fair enough. She described it as "like being ####ed" - I used to get light headed after playing sometimes but it wasn't like being ####ed so it could be the problem? who knows i'll give it a go.

Has anyone else used Singer's "Metodo Teorico Pratico" book?

My teacher has given me the third volume and told me to work on the arpeggio exercices. I, of course, looked right through the book (not just the pages he told me to work on) and discovered that at the end there are a whole lot of exercices in all the different keys so I have started the page with five flats with a view to building up to seven flats and (hopefully) improving my sight-reading in flat keys for the wind band.

No I haven't come across it. Ferling has studies in all the different keys, and that's enough for me at the moment. My oboe teacher has just put me back onto Ferling after several months of playing Bach. (I still have to play the Bach passages as well)


Some nice news to share. I've upgraded my instrument and am now the proud possessor of a Loree oboe. It's got a lovely sound and I love playing it. I never thought that I would end up with a Loree but when I tried a whole variety of different instruments, it was that one that I liked (and Andrew wasn't twisting my arm at the same time!).

Enjoy your new instrument!

The Singer book really is exercices as opposed to studies - there is no tune and most of the time no rhythm either (everything is written in semiquavers). They are also very short (the arpeggio exercices are half a line, the scale ones a full line - except my teacher expects me to work on a page at a time! Each exercice is supposed to be played with umpteen different articulations and dynamics and varying combinations of the two!


Sounds lovely. Where did you get it from in the end?

fantastic - is it new?

No it isn't new, it's a second hand oboe from Peter Davies in Huddersfield. He has all sorts of instruments which I tried, and had to decide between a new Marigaux or the Loree. I decided upon the Loree in the end because of the sound, but also because of the cost. Apparently it hasn't had a lot of use, and it is in very good condition. I can't believe that I found it so easily....when I took it to my teacher for his opinion, he told me that some of his pupils have had several instruments to try before they found the right one.
I am so enjoying playing it, it's great. Now I just have to find a buyer for my other oboe!!

Hello Itchy

congratulations on your new "loree", they are exquisite, welcome to the family...Ah yes the sound, that sound, nothing quite like it..with Loree's its you who makes the sound and not just the Oboe...they have such an individual quality...

Enjoy it, take care of it...remember Loree's can be a little tight lower down, just adpat your reeds and embouchure and you will be fine

Regards

Andrew

Hello Andrew,
I see the mention of a Loree has brought you out of hiding

Yes hello Keri, I have been a bit busy lately, lots of personal family dramas...and I needed to step back from playing for awhile...Am back on board playing now and re-building my embouchure...I guess I just needed a rest...

Am very pleased that Itchy has found such a lovely Oboe...very happy for her...

Anyway thanks for the welcome home, and hello to all my friends here

Andrew

Andrew
It's great to hear from you again, I was beginning to get a bit worried! Sometimes everyone needs a break, just to recharge.
You're right about the lower notes on the Loree, and altogether it's much less forgiving instrument than the W&W, but the sound....

Hello Itchy,

Yes I am back, back in the land of the living...I did need to gather my senses a little..

Glad you like your Loree, I am interested by what you say that the Loree is not as forgiving as you W&W, in what way?..it should be very smooth and the tuning should be excellent..the tightness in the lower notes is usual below D...How old is your Oboe do you know?..is it conservatoire, full Gillet, left hand F etc?...if it is proving very tricky lower down it may have a pad that is not quite sealing possibly Eb. Mine went out and was a terror till I tweaked it...

Ah yes the sound, that lovely sound..

Andrew

Wow! I'm glad you like your new Oboe itchy

By not as forgiving, what I mean is that any wrong notes are much more obvious and I've got to be a lot more careful about finger placement, somehow it seems easier to crack notes than on my W& W. I suspect it's much more about me getting used to a different instrument than anything else, not to mention my antique reeds.

As to age, I'm not too sure, but less than 10 years old. It's dual system so I have the best of both worlds, and a left hand F, which is great. I think I have to go on a journey of discovery to find out what all the other bells and whistles are...

