Well done Keri!!

Well done!

Thanks for that Andrew. I wouldn't really consider buying an instrument over the internet unless it was really cheap, ie one to stick in the gap between me leaving school and having to give back that oboe and saving enough to get one of my own! My main problem is that I know very little about oboes... It took me a while to work out that the website I was using for fingerings wasn't working because I had a thumbplate oboe!

As a guidline, how much would I need to save to get an instrument thats the same standard as my clari? (Full key system, pro level)



Go you!!!

First of all you have to decide what you mean by "full key". You have a choice between thumbplate, or conservatoire or dual system which lets you use either system. I think many British professionals have dual systems but most (possibly all) French professionals have a conservatoire only system. There is also the question of whether you want covered or open keys.

As to what keys you need: a bottom Bb, a C#-B link, a vent hole for the forked F are (I think) a minimum. I would also add a third octave key although I'm not sure if they are quite so standard on thumbplate oboes. Some people will say also a left-hand F, others will say you can live without it. Similarly the banana key, my teacher (who plays professionally) says he has only ever used it in one piece.
Then there is the question of trill keys, left and right-hand trill keys for the C-D trill are handy, you need a C#-C trill key and a split D ring is also useful for trills. You can also get a key to help you with Ab-Bb trills.

I would be inclined to think that a graduate or intermediate oboe would probably be sufficent for your needs. These start at around £2500 (as opposed to around £4000 for a professional one). If you look on the Howarth website they have a comprehensive (ie not just their own) list of new oboes (with descriptions and pictures). Once you have found an idea of what you would like from their "new instrument" pages you can then have a look at the second-hand pages (these don't have pictures or as detailled a description) but you can get an idea of how much you would save if you bought second-hand. If you go to Howarths you can try out as many new and second-hand ones as you like.

John Myatt's website is not quite so helpful (no pictures) but they do stock cheaper brands than Howarths (such as Ward and Winterbourn which I think Itchy plays and is happy with) so it might be worth having a look there as well. As Andrew says they are about a 25 minute train-ride from Kings Cross and will also let you try as many instruments as you like.

Thanks Keri. So much more complicated than Clarinets! I have a LH F key on the oboe I use now, so I'll probably want that. Either of those figures are pretty inaccessable to me at the moment, with £4000 for world challenge to pay for, and an A clarinet before I go to University.. That is quite scary though, as an intermediate oboe costs more than my clarinet did! Methinks my stopgap between school and a decent oboe of my own will be quite a long lasting one...

I forgot to say anything about octave systems. The most widely used is a semi-automatic one (I don't know what you have on yours) where the first octave key closes automatically when you press the second-octave key. With a completely automatic system (or German system) you only have one octave key and the second octave hole opens when you lift your left-hand third finger. However, I have heard that the mechanism is not particularly reliable and it also means you have fewer fingering choices for the highest notes.

As far as price is concerned, I would suggest thinking about a second-hand oboe. My oboe teacher says that they are like cars; as soon as you take a new oboe out of the shop it loses about 15% of its value. If you buy a second-hand oboe through a reputable dealer like Howarths or John Myatt then you know what you are getting and they are considerably cheaper. You can even tell Howarths what you are looking for and they will let you know when one comes in that fits your requirements.

I took a gamble when up-grading mine (after thinking about if for a very long time) and bought a Marigaux on e-bay. I paid a bit less than £600 for it, had about £500 worth of repairs (complete repad and some slack taken out of the key work and had actually expected to pay a bit more than this) and almost died of shock when I asked Howarth for an estimate to give to my insurance company and they gave me one for over £4000.

Isn't alarming...Oboes and the double reed family are terrifyingly expensive...it seems to go with the territory...£2000-£5000 seems to be the ballpark figure, new intermediate Oboes are about £2500 and full proffesional Oboes new are nearer £5000 oh yes the killer is that that figure wont include a case The cost I think must be something to do with the conical bore and the extensive keywork involved...I swear my new Oboe has even more keywork than my last one and both are full conservatiore systems...the new one apparantly has a High D facilitator? but I am yet to find where it is...I'll probably stumble upon it one day by accident whilst trilling....

