The second movement of the Saint-Saens Sonata is quite hard in terms of breath control and phrasing - bit cheesy but I like it
Theres a very hard Elliot Carter piece called Inner Song which is mostly very slow.

Head, Elegiac Dance?
Haydn Concerto slow movement?
Mathias Concerto slow movement?

Just off the top of my head.

I was just thinking that the Haydn concerto slow movement might fit the bill...

I made a reed that sounds reasonably okay!!!!



(Mind you, it probably won't tomorrow.)

May I suggest the Finzi Interlude with a piano reduction. Staggering work, about 14 minutes long and the reason I play the Oboe...its very challenging but simply beautiful.

Andrew

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I played the Saint-Saens sonata last year (all three movements) and I loved the second movement.

I don't actually own a copy of the Hadyn concerto. I have bought nearly all my oboe music second-hand and Haydn is one of those pieces which so many people play that I have always put off buying it telling myself that I am bound to come across a second-hand copy some day. Perhaps I should resign myself to paying full price for it ...

I don't know (in the sense of neither seen the music for nor heard) the pieces by Head, Mathias and Finzi.

Will go and look at prices on the Howarth's website and decide how much money I can afford to spend on music ....

Claire: Congratulations on your reed May it be the first of many
I made a really, really nice-sounding one last week. The next day it was too hard but because I thought it had the potential to be one of those reeds you fall in love with I was reluctant to do anything to it in case I wrecked it. Instead I took it along to my next lesson and insisted that my teacher put the finishing touches to it. It has indeed turned out to be

I'm guessing you already know the Poulenc sonata.

I am and I don't particularly like it - possibly due to the fact that I learnt the 1st and 3rd movements after I had been playing for only slightly over a year and I found them very challenging.

On a different note .
Fingers crossed that I may have a place in a symphony orchestra .

As I am such a coward about driving to the wind-band rehearsals, I asked around and found out that a (very good) French horn player drives right past my house so I have arranged to go with him. Last week on the way back he mentioned that the Departmental (French equivalent of County) music teachers' orchestra currently only has one oboe and would I be interested in playing second oboe/cor anglais. Of course I said yes but then wondered if I am actually good enough. He seemed to think I play well enough and said that there are already a few other people who aren't music teachers who play in it. The conductor is my daughter's music teacher at her new secondary school so I sent a letter in with my daughter this morning and am waiting with baited breath ...

Good luck fingers crossed for you

Oh shame. I must admit it took a few listens for me to tune into it, but I'm listening to it quite a lot at the moment. I think I have a bit of a thing for Poulenc anyway - love his choral songs.

Eek. That could explain a lot. I think I'll be leaving it a good bit longer than a year.

Gah!
Daughter came home for lunch and after asking how her morning was I said did you give the music teacher my letter to which she said "Oh no I forgot. It wasn't urgent.... was it?"
Children

It gets on my nerves that you can get loads of CDs but nowhere find the sheet music! grrr.

My daughter made amends and took my letter to the music teacher at afternoon break and he said he would love to have me

Rehearsals are once a month for three hours on a Saturday morning and I don't have to drive to get there


What are you looking for in particular?
Some things I have heard on a CD and wanted the music for have taken a long time to track down but I don't think I have been totally defeated by anything yet.

Salieri Concerto for Oboe and Flute
Daniel Bortz Oboe Concerto

The Bortz I've found on some finnish site for 400kr but you can only pay by credit card which I don't have.

If you don't have a credit card does it mean you can't buy anything from another country via the internet? In which case it does severely limit your chances of finding obscure pieces of music.

Can you get someone with a credit card (parent? relative? friend?) to buy it for you, and you pay them back?

Who was/is Bortz, anyway?!

I'm not sure - some websites seem to only accept credit rather than debit cards.

As for Bortz, he's a contemporary(ish) norwegian composer born in the 1940s i think.

Have you tried entering the card details anyway? Strictly speaking my card is a debit card rather than a credit card. (In France no cards are free and you have to pay more if you want the card to work as a credit card). However, when I am abroad, or using the internet, it is always considered as a credit card.

The Salieri is published by Peters and is available from sheetmusic plus and probably other places as well. Excuse my barging into the oboe thread, but I bought a copy in the 1970s when I was enamoured of an oboist.

you're quite right. not sure how I missed that the first time round... thanks!

I tried - no luck. Its ok I got a friend to use hers!