Hello Itchy,

yes you will adapt to the new instrument, it will take awhile. Definitely try different reeds, loree's like certain staples and reed styles...

keep us posted

Andrew

Yay! my teacher thinks it's time I learned to scrape/adjust reeds! About time too. I hate having reeds that are too hard and not being able to do anything about it.

Just before the holidays my teacher showed me some harmonic fingerings which I am supposed to using in particular exercices.

However, I couldn't resist experimenting with them in pieces as well. I have a particular fondness for the second octave A (fingered like a D with the second octave key) which, it seems to me, is better in tune and less harsh than the normal fingering. In one piece there are several jumps from D to A. Do you think it is acceptable to use the harmonic fingering here?

Obviously I will ask my teacher but I haven't got a lesson for another week.

I use harmonics quite a lot, especially D/A. Can't imagine the piece you are talking about though, which one is it? Personally I only use them for long sustained and very quiet notes, not for jumping-around stuff.

It's the first movement of Telemann's Methodical Sonata n°1 in G minor but I don't think you know the piece - I posted a query about it when I first started it and I think you said then you'd never played it.

Each time the A is a sustained note and it is the ornamentation which makes it jump from D to A (in the unornamented line the preceeding note is the Bb immediately above). What worries me slightly is that you say you use it for very quiet notes and each time the A is supposed to be the climax of the phrase. I thought the harmonic fingering gave me a more convincing forte (but this no doubt says something about how loud my forte usually is )

I often use harmonics at the end of phrases or in quiet bits as they feel more stable, but I've always found they're very quiet, and not in proportion with the rest of the register, so I would try and avoid putting them in a solo melodic line unless I thought the dynamic contrast would sound good.

Looking at your other post where you say your harmonic is loud, it could be that you have an oboe with a different response - its not impossible. Ask your teacher is your forte is too quiet!

I don't need to ask him - I have lost count of the number of times when he has said that my idea of forte is his idea of mezzo-forte

I've just played in my first concert with the music teachers' orchestra.

I was somewhat stressed before hand as it was a repeat of a concert with a children's choir that they had already given five times last year so everyone except me knew the music really well (I had only played it once). However, in the end, it was really good fun. It was in a proper theatre so the audience were in the dark (ie we couldn't see them) and the musicians were seated behind the choir so I felt safely hidden. It was also nice to be playing with another (better) oboist who knew exactly what he was doing.

Following people's suggestions I bought Michael Head's "Elegiac Dance" and took it to my lesson last week for the first time. I just assumed my teacher would know it but he got quite excited about it. Apparently he heard it played once, long ago and didn't realise the music for it was readily available. In this week's lesson he got the music-school accompanist to come along; for her it was a completely unknown piece (as was the composer) but she liked it too and has borrowed the piano part to learn it properly.

I'm so pleased you and your teacher like the Head...The Elegiac Dance is very nice...

I'm so pleased that you like the Elegiac Dance, I love it. I'm just trying to persuade my piano playing friend that she wants to learn it as well. She took one look at the accompaniment and said it would take a little work!

The piano part looks worse than it actually is. Some of the chords are "interesting" (ie it is not immediately obvious if you are playing the right note or not) and a couple of passages are a little fiddly but not too impossible. I always play the accompaniments through to see what they are like and I sight-read this one without too much difficulty.

The one thing that rather depresses me about it is that at home I can play it breathing only where a breath is marked, come my lesson I can't even manage the whole of the first line without an extra breath

So, all the people who've played the 2nd movement of the Saint-Saens sonata:

I'm struggling with making some of the arpeggio type passages musical - especially the ones in the middle. My teacher suggested slightly elongating the first note and/or thinking of them as a sigh. The first idea isn't working for me, as soon as I start thinking too much about the rhythm, I play them more mechanically in time. The sigh thing is not too bad, but does anyone have any other ideas?

I think images/descriptions rather than technicalities work better for me - like if it was a staccato section, I might think of making it spiky or sound like bouncing a ball.