As for open or covered hole, well most people these days play covered hole but a good friend of mine and former pupil of George Cairds plays on an open hole and would touch a covered hole Oboe for all the tea in china, it's what you get used to I suppose...Open hole do tend to have a slightly warmer tone I think but I could be imagining that...Dual systems are probably your best bet, offering you the best of both worlds...I play conservatoire but it's what I am used to.

When you are ready and you have the cash talk with both Howarths and Myatts and see what they have, a good second hand instrument could be purchased for a fraction of the new price and will be nicely blown in so that would be a bonus...Personally I reccomend the French Makers Loree, Marigaux and Rigoutat but thats just my preference....Howarths are also a fine maker and well respected, I have many friends who play them and swear by them...Ask AmandaL about Howarths, she'll give you the low down on them...

Good luck,

Regards

Andrew




Well done Keri, what a great result...

Sounds like a good buy Keri!!

I'm not really bothered about the octave system - the one I use now hasn't any kind of automatic octave, so by the time I get my own I'll be so used to swapping I guess I'll never stop.

I'll definitely go for Open hole - I've tried closed hole flutes and it just feels so wierd to have metal under my fingers rather than air. I don't get on so well with the sax either, it just doesn't feel as right under my hands.

No case either?? I'm begining to think that I won't get a decent oboe this side of Uni! £2000 got me a pro level clarinet, a good mouthpiece and an industial strength case, as well as an assortment of reeds and a pencil!!

I think it's only the French ones that come without a case.
All Howarth's own oboes come with a case and they do say in the description for each oboe whether or not the case is included.

Wow! That's a very good buy

I reckon a trip to Myatts might be worthwhile as you could choose from more than just Howarths oboes or the French oboes like Loree.
As Keri says I play a Ward and Winterbourn TW3 open hole oboe which is their intermediate instrument and I'm very happy with it at the moment. I'd love to upgrade at some point in the future, but my TW3 suits me fine currently. When I rang W&W earlier this year to get the new replacement value for a TW3 they told me that it was somewhere in the region of £1500 but I have seen them new for £1100 on woodwind dealers internet sites.
Happy oboe hunting!

Help! I've got water in my B or A key, and I can't get it out because tissue paper won't go in between...

I hope you've solved it by now (given that you asked over three hours ago) but should it happen again:

The water will be in the hole immediately after the note that won't come out; so if it's the B that sounds gurgly it will be in the A key. (I can't quite work out what you would be playing for it to be in the B key except, I suppose if you are half-holing for something). You ought to be able to slide a non-gummed cigarette paper underneath. Cigarette papers are probably better than tissue paper as they are slightly stiffer and so probably easier to manoeuvre under keys (actually I've never tried tissue paper). Failing that you can try holding the oboe sideways like a flute (take the reed out first so you don't bang it on something and damage it) and blow really hard across the hole. Then swab the oboe.

I keep getting water under either the little key that is raised when you play a C with the conservatoire system and/or the second octave key and it is really annoying.

Thanks Yep, It's better now

Anyone see the X Factor this week? The Oboe player backing Same Difference is my daughter's Teacher.

Is there something wrong with this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SELMER-CONSOLE-OBOE_...1QQcmdZViewItem

It's the cheapest I found... If there is nothing wrong I may bully my mum into letting me have this.. I know I jsut started the clarinet but I also want an oboe ..

Not that one can tell by the picture and the description. You can never really tell unless you see it / play it, though. If you can really get it for £1.20 you haven't got much to lose! (well, apart from the postage)

I would swap to the oboe if I were you - clarinettists are two a penny

It looks like it's open holes, but if your used ot playing clarinet you might prefer that. You need someone with more knowledge to give you some advice.

It looks okay to me, but make sure you leave some cash spare for a service!

Ooh! I really want it. I can see my parents disagreeing.. Even if it is another instrument... Why did I have to buy the clarinet under a year ago.. ?