I was talking to a lady tonight who used to love playing the oboe. She loved it so much that she overplayed it and damaged the tendon between her thumb and index finger (weight of the oboe apparently). She hasn't been able to play at all since, isn't that sad

Her oboe was made of real ebony and neither of us were sure what modern oboes were made of - can anyone enlighten me please...

Most I think are made of Grenadilla, or African Blackwood (the same tree). I'm not sure of the differences (sound and weight wise) between this and Ebony. I've seen a few Howarth oboes in a lighter, more reddish-brown wood. anyone know what this is?

Cocobolo? Or something like that.

Sometimes when I'm playing the Oboe I find that my right arm starts to ache with the weight. I think it's posture, but I wonder how heavy my thumb/arm would find proffetional oboes with full keywork...



The reddish brown Howarth one is Cocobolo wood. It sais on the howarth website that it reduces 10% of the weight. More expensive though... Makes a different sound from the normal oboes so if you like it, it might be a better choice than the Grenadilla.

If you actually go to Howarths (as opposed to looking at photos on the website) then you will notice that even their African blackwood/Grenadilla oboes are sometimes reddish-brown. When I was in there one day they had one out on the counter which was a lovely reddish colour and I asked what it was made from, thinking it was Cocobolo but was told it was Grenadilla. Apparently most oboe manufacturers choose to use a coloured polish on the finished oboe to darken the wood but Howarths have decided to leave the natural colour. Since I was interested, the woman in the shop got a number of others out for me to have a look at so that I could appreciate that no two instruments were exactly alike.

As for the thumb problem... When I first started playing my cor-anglais I found I was having to stop after about 20 minutes because my thumb was too painful. When I told my teacher he looked at the way I was playing very carefully from all angles and then suggested I change very slightly the way I was positioning the thumb. I had too consciously think about this for a couple of weeks until it became automatic but the difference it made pain-wise was miraculous.

What worries me more is my shoulder. My playing is now limited not by my embouchure but by pain in my shoulder. This started last year and was initially caused by writing on the blackboard but obviously playing the oboe doesn't help. I am trying to limit what I write on the blackboard this year (but am not finding it very easy). However, just using the left-hand when cleaning it seems to make some difference and I am also trying to use the left hand at home when I need to reach to get anything off a high shelf.

I've never had that with the cor - probably because I don't really *practice* much on it, but my new oboe is significantly heavier than my old one and sometimes after about 45 minutes or so my hand starts to cramp. its getting better now, so it might have just been me getting used to it, but how did you change your hand position?



I didn't know that. Strange, i once saw an oboe snapped through the middle joint (don't ask!) and it was black all the way through. I suppose each batch of wood will be a different colour.

I changed three things:
1) The cor rests slightly further along the thumb nail (ie closer to the tip of my thumb). At first it felt like I was going to drop the instrument, particularly when playing top C as it is a thumb-plate and I was used to the conservatoire system.
2) I bent the thumb slightly.
3) I changed the angle of the thumb and inclined it slightly more towards the instrument.

As you are having lessons at a music college, it would probably be worth asking your teacher to have a look at the way you hold the oboe.

The height of the thumb rest also plays a role. When I started having severe shoulder pain I bought an adjustable thumb rest to put on the oboe (would have put one on the cor as well but couldn't find one that fitted). By setting this very low down I could relieve some of the shoulder pain but doing so created cramps in my thumb joint. As my shoulder got better I gradually raised the thumb rest again.

I would hazard the suggestion that there's a difference between an ache (what Lizbun is apparently describing), and actual pain (what Kerioboe is describing). Obviously pain is not good, but an ache is just tired muscles.

Lizbun, I've been playing for years and I still get arm ache when I'm doing a really intense practice session, playing pieces with not many breaks in them. I think it's just what you're familiar with - ie. the more practise you do with a professional oboe, the easier it will be... When you swap from a student oboe to a professional one, you might have to reduce your practice time for a while until you get used to the weight.

Personally, my main problem is that the weight has made my right thumb deformed It's been like it for years, but now it seems to be developing a second area of deformity

music college - me?! i should be so lucky!
i did speak to my teacher though (lisa osbourne - plays a lot with the Halle, anyone met her??) and she says its probably just the new instrument and i should get used to it.




wow bad times! perhaps it's worth getting a strap - if its actually damaging your hand!

Nowhere to hook it onto with my new oboe It's probably too late now anyway!

