To my mind the simple truth is porbably that after a while playing the lip is becoming tired and maybe the diaphragm isnt supporting as it should...at this point a little tension is creeping into the embouchure thus closing the reed to retain pitch..It happens to me and has nothing to do with any particular reed makers reeds, I have found it can happen with anyones reeds, sorry to say it but the smallest pressure which comes from the embouchure will do this quite quickly ..

My reeds close now and then and I just give them a gentle squeeze and they are fine..Always give a reed a little time in water and relax the embouchure..I am afraid to say that we ( none of us amateurs and students I suspect) support correctly all of the time..If a reed was playing in pitch when we started then the fault is most likely to be ours and not that of the reed maker..so relax and keep the diaphragm support going..

Kindest regards

Andrew

Forgot to say. I've also always found on my S40 that half holing or lifting the LH 1st finger makes no difference, they both sound the same.

For top "d" try low c and middle finger (RH) and in the left hand add the G and A key, lift the index finger and you shouldnt need an octave key again until you reach top E..Now bear in mind that I play conservatoire and not a thumbplate system..but its always worth a try

Andrew

I'm sure you're right Andrew. Plus something I've noticed creeping in recently is a tendency not to relax the embouchure sufficiently when descending a scale and also not to support adequately. That means I start the next "ascent" already sharp. Go up and down a few times like that and my pitch can go sky high if I'm playing solo. If it feels as though that is happening I try very hard to relax and increase support.

Tension in the lip is very common at this stage Pushpull..You should have heard mine creeping up last night..I actually closed my reed completely at one point and nothing came out.. I could have kicked myself tension and tiredness is the devil when it comes to pitch and I had played a very lengthy rehearsal that afternoon.. I actually re tuned the entire woodwind section after the Beethoven prior to the Bruch as everyone with the exception of my second was creeping up a little..I did the same again after the first piece in the second half as well..we had a lot of high notes coming and if I hadn't the pitch would have gone stratospheric..

A good tip from one of the pro string players was to re-check the tuning throughout the orchestra, she meant well and it proved a good suggestion. Funny part was I had never thought about re-tuning them but the moment I gave the "A" everyone checked without question...I came over " all in charge" which was a hoot..amatuers and pros all tuned and we were ready to go..

Responsibilty is a heavy cloak to wear but someones gotta wear it..

Andrew

Just to add to Andrew's remarks, if it is only the high notes which are sharp, Emsoboe could try the following:
sing a low note, a mid note and a high note (doesn't matter what, just that the low and the high should be at the limit of her range) and get her to concentrate on what she feels in her throat. Then get her to play a high note on the oboe while imagining she is singing the low note. My oboe teacher got me to do this and it is surprisingly effective. I think it releases the tension in the throat and the unconscious desire to bite down on the reed to force the note out (or something like that).

The other thing to practise is octave jumps, the aim being to hit the correct note first time.

I'll show her this tomorrow and it's something she can have a go at.

It is back to lessons this week and I've asked her teacher to work on a specific piece (she wants to play it in a competition) , he thinks she plays it well already. We think there is room for improvement even though she's probably playing better than when he last heard it. She ended up downloading a recording from itunes to get ideas from in the end.

I don't know about how other people think but there always seems to be room for improvement even when the pieces are reasonably good.

Thats very clever, I like that idea...must try that..Octave jumps as well are essential, hear the note before you jump..

I'll have to try that today

My teacher has me doing downward octave slurs at the moment.

Lesson tonight! Guess what someone will be doing tomorrow?

Of course there is. Getting tired of a piece or overplaying it is the only problem

Emsoboe doesn't really get tired of pieces unless they are too easy and that isn't the case with the current ones. She is playing several pieces at the moment.

She's had a good lesson tonight, the first hour she's had with her actual teacher. She was very pleased with how it all went.

I did mean jumps both ways (up and down and down and up) and once you've mastered one octave you can do two.

My teacher seems to have persuaded me to join the NYO and I don't know why I agreed lol Application done already so hope I get in



What is she doing at the moment?


I'm doing the Krommer concerto op.52 1st mvt, Grovlez sarabande et allegro and Telemann eminor sonata.

She's still playing all the Schumann Romances, trying to improve no1. To be honest she's not looking to start anything new just now. There are reasons for this but it's all a bit up in the air at the moment.

Lots of things going on though with two Halle projects and another with the BBC Phil where they are playing at the Proms. A local festival and a local Young Musician of the year. Not the best time to start new repertoire She may even think about NYO too.

Have you decided on Chets or Wells?

I see. I chose Chets
NYO is VERY difficult to get in to.

Yes!! All auditons are experience, getting in would be great but not getting in wouldn't be a disaster. It's a philosophy we've developed recently, so far so good. She is getting hour lessons now and opportunities to play at a higher level so who knows by September.

Have you got funding organised for Chets and was it easy to get?

