I've just indulged and bought an oboe...I've always wanted one and this one was incredibly cheap (for an oboe) and i gave into temptation and bought it - have I made a huge mistake! Have I wasted my money? It is apparently playable and was made for Rudall Carte and Co.

aw - I want one

I really wish I didnt have this habit of doing these things 'on a whim'. This one was valued at £500 and I got it for 250 - not bad??

Another question, what strength of reed do you reckon I should be playing with? I do play the clarinet with a 3. I dont want to buy a few because they are expensive!

Congratulations! I have 2 cheapies from Ebay, but never really took the oboe seriously. I do play occasionally and found it surprisingly easy - though, like you, I play the clarinet. For a complete music beginner though, I'd imagine it is slightly harder than clarinet - but only at the beginning.

Start off with a cheap Rico medium-soft for now, then later experiment with better reeds. I think a soft reed is too soft for an adult - especially if you play clarinet.

Keep an eye on Ebay.com. The exchange rate is great for the pound and there are some excellent reeds from the USA. Because the reeds are so light, postage is very low. In fact some reedmakers don't even charge for postage.

With all those little screws, the oboe looks horribly complicated, but in fact the screws are for fine-tuning the adjustment and many people wish that we had the same on clarinets!

There is a great little book: A Method for Adjusting the Oboe and English Horn by Carl J. Sawicki.

Very easy to follow and goes step by step, introducing the important screws and telling how to adjust them.

Have fun!

Steve

Malone,

I forgot to say that the Oboe forum at www.woodwind.org is a great forum - very friendly.

Steve

My husband bought my first oboe from e-bay as a present as I had always wanted one and, purely by co-incidence saw an advert for oboe lessons a fortnight later and so started learning with a teacher almost immediately.

I could get a sound out of my oboe straight away (although not a particularly nice one), it was when I heard my teacher try it out that I realised it was actually quite a reasonable oboe. If you have any oboe playing friends I suggest you get them to try it out for you.

The screws have an unfortunate tendancy to work themselves loose which effects playing, often quite drastically. As Stevenso says you can look in Sawicki's book or there a couple of internet sites with similar diagrams. Don't try adjusting anything without some sort of diagram as it is not immediately obvious what each screw does and sometimes adjusting one screw means you then have to adjust another.

I can't give any advice about reeds as my teacher makes them. Don't start of with too hard a reed though as this will encourage a tendancy to bite on the reed to get a sound - the oboe embouchure should be rounder than a clarinet one. To somewhat simplify, pressure on the bottom lip makes the note in tune, pressure from the top lip improves the tone. To have some idea of how much pressure you need try playing a note without tonguing it, just gradually increase the amount of breath you use until a note comes out. The reed strength is right for you when the note comes out without you feeling either that you are having to force the note out or that you are having to hold back to stop it squeaking. (Sorry that's not much help if you're trying to order them by post).

You should also be aware that the reeds are incredibly sensitive to climatic variations and can change from one day to the next.

Have fun

Hi - thanks for the reed advice - I just bought a medium-soft rico one from a website i dont know the name of - I could buy it from ebay because my monthly paypal limit i gone from my huge spending spree this month so had to go else where. I may ask for advice later kerioboe when it comes as as far as I know, I am the only woodwind teacher for miles around, except for the odd flute teacher, and I dont teach oboe...yet...!

someone else to join the Oboe conversations! I've just bought a Saxophone for £100 from a Cash Recycle place. I saw it in the window and thought my girls would give it a good home Is it that time of the year or something?

The biggie is what does it sound like?

Have fun playing

I dont know yet - its an ebay job, but from a private seller, not a mass made chinese thing. the seller played oboe herself for 10 years but hasn't used in the last year so decided to sell it.


Oh, and i've just been out and bought some music for when it comes. I've got learn as you play Oboe from amazon £3 and if its sounding ok, then I also bought first repertoire peices for oboe with a goal for playing in the music festival in june in the Adult learners class - the piece is Siciliana from partita no.2 by Telemann...

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I've just joined you.

yay!

You mean you've just bought one too?

mmm... eBay.. (and even cheaper than Malone's ) - If I spend twice as much again getting it mended it will still be a good price.

oooh - Grrrr! But i know the one i bought is playable - I emailed the seller for more information and to tell me a bit more about its history, seems its had a really good life and has been in the same family for over 20 years...

humph

(actually I'll be surprised if mine doesn't pull out of the sale)

oh dear...they can't do that, surely - they have an obligation to sell it to you - it was their own fault for putting the starting price low if they were hoping to get more.

I've bought things where they've pulled out - they send the money back by Paypal and make an excuse - like they made a mistake and it was sold last week in the paper, or it's just been stolen. Nothing you can do really. Except give them horrible feedback - and then they give you some.. (which I wouldn't risk)

ah yes, I've been there with bad feedback - I bought a clarinet from ebay, and they wrapped it in one layer of tissue paper and so one of the joints had broken, it was still playable, so I left negative feed back, and he left me negative too...unfair!

So are we entering the Grade One challenge?

I hope so! But I've just done on eup here, (on french Horn) so think i'll have to wait till november again!

go for it both of you! I'll look forward to hearing the results of the Grade 1 challenge

Hope both the Oboes arrive safe and sound...Just maybe in the future one of you could play a duet at a forum concert with my daughter?

what about a trio...that would sound...ermmm. interesting!

Well we've got a duet book (unused) but not a trio one. You could always give it a try...Is Leeds too soon?

Hmmm...I think so. I've just heard its being sent special delivery so I should have it by tomorrow - yay! Leeds is quite far away for me...

and me

Have you played the oboe before malone? It can take a while to get a nice sound out of it.