Des, are you really such a night owl, or are you in fact in a different time zone and not York at all?!

I thought you were studying music and just assumed it was a music college. But it seems you have a professional teacher as a player anyway so someone who ought to know what they are talking about.



I use a strap with the cor-anglais but this is at least partly for psychological reasons - as I said in an earlier post I feel I am not supporting the instrument properly when fingering C with a thumbplate system.

In desparation last year I tried the strap with the oboe (this was before I bought the adjustable thumb-rest) but didn't find it particularly satisfactory - the angle at which the oboe is held meant that the strap was brushing against the thumb. I also found it hard to find the right length for the strap - for it to take as much weight as possible it needed to be as short as possible but then I had no flexibility with reed placement. I did wonder if an elastic strap might have been better. If anyone has tried one I would be interested to know.

My teacher has a slight deformity on his thumb but I didn't notice it until he showed me.

P.S. Claire, my strap come with an attachment to fit it onto an oboe without a ring and you could always change the thumb rest.

I'm a student I thought it was expected but yeah we don't have internet in our house yet so I tend to stop by the computer room after a night out

Wish me luck. I'm going to my first rehearsal of the County Music Teachers' Orchestra tomorrow morning.

Go Keri...go Keri...

Will look forward to seeing how you've got on.

I seem to have a problem here.

When I'm practicing, I can play longish passages without taking unneccessary breaths which is how it should be, but in lessons, I can't play anything without breathing in a place I don't need to when practicing. (more or less the same tempo)

I think it's partly to do with the embouchure and not being able to form it properly with not enough warm up time available (1 hour lesson - 5 min scales) but I really feel out of breath quicker (probably because I don't want to make silly mistakes and concentrate on those more?), but I really don't want this to happen in festivals/exams etc, so is there anything I can do?



ps. good luck Keri!

This is the same for me, but I always put it down to slight nerves from being in a more formal situation than practicing at home. The other day I played Arethusa (from the Britten Metamorphoses) and Faure's "Piece" for an audition - for the most part it went really well, but towards the end of the Faure and halfway through the last "section" of the Britten I was totally out of breath and had to cut short some notes just to breathe.

You're right about the warming up in a lesson - i've taken to playing 10 minutes of scales before hand. I know a guy who practices twice a day, the first one is just scales, not because he needs to, just so he's "warmed up" for the second one! thats more dedicated than me

The rehearsal was really good
Everybody was very friendly and welcoming and the music was in many ways easier than the windband music since it wasn't written for the benefit of B flat instruments and there were never more than 3 flats or sharps in the oboe part.

I also realised that this was the first time I have ever met another real (as opposed to online) adult oboist on an equal footing (ie not in a pupil/teacher relationship). We had a nice chat about oboes, reed-making etc.

Finally I realised how lucky I am to have my teacher. The first oboist is a secondary school music teacher who studied music with oboe as his first instrument. While he is without any shadow of a doubt considerably better than me, his playing is not a patch on my teacher's - it is good but doesn't have that "extra something."


I'm exactly the same. For me it is purely down to nerves. In fact, on a bad day, I can feel a "bar" in my chest which prevents me taking a proper breath.

As for warm-ups, I remember posting on here about eighteen months ago about a senior windband run by the music school which I used to go to (but which only ran for a year) and how everyone played from cold and how I found it impossible to do so. I have got better at doing without a long warm-up but I still like to do something. I'm inclined to think that warming-up is part and parcel of playing the oboe since whenever my teacher picks up his oboe in my lesson to demonstrate something, he always starts by playing a very fast arpeggio. I think as you get better you probably get used to managing with a shorter warm-up (or at least that's what I'm optimistically hoping).

I have this breathing issue too, I think it's nerves. It would be interesting to work out whether you *do* really need to breathe, or if it's just your stressed-out subconscious telling you you need to breathe, whereas actually you don't...

Changing subject, an oboe first for me: I played a concert yesterday on one of my own reeds!!! Actually, it wasn't completely how I wanted it, but it was good enough... I'm quite proud of myself. To anyone who hasn't started making their own reeds yet: try it! It's actually easier than I thought it would be. (I thought it would be *months*, and hundreds of useless reeds, before I made anything playable. I've only made 3 useless ones.)

I had a really good lesson this afternoon which lasted for an hour and twenty minutes. It could have lasted even longer but my embouchure couldn't take any more.