They nearly killed me when I brought the Clarinet and didn't tell them until the day that it arrived and in our posession that I brought it from eBay ..

I'm very much a covered system girl, but I do teach a girl who plays on an open system and naturally have to demonstrate. However I'm much happier with a covered system. small hands you see, yet I manage the core with ease.

Bump.





What are the Oboe people getting up to at the moment?Grades, pieces, anything new?

Hello Liz,

Well let me see, as you know I am blowing in my new Oboe and Cor so I have been slowly stepping up the work load and am up to abut two hours a day subject to me finding two hours a day that is...

I thought I would re vist some old territory and am working through the Three authentic Handel Sonatas, I love Baroque music and these when ornamented are super, I am also doing some Hinke and some Gillet studies, the Hinke are very useful and the Gillet are very stretching so always a good balance. I must confess that my sound is not what it once was...will it come back I don't know, I sem to be almost strangling the first octave notes and have to be very concious to get a good OOO shape in my embochure yet still keeping the support going.

To be honest I think I sound dreadful so I have a very busy few months ahead of me prior to me going to the Benslow, which I think I have booked a little early seeing as how slowly things are going. As you know I have not played for many years (nearly twenty) so it's taking me by surprise at just how awful I sound...my tongue articulates but my reeds don't always respond Immediatly which is irritating, my fingers seem fine and move fairly fast still and Vibrato came straight back without having to think about it but my sound is AWFUL, downright ropey, some notes are worse than others but it will even out...you may rest assured it will be a very long time before I post anything on "YOUTUBE"

So now I had better run and do some practice, I have two hours now so I shall make the use of it and get blowing...

What are you working on and hows it going?

Kindest regards

Andrew

The sound will come back... well, it's supposed to.



I'm doing the same as ever...
Albinoni, Nielsen and studies from ornamental oboes.


My teacher mentioned about grade 7 scales, so i might be doing grade 7 pieces soon...
But maybe she said grade 7 but meant grade 6.


Next time I get reeds, I must buy medium hard... 8 more mediums to go My teachers other pupil sais that it hurts a until you get used to it


Also, I was in the festival playing the nielsen on Wednesdey. Have to do it again tonight at the 'highlights' concert, because there isn't any other woodwind. The one teacher who puts woodwind pupils in didn't enter them this year...

On the oboe I'm playing the first two movements of the Saint-Saens oboe sonata. I'm also trying to improve my breathing and eliminate tension from my playing.

With the cor anglais I have just finished playing through the first volume of E. Rothwell's Oboist Companion as a way of familiarising myself with the thumbplate fingering and have got to the point where I think I might tackle some "real" music.

My son's taking his Grade 7 exam on Tuesday. I'm loathed to mention it because the very thought is making me sick with nerves . He's chosen Bach study, Cimerosa 1 and 4 and Schumann Romance No 1. I'm driving him to the exam centre and will wait for him afterwards .

Sara

good luck! I'm sure he'll do fine

I love the Cimarosa and the romance. Don't know the Bach...

I don't know what to do exam-wise. grade 7 in march? I wish the June exam wouldn't colide with GCSEs...

I'm playing some bits of Bach chorales (instead of Ferling) and a really nice piece called Elegiac Dance by Michael Head.
I'm trying hard to get a nice rich, even tone and then I might start working on vibrato. My teacher has asked me to get some baroque music...Telemann, Vivaldi and Sammartini and I have been working on the Loeillet sonata in C.
I'm just blowing in some new reeds which are quite hard but have a lovely tone (I think that I will have to scrape them down) and one from another supplier which is not so hard, but sounds harsh and tinny. I hope that it will be ok for practice.

Andrew, it sounds like you're really enjoying your new oboe and cor...

I am having a lovely time with them, the Oboe particularly is super, the Cor needs to open up a little but it will come...

Good luck to him! All our best wishes Sara!

Thanks for the As he's only been playing just over a year, I keep worrying if he's going to be "found out". He says he should tell the examiner and go for the sympathy vote lol. I don't know which of us is going to pass out first

Sara

How did it go Sara?