I used to swap instruments with the oboist who sat behind me in school concert band, It sounded ok then.

I see you're over the boarder! It's almost odds on you'll sound like a duck at the start

Isn't this 'duck' business a bit of a cliche thing that everyone repeats.

From my own humble first attempts I think the duck sound may be due to kids being given reeds that are too soft for them, and then blowing too hard.

Rather like those things that hunters blow to attract the ducks down.

My playing could be described as many things - some unrepeatable here - but nothing like a duck!

Steve

It is definitely to do with the reed, although not I think that the reed is too soft. My embouchure has strengthened rapidly over the past few months and if I use a reed which is too soft and blow too hard no sound comes out at all.

I think it is more likely that the reed is not properly balanced. I have occasionally had reeds which have become too hard and duck-like. My teacher has almost always been able to remove the "duck" sound by some judicious scraping. On the rare occasions when, after about five or six attempts, the sound hasn't improved he decides it is is a duff reed and snaps it off the staple.

If you vary the pressure of the bottom lip you also get a sort of wavering sound which I think, combined with a poor reed, probably produces the sound people refer to as a duck (although I think a strangled cat would possibly be more accurate).

Thanks to you, I have now been banned from our local animal shelter! I only wanted to conduct scientific experiments!

Steve

PS The vet said that the cat should be right as rain in a few days.

I also think it's because when children start they blow the notes individually. this might be due to reed or more likely the strangeness of blowing a double reed instrument. Could also be to do with learning how to breath for the Oboe/ lung capacity/flow. My daughter sounded very odd at first and in the very early days people commented on her duck like qualities. I suspect it's just a hurdle that people have to get over and it will last longer for some than others. I'm pleased to say that it only lasted for a couple of months with my daughter. Perhaps adults being physically bigger adapt more quickly so it doesn't present itself as a problem for any length of time in the same way.

I went out and bought two reed yesterday - both medium soft. And a freind bought me a bassoon reed (?!) by mistake I think but i accepted graciously and have been playing with that. From looking at a reed, how do you know what strength it is - like on clarinet reeds that say eg.3.5+ etc...?

it has arrived...

and...?

well...its definitely an oboe

but what does it sound like?

Well...it is playable, but I do think it needs a little bit of TLC from a good instrumental repairer to get back to its best. Up close it is really beautiful. The wood hasn't been dyed black which is so often the case on these Clarinets and Oboes but its a very rich brown colour in the right light. I had a look aver it and adjusted a couple of screws but I think it needs a little more like, I think there are a couple of bits of cork missing. Apart from that, I can get an oboeish sound out of it and its alright but not sound playing most of the first two octaves.

Do you mean cork as in pads or cork as in muffling the sound of the mechanism? You can check that the pads are sealing properly fairly easily with cigarette paper (I expect you probably know how to do the same thing with a clarinet - let me know if you don't).

I suggest you concentrate on D above middle C up to G two octaves above middle C to start with. Middle C and the B and Bb below are more sensitive to the correct embouchure and the correct breath pressure, as are the notes which use the second octave key. The B and C one octave above middle C also have a tendancy to sound a bit hollow compared to other notes - you learn to compensate for this eventually. Cheapish oboes may also have other inherently weakish notes.

As a woodwind teacher I know you know that you have to make sure the holes are properly covered but I used to find that half-holing used to make other fingers slip off marginally, the annoying thing was that I would know one of my fingers wasn't covering properly but very often it was such a slight displacement I couldn't feel which one it was and I couldn't hold a note long enough to try moving each finger in turn to find out. Although possibly this is easier on an open-key oboe like yours as the holes in the centre of my keys are tiny.

Most of the pads have obviously been replaced by modern ones that you would find on a clainet of flute and not made of cork. What I meant was that, some of the look like they aren't quite where they should be in realtion to other keys, but i'm only guessing but I'm not an expert at these things but I often take my own instruments apart to I can aquaint myself with the mechanism and how it should be so when something goes wrong, I know what it is and how it should be. As I have never looked at another oboe this closely its harder to tell what it should look like. and there is a key which is not going all the way down when it should be when pressing the middle right hand pinky key down, but it does go down if i press the right hand middle finger key - the pne I am talking about that wont go down it the one on the side, directly underneath the right hand pinky keys...does that make sense?

I'm guessing you mean the little baby key in the middle of this picture (which is hopefully going to appear!)



You're right in saying it should go down when you have your rh middle finger down and rh little finger down (although not if you were just pressing the key that is directly on top of it in the picture) I know that I've fixed a similar problem on another oboe in the past, but I think I did it through guessing and it not being an oboe anyone cared about
If you want me to take some close up pictures of the mechanism of my oboe so you can see what it looks like, I'm happy to oblige (mine is a howarth s20)

that would be quite useful actually. I took the bottom joint completely apart last night and oiled it, so the keys are moving alot more smoothly now which is nice. Used to have a flute with heaps of little adjusting screw on it so the adjusting the screws on this is quite similar. I'm just about to take the top joint apart now and see what I can do there. As far as I can se it is mostly problems with the lower joint, but let wait and see. I might fix that little key problem with a bit of felt in the meantime and see how that works out.

How to do you adjust tuning? I seem to be in the key of Bb constantly, I have a tuner and cant get it in tune. and the reed doesnt go any futher in

Isn't that why the orchestra tunes to the oboe? Because it's very difficult to tune?

I think a whole tone out is a little excessive though....

thats what i thought, I've been working on it and i think im only a semitone out now...