found one post  HERE  for sure) Changes that require some fundamental reworking.  I find that I struggle with these every year, but when I got a request from Dean to make this video I got my act together and came up with some strategies that may help you - and ME - in future seasonal shifts. Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until the end of the year. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

I'm getting close to the end of this project.  It's been really fun, and I will keep making these videos as ideas occur to me or as people ask questions or send me reeds to analyze - but the end of this year is the end of my weekly publishing schedule.  Thanks for all the support and feedback along the way! In this episode:   What is the heart? How thick is it really?   What happens when it’s too thin?   What happens when it’s too thick?   How can you tell if your problem is in the heart or elsewhere?   Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until the end of the year. Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your le...

I’m responding today to a note from Jonathan about stability. Stability in an oboe reed is a big concept, and varies greatly from person to person and style to style.  I have some ideas, though, and share them cheerfully. In this episode: What is stability? Where does it come from? How much of it do you want? What do you do when your reed is TOO stable? Too flexible? Click HERE for the video, if you don't see it below. Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until I run out of things to talk about.  Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!

Thursday night I gave the second performance of my Fall Recital.  I loved my music, I was happy with my choices.  I owned the stage.  I played to the full extent of my ability, my audience was on board and enthusiastic.  I felt that I was in complete control of the room, the material, and the oboe the entire time.  I got great feedback, and I also just knew that I had done well.  I could feel it. The previous Sunday I gave the first performance of my Fall Recital.  It felt to me like an unmitigated disaster throughout.  Right from the beginning I was missing some low attacks, but by half way through my second piece I thought I might die.  My arms hurt from tension.  My mouth ached. I could barely hold my face around the reed.  And there were three more pieces to limp through before I finally managed to escape.  I was embarrassed, sad, and disappointed in myself - what kind of musician am I if I can't even play through an hour...

In this episode: How to use your oboe mandrel to wind an English horn reed Measurements and structures of an English horn reed How and why to put wire on How and why to put the little tube on the end Here's the YouTube playlist with all of my other Five Minute Reedmaker videos.   You could subscribe right there if you wanted to - I'm dropping a video each week until I run out of things to talk about.  Here's my website, where you can order reeds or cane or ask me questions.   Questions will keep these videos flowing!  Here's how you can send me your own reeds to analyze and improve on video for your learning pleasure!