The June session is likely to overlap, so I'm doing grade 7 in March





Scales are a bit evil...

He's got to Grade 7 oboe in just over one year?

Isn't that some kind of record? Who makes his reeds?

What are you feeding him?

Steve

Thanks folks! Yes it went pretty well. No stops apart from the accompanist went wrong but they both kept going. Tuning was going badly out by the end of the third piece though. I managed to get a flavour of it from across the corridor in the waiting room, it's hard to hush up an oboe So I'm really pleased for him, it's such a lovely instrument and he loves the kind of music that it plays, so I hope he perseveres with the stamina thing! I think we'll be waiting till January for the result, though


Sara

Grad it went well.

The Oboe repertoire is lovely










MY STAMINA'S WORSE THAN A FEW MONTHS AGO! Scince I came back from Germany in the summer, I can't play for 5 minutes without my upper lip beggining to show. I don't know why, because my overbite is getting better, not worse, and my braces(traintracks) can't have made my jaw shape change a lot in a short time can it?
I do practice long notes everyday(nealy), but it tends to be at the end of a practice settion

I got to grade 8 in a year (a long time ago). BUT I had been playing flute for about 6 years before that, which helped enormously.

Maybe Sarah's son played another woodwind instrument before, too; if not it's very impressive!

Sara...well done to your son...getting to grade 7 in a year is seriously impressive. It took me about 2 1/2 years to get somewhere between 6 and 7, but I hadn't played any sort of woodwind instrument for several years before then. Now I've restarted and and I'm back where I was before.

I had a lesson yesterday and Elegiac Dance was much better than I thought it would be. Some bits I thought I'd got wrong were ok and the bits I thought were ok-ish weren't quite right, and there's still a lot of work to do on it...but I'm feeling quite happy...And the chunk of Bach cantata was ok as well. Now I have another chunk of Bach cantata to learn, I can't remember what number it is. It's just as well I enjoy playing Bach!

Well I started him off playing the recorder aged 4! He never took it seriously even though he was very able, so he moved onto flute at about age 10. Got to the stage where he was ready for Grade 3 after about a year or more, but he never got on with the sideways posture, so gave up without taking the exam. Then aged 15 he said he wanted to study music at Uni/Conservatoire level and possibly go into composing as a career So I came up with the idea of oboe as second study instrument and bought a second hand one cheaply, which was swiftly outgrown and upgraded. He's 16 now and already has Grade 8 piano. He loves oboe, but once again posture and stamina are his biggest problems. I'm hoping that with time it will become easier, at the moment he's in visible discomfort while playing. I'm pleased and reassured by Claire saying she got to grade 8 in a year and Liz is at a similar level while being much younger too, so it's obviously not unique.

Thanks for all the encouragement though. A lot of hard work has gone into it, so it's not happened by magic

Sara

I had to do recorder at primary school for 4 years, and in that time I think the hardest thing we had to play was about grade 2...


Reading music already does help(a lot), but maybe finger technique is quite easy on the oboe compaired to other woodwind, so that combined makes some people reach grade8 faster?


My teacher asked if I wanted to be in CYO or CYWO! I wonder if the CYO will take me...
The auditions are in the summer right?

Go for it Liz! Try out for both

Sara

I'm sure having played another instrument to a fairly high level first helps as you don't have to learn to read music and know what it is supposed to sound like just by looking at the page; for scales you already know which notes you want to play you just have to speed up the fingering. I was playing pieces on the grade 8 lists by the end of my first year of oboe lessons but I was also finding them very frustrating and very hard work both physically and mentally. Stamina has improved but I still can't play a whole sonata without large breaks between the movements. Sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn't have been better to have progressed more slowly and then stamina might have been more in line with the length of the piece of music played.

Kerioboe, does your stamina continue to improve at a steady rate? Do you go beetroot red during a piece and feel totally exhausted after it? You see my son's accompanist said unless you feel totally at ease with your instrument then you can't really play it. Quite harsh really, right before his grade 7.