Yep. I understand that. I entered loads of competitions/festivals/auditions thinking I'll never do well but the thing that matters is that you enjoy the performing experience, not winning. The only bad time is when my playing is bad in the extreme and I want to disappear from the room. Thinking about it, I don't have that often. Most of the performances are a bit embarrassing but not as bad as it could be. NYO want grade 8 distinction as a minimum (like BBC young musician) so it's a very high standard orchestra.

the funding for chets is all sorted now. It's going to be like a less stressed version of music college so if(when lol) I go to a music college I can hopefully handle the difficult part better.

Well if you do it once and don't get accepted you at least know what to expect the next time. I think so long as you don't pin all your hopes on the outcome then you can learn a lot from the experience.

For some reason Em does better at auditions than exams , though she does tend to get high marks for her pieces. Not much festival experience.

Glad you're sorted for Chets and hope you enjoy it.

Don't forget your clogs and shawl. It'll be perishing up here come September. Actually it's pretty grim today.

my teacher doesn't believe in wire... she says good cane shouldn't need to be opened further if it was tied on properly. I didn't play them for two days and they're fine again now, maybe they were just tired, or I was..

Good luck for NYO - I saw them do the Berio Sinfonia a couple of months ago, it was fantastic.

Opinions differ on wire. My teacher uses thick Cor Anglais wire, some people use the thinnest you can get and some people don't use them at all. Same with scraping.

Thanks. I don't think i'll get in but it's worth a try. There must be loads of people better than me who are trying to get in lol I'd rather be 2nd oboe of a good orchestra like that than principle of a smaller orchestra that i'll be leaving behind anyway.

Won't you be at Chets in September? I would have thought they would have a pretty good Orchestra and there's always the Halle Youth (don't know how good, but they are supposed to be G8+) if you wanted to do more. One of our teachers really rates one of the Birmingham Youth Orchestras (it isn't weekly by all accounts). As far as I can gather quite a few of the Chets students are in the National Orchestras.

I would think that you will have lots of options for higher level playing as well as NYO.

Interesting Des. Mine were also better after leaving them for a couple of days. Were you having problems last week in the hot weather? I wondered if that might be it.

Halle youth isn't bad at all, I was going to join but couldn't make the rehearsal time. They sometimes play gigs with Halle players mixed in, which is pretty good experience really.



I was actually. Perhaps that was it - I remember going on tour in the south of France a few years ago and my reeds almost stopped working. They are enigmatic beasts aren't they??

My daughter is in the Halle Harmony, even after a couple of rehersals you can tell they are going to be really good. I've heard a rumour that the intention longer term is to use this as a feeder Orchestra for the Halle Youth (may not be acurate). I got the impression, at the end of last weeks rehersal, that the organisors were impressed with how this is going.





Seems like all three of you have been having similar problems. Got some new reeds arriving today hopefully. As our problem one has been pronounced deceased (not just down to the weather).

The weather definitely has an effect on them and is very noticeable living where I do in the south of France. The problem is in the change in seasons - once the hot dry weather (it's not so much the heat as the change in humidity levels) is here to stay (or gone for good) you can just rescrape slightly but the transition period (which lasts somewhere between three and six weeks) is an absolute nightmare. You just don't know from one day to the next what state the reeds are going to be in. There have been weeks when my teacher has refused to do anything to my reeds because he says that by the next day everything will have changed again and it is highly probable that I will want the reed back the way it was before he adjusted it. What I tend to do now is to forget about rotating reeds until the weather has settled, have a variety of different ones and just find one that works on any particular day.

Well that may explain the huge reed case (50 or 60) my first teacher carted around. She usually discarded at least one of her reeds in MY lessons. God knows what her turnover was when playing seriously (though she did hint once that she ought to be spending 2 hours a day making reeds ).

hot dry weather might not be good for reeds but it's much better to live in than hot humid weather you get in asia

My teacher has one of these but has the reeds he gives to his pupils in it. For his own use he has a multitude of small reed cases and in weather-changing-periods can open five or six of them and try a reed from each before he finds one he likes.


Hot dry weather is not bad for reeds - it just makes them behave differently. Actually I think you could use oboe reeds instead of a barometer as a rough prediction of changes in humidity levels

There was a chethams introduction day yesterday I'm going to be in what seems like a very good wind quintet but what kind of music would a wind quintet play? there can't be a huge repertoire around...

I can't answer your question but the Halle have a wind quintet so there must be some. Their's includes, Clarinet, Oboe, Flute, Basssoon and French Horn (didn't notice the fifth instrument sorry). Is the quintet you're playing in similar to this?

yep.

There is a massive repertoire for wind quintet. It's pretty much the wind equivalent of the string quartet. Try Googling or just look at a sheet music web site e.g. https://www.juneemerson.co.uk/

Lots of famous composers wrote pieces for a wind quintet and there also lots of modern arrangements of all sorts of things.

My teacher plays in one and they have a very varied repertoire.

I have it on good authority the other instruments are Cor Anglais and Eb Clarinet that are sometimes involved. Emsoboe has been working wiht members of the Halle wind quintet over the last couple of weeks.