First of all my teacher said he'd been making reeds at the weekend and he'd scraped one which he thought I would like so he'd put it to one side for me and it was

After a couple of warming up exercices he showed me how to play harmonics, saying this was a useful way of improving stability of third octave notes. They were fun

I was supposed to be playing with the music-school accompanist but she got confused about the time and turned up after 50 minutes. I had 5 minutes with my teacher and the accompanist and then my teacher had to leave so I stayed by myself with the accompanist. This was when things got really intense. In my normal lesson I play for a bit and then my teacher either makes comments or demonstrates and then I play a bit more. With the accompanist it was non-stop playing - including a fast movement at a much faster pace than I had been practising it.

Sounds like you had a good lesson very pleased for you.

I've recently taken on a new pupil, a near-beginner. She plays flute to a reasonable standard. The thing is, when she plays the oboe she gets really dizzy - I've tried correcting her breathing and posture (which were awful) and that helps a bit, but she still has to sit down after a short piece. She only gets this problem when playing, she can hold her breath for far longer than she can play. I've never encountered this before, any advice?? I worry it's going to put her off the oboe, which she really wants to learn..

Although you said you have corrected her breathing, I am fairly sure that the dizziness is due to NOT breathing OUT.

When I started the oboe (having played a lot of recorder and a little bit of flute) I found oboe breathing totally unnatural. Your body is telling you that you need more oxygen so instinctivly you try to breathe in, only your lungs are still full of air and this is what makes you feel dizzy.

What helped me at the beginning were:
1) two different symbols for breathing on my music: a cross meant breathe out a tick meant breathe in.
2) Playing scales with a metronome with a breath out on one beat and then a breath in on another (eg. C,D,E,F, out, in, G,A,B,C, out, in etc.)
3) Breathing out before I breathed in even at the beginning of a piece.

My teacher also insisted that I breathe out audibly and would stop me straight away if he didn't hear me breathing out (I did find this quite frustrating at times as he would be stopping me every couple of bars but it did stop the dizziness and I eventually got into the habit of breathing out without him having to remind me).

Although I no longer get dizzy, when playing in a stressful situation I still have a tendancy not to breathe out and to try to economise my air at the end of phrases when of course what I should be doing is to get rid of as much air as possible.

Good advice from Keri. She's definitely not breathing out enough. Have you explained this clearly enough to her? I have pupils who have had lessons for a year or so who still get dizzy spells in lessons because they forget to breathe out - it's such a counterintuitive thing to have to do.

As she won't know enough notes for scales yet, try making her do a repeated note, say 3 seconds long, and between each note she has to do a proper breath out then in each time. Once she's got the hang of that, make sure you keep a close eye on her when she's playing a piece - and if she's only not breathing in, not out, make her do the piece again, with out breaths.

Some kids seem to be more susceptible than others, I think it's just constitutional. I have one girl who never ever gets dizzy, and one who it happens to frequently, even though her breathing is not bad on the whole. I think it's because in a lesson she works much harder than she has to when practicing at home, and also she sometimes has her oboe lesson right after PE and/or before lunch, which isn't good!

This is almost exactly what we've been doing - she's not using the same breath for more than a few seconds but she still gets dizzy. Though to start with she was breathing really badly and doing it properly has helped a little.
She's not hyperventilating either before someone suggests it

She's just told me that she has an inner ear problem which means she sometimes gets dizzy if she lies on her back, or puts her head upside down - it could be connected but i would have no idea what to do about it.

I think it may well be connected but have no idea what you could do about it.

I had an ear infection last year and while it lasted I could only play sitting down as it made me dizzy as soon as I started to blow.

If you're doing all those things already, it would seem to me (as a totally non-medical person) that there could be some underlying issue, either the inner ear thing or something else. She's just not normal!

Can you get her to go to a GP? Preferably one who knows something about oboes (! could be a tall order). Or she could take a reed and explain the problem (possibly with a letter from you to explain the physiology of it).

You could also try these people, they might have some ideas and are probably more clued up than the average GP.

If you can get a medical opinion on what the problem is, they might also say whether it's something that can be dealt with, or if she will never be an oboist (and it's probably better knowing that sooner rather than later...)

thanks guys



i'll try having her sit down to play - not ideal, but worth a try!

I should perhaps add that the dizziness which came with the ear infection was very different to the dizziness which comes from not breathing out. Not breathing out causes a sort of light-headed dizziness the ear-infection dizziness was a very alarming impression of the whole room spinning and the floor no longer being horizontal.