[quote name='plonkee' date='Nov 28 2008, 01:27 PM' post='764615']
So, all the people who've played the 2nd movement of the Saint-Saens sonata:

I'm struggling with making some of the arpeggio type passages musical - especially the ones in the middle. My teacher suggested slightly elongating the first note and/or thinking of them as a sigh. The first idea isn't working for me, as soon as I start thinking too much about the rhythm, I play them more mechanically in time. The sigh thing is not too bad, but does anyone have any other ideas?

[b]Imagine how a singer would approach it...imagine little rushes of water tumbling down a waterfall, some gathering speed others steadying slightly, minor accelerations and decelerations...think and play it musically, don't regiment it use rubato...its pure romance not a march...ebb and flow...thats about the best suggestions that I can come up with...if it sounds rigid it aint gonna work...

Andrew[b]

Its a "lilting" melody, my old teacher said she always thought of it of a shephard playing a flute. I would say give it some bounce, give it a little tiny bit of rubato and use dynamics within the figures themselves. I would start playing it exactly in time, with a tenuto on the first note of each beat. Its very easy to play this piece way too slow, or to rush through it and lose all the nuance - the way I play it is reasonably lively, but with lodas of metronone practice so that i don't lose the tempo. Not sure if that was massively helpful

Oh and by the way, I mentioned on another thread that I've just bought some Fortay "professional" reeds - they arrived yesterday and are absolutely superb they sound magnificient and have almost perfect intonation. I can't express quite how good these reeds are! I practiced for about 3 and a half hours today just because they were such a joy to play on - I think for the first time I'm really happy with the sound I'm making well done fortay!

Claire, my teacher said to thank you for suggesting that I buy the Mathias Concerto

I took it into my lesson today as last week he had said it was time to move on to something new and it turns out it is a piece he had never heard of. He was looking at the piano part as I played the first couple of lines of the second movement and he suddenly said "Come on, this looks really interesting let's go and try it with the piano."

He had booked the accompanist to come after about half an hour of my lesson to play Head's Elegiac Dance with me and when she arrived she was somewhat surprised to find us already there and playing (or attempting to play) something completely different. While I went back to the oboe classroom to get the Head my teacher talked the accompanist into sight-reading the first movement of the Mathias Concerto with him, which I must say was pretty impressive sight-reading! (Actually they played the whole of the first movement and the first three pages of the third until the accompanist decided she couldn't cope anymore and called it a day). While they were playing the head of the music school came in to see what they were playing and was equally impressed by this "unknown" piece.

When they'd finished my teacher was saying how much he likes music like this and that he'd forgotten how much fun it is to bash your way through an unknown piece with tricky rhythms (although I'm not quite sure the accompanist felt the same way) . He also said he was looking forward to teaching a completely new piece and brushed aside my objections that I had only intended to learn the second movement.

Glad it was a success!

The third movement is pretty tricky though, so if your teacher makes you learn that, be prepared to work!

At the speed at which he played the first movement I don't think I fancy that one much either.

Where have all the oboists gone? Nobody has posted on here for more than a month

What are people playing these days?
I'm working on Vivaldi's trio sonata in G minor with my teacher playing the second oboe part and next week we are supposed to be getting a cellist to play the basso continuo with us. I'm quite looking forward to that as I've never played with a cello before (although I'm hoping it's going to be a student cellist and not the cello teacher as I find the idea of playing with two teachers rather intimidating).

I just bought a copy of the Gillet Etudes. Very, very hard, but I'm sure they're good for me

I've got a slot in the "showcase" concert at the end of the academic year but I have no idea what i'm going to play. Any suggestions?

I'm working through those too, have kind-of done 3 and am on the 4th. (Not in the order of the book.) I say 'kind-of' because I don't feel I can play them particularly well, and getting them up to the metronome speed it says is rather a challenge! But my teacher seemed happy enough to let me off practicing them any more so that's fine by me.

I'm here
I'm playing the Telemann sonata in Bb 4th movt and Saint saens 1st mvt for 2 moors audition and starting the Telemann sonata in Eminor and poulenc sonata.
Still don't know exactly when Chethams audition is yet.

Playing it with the cellist must be great!

I'm meant to get some cane, thread etc... to start making my own reeds...