Having a bit more time this morning (at work ) I've had a bit of a Google and come up with a couple of sources for you. There is actually a Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_quintet
which is a good start.

That also has a link to:
http://www.idrs.org/Publications/Journal/J...ugh.Survey.html
which is a survey that was carried out amongst quintets in America. All the usual suspects are there including Danzi and Reicha who wrote several each. I discovered from the list there is a quintet arrangement of Ravel's "Tombeau de Couperin". I didn't know that, I shall certainly be on the lookout for a recording.

Incidentally, anyone studying oboe should have a good poke around the IDRS (International Double Reed Society) website. There is a huge amount of information and a searchable database of articles accessible even by non-members.
http://www.idrs.org/

If you like your music 20th Century, I can recommend a CD by the Galliard Ensemble - "20th Century Wind Quintets", which has some wonderful stuff including (as listed in the IDRS article above):
Berio - Opus No. Zoo (great fun)
Ligeti - 6 Bagatelles (lovely pieces, not in a style you might expect from Ligeti)
Carrapatoso - 5 Elegies (small pieces in the style of various (dead!) composers).
See http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Deux-Elles/DXL1025

Clarinet, Oboe, Flute, Basssoon and French Horn (didn't notice the fifth instrument sorry)

This is five instruments!

Ligeti's ten pieces for wind 5tet are pretty cool too.

I did realise later In my mind there was another and then I remembered seeing an Eb Clarinet peeping out of a case and a Cor but they were probably only there for company

I'm actually quite pleased with myself as I was only dropping off

Arg! I keep breaking reeds when making them! My knife is sharp enough but the problem is me being impatient. The problems are:
1. I put too much pressure in my hand when scraping thinking that it would be quicker. I really find it difficult to improve on because i've been scraping the same reed for ages with no improvement so become stressed which makes my scraping worse
2. my tying on isn't as secure as it should be so it looks fine at the start but later on it isn't

At least it's not something I have to learn perfectly any time soon but it would be nice if I can make reeds however bad the quality without breaking so many before going to chets.

I think you've hit the nail on the head You need to be more patient (easier said than done I know ).

It looks so easy when you watch someone who knows what they're doing. I spend probably about half an hour doing what my teacher does in less than five minutes. (He keeps telling me I'm too cautious but at least I end up with something playable at the end). At the moment I have taken to doing the scraping over two days. The first day I scrape it until I get a crow and then the second day I scrape it to get it the way I want.


This was one of the things my teacher was intransigent about. If he thought it wasn't tied on properly he would cut the thread, take the cane off and make me start again. At the time I did find it slightly infuriating as what I really wanted to do was scrape but I am now glad he was like that as it is the one thing about reed making that I can do quickly and well.


It really is a case of lots of practice and you will, presumably, have more free time once school finishes. When I first started I bought some cheap cane to practise on - a reed maker in France sells 30 gouged and shaped low quality reeds for the price of 10 good ones. They were playable, although never brilliant but at that stage I think even with good quality reeds my scraping wasn't good enough to produce a good reed.

Yep. My teacher seems to do it in no time at all GCSEs are over so I should be able to make loads. The ones that I eventually get to work aren't too bad but it's just I can't seem to make many of them compared to the ones that end up broken.

Different topic but no.10 of the ferling studies is 'tempo di Polacca' so how fast should it be?

That's it. The time has come. I am now, officially, without an oboe.



It was a crappy oboe, but I miss it. At least I HAD one. Can't afford to get another one right now...

What happened to it?

It was only rented from the School of Music, but as I just moved Manchester and am no longer a member of a School of Music I have to get my own... I'm looking at the rental schemes on Howarth's at the moment, hopefully get a decently priced one there!

Have a look at Howarth's second-hand instruments. You can save a lot of money buying one second-hand and if you intend to carry on playing works out cheaper than renting in the long term.

Second hand is good but if your looking for a professional model you need to try loads and the one you like might not be second hand.

I really need to get a new oboe in the next few months before the one I have now becomes unplayable but I have to wait for chets teachers opinion and trying different makes (loads I want to try) is going to take a lot of time... Should I have a look in howarths to see if I can pick out a few makes that I really like over the holidays and save time or will I need to try loads at chets all over again if I do?

I'm not sure where Chets would get their Oboes from for you to try. From what I saw at the RNCM woodwind day some of their students had Howarths, the younger ones S10's. It's probably best to make a start and then discuss them with your teacher at Chets before you buy. There isn't anywhere in Manchester likely to have a big stock of Oboes.

True, but if you go to Howarths you can try out their second-hand models and they have got lots of different makes of professional ones second-hand (including both thumbplate and conservatoire and dual system). And if Stephie has no oboe and a limited budget this seems to me to be the best way to go. He could always sell it again in a couple of years time.


Didn't your Chets teacher give you any advice?
Why don't you see if someone can take you to the IDRS at Birmingham? You could try out every make there and make a short list to suggest to the teacher in September.