Emsoboe is working on Cimarosa 1st and 4th movement, Schumann Romance No1 and Gallop for G7 at the end of April They are going fine but she's a bit obsessed with getting the pieces sorted for G5 Piano.

Ferling studies...having started a bit of the way through the book, we've been working from the beginning since Christmas. My teacher promises me that I won't have to revise the studies that I've already worked through, so at some point I have to leap onwards into to the more difficult key signatures further on.
Apart from that, I've been doing "Roundelay" by Alan Richardson (is that right?) and some Vivaldi after that...

Having spent quite a lot of time playing Bach, I'm finding the Ferling studies quite challenging but I think I'm enjoying them, when I don't make daft mistakes. Perhaps enjoy is too strong a word!

Well at a lower grade......

Having done Grade 3 in December, I've been finishing off some Grade 3 material before attempting the dizzy heights of Grade 4. Currently some Purcell and De Fesch. I was however a bit surprised to find that a Hinke study I've just been doing seems remarkably approachable although it's apparently ABRSM Grade 5. I do get a bit confused by what appears to be totally different standards of difficulty at one grade.

On top of that my teacher came up with something for us to have a go at as a duo (though it was written for 3). It's called "3 Oboes Dancing" by Paul Burnell. He's an oboist and percussionist so it has some "interesting" rhythms. It consists of 36 lines of 8 bars which are played in canon. Counting my line whilst someone else plays their seemingly unrelated one is proving problematic, but I'm assured it's good for me. It certainly has potential though and it can be downloaded free at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.burnell/msqpaul.html

Nice pieces. I hope the exam goes well.

the too moors festival auditions are meant to be this saturday but it's cancelled because of the weather At least the pieces are going to be for grade 8 as well.

Sorry your festival is cancelled Liz. Are the G8 pieces going well??
I'm thinking of doing G8 myself. I've played some of the pieces already but nowhere near exam standard. It's the scales/aural that are terrifying me.
Perhaps I'm quietly barmy even thinking about doing this, especially as I don't need that sort of hassle.

I quite enjoy them too, I just wish the print was a bit bigger.

Funny you should say that. My clarinet teacher swore by Ferling and used them for sax and clarinet teaching.

After a few weeks I spent a few minutes sweating over our photocopier at work and learned how to enlarge and then copy in landscape format, so it filled the whole A4 paper.

I'm concentrating on oboe these days and have a great teacher, but I'm not really good enough yet to play Ferling well enough to stop him spinning in his grave!

Steve

Unfortunately I haven't had easy access to a photocopier since I started learning the oboe, otherwise I would have done this long ago.

My oboe teacher did actually suggest that the small print wasn't such a bad idea since it stops me being able to sight-read them straight off and forces me to memorise at least in part.

I don't think that I play Ferling very well either, but my teacher is a great believer in challenges and learning experiences!

Well I would say ( and I am not alone here) that the Gillet are almost impossible to play and that was a comment from a professor at the Paris conservatoire...The Ferling are nice and the Selner are excellent..James Browns technical excercises are good and the Bleuzet are very do-able...

I applaud anyone who can get to grips with the Gillet...

Not been about much but am home now...and have just been offered first chair in a nice symphony orchestra so I am well pleased..

Andrew

Me too, i've been looking at no. 23 (I think - the staccato one that starts with repeated Ds), and physically cannot play it at the tempo indicated! It's at 120 and I can get about 100 at best. The double tounging bit too is a disaster. My teacher can though and she's only 5 years older than me! jealous.

Aha, you tried to slip that in quietly didn't you!

Fantastic! Congratulations!

So, come on, you can't leave us all just with that snippet. When, how, why, what...? etc

Which orchestra, and will you still talk to us when you're famous?


Steve

Aaaaaagggghhh, I'm doing that one at the moment. It's a nightmare! I can get it up to 108, but getting it any faster than that is defeating me at the moment. My tongue just gives up after a bar or two.

And my teacher's making me learn double tonguing. I sound like a beginner! It *is* getting gradually better but it's still fairly rubbish.