Sara

Is any oboist ever *totally* at ease with their instrument?! Or their reed anyway... Not until they invent the perfect, indestructible reed...

So true!

I have to say that, apart from the reed, I feel more at ease with the oboe than the clarinet. The notes come out more easily -particularly altissimo, and the keys are lighter. Don't forget that the folks who repair and adjust woodwinds envy the oboe for having all those little screws. It makes it so much easier to fine tune.

Perhaps the subject of a new thread, but I wonder if the whole approach to controlling the reed could be improved. It represents such a major hurdle in learning the oboe and I have the impression that not enough attention is paid to how to adjust them.

Though I could say the same for the clarinet!

As for the perfect reed.... I had one a few days ago. Soaked it for a minute, shook the water out... and watched the reed fly across the room, hit the wall and...split down the middle.

But it was a perfect reed... honest!

Steve

You're right, that wasn't a very tactful thing to say right before an exam. Although my teacher is always telling me that the oboe is designed to be played and that you shouldn't feel you are fighting it to get the notes out. About a year or eighteen months ago I had a eureka moment and realised he is right, when you are relaxed, it is far easier to play. Unfortunately the relaxed moments are few and far between. The very nature of the instrument means that it is very hard to relax while playing; after all if you don't have enough breath pressure the notes won't come out, and if the embouchure is not firm enough it is out of tune. At the moment I am spending most of my lesson time on ways of eliminating tension but I have yet to notice any spectacular improvement. What I have noticed (which I suppose is a step in the right direction) is how I create the tensions.

To answer your question, my stamina has continued to improve (just not as fast as I would like it to) and I can only really tell when I go back and play something I was playing some time ago and realise it is no longer as exhausting as it once was. As for going beetroot red, this depends partly on natural skin colour. I do go very red and was the only one of my teacher's pupils to do so. This year he has a new pupil who has moved to the town and who had been playing for a couple of years already; like me she has very fair skin (whereas all the other pupils have olive skin) and she too goes bright red. I went to a recital last year and the fair-skinned oboist (a teacher at the top Paris conservatoire) also went alarmingly red and had a blood vessel pulsing worryingly in his temple. So, if your son has fair skin I wouldn't worry too much about going red. I am still exhausted at the end of a piece, it's just I can play longer before I am exhausted.



My teacher does pay a lot of attention to adjusting the reeds. I am supposed to be learning but I think it will take me years to be able to adjust them as well as he does.


I occasionally have reeds I love which eventually wear out. When my first perfect reed eventually died on me I watched with horror as my teacher heartlessly snapped off the reed and threw it in the bin. (He reuses the staples).

When I have my monthly lesson, my teacher almost inevitably looks at my reeds and fiddles with them. He's quite good at explaining where the problem is, and how it might be fixed...or with terminally bad reeds, why they are so dreadful. I've learned much more about reeds from him, than I remember learning from my first teacher, but perhaps that's because I've forgotten what she said!
I'm now getting a lot more confident in attacking them with a knife, but I do go carefully.

Hard luck about your good reed, Steve, I try to be really careful with mine, to the point of total neurosis.

Thanks Kerioboe. Yes he is very pale skinned with freckles, so I suppose it's reassuring that a top professional was looking so red . It's a good idea to bring out some of the old pieces to see if he can play them with more stamina than before. Let's hope

Sara

Gosh, my oboe playing's moving so slowly along at the moment... it's ridiculous because piano seems to be on some sort of crazy high speed train...
I'm jealous of you Liz, you're so lucky to have been able to do all of that work in just a year, it's fantastic!!!
xxxxx

I also slogging along at the moment, I don't seem to make much progress some days but I suspect its getting better, My sister swears it is and the dogs have stopped howling or running away (its true they really did at first god love them )

I feel that having spent about two months blowing in that I am now able to step things up a bit so have broken my practice time down into three hour long slots. The first hour is purely scales and arpeggios...the I stop have lunch do some stuff around the house then do my second hour which is studies and pieces, then another break and then I get the Cor out and do an hour of scales and arpeggios on that and have a really good blow. I love the Cor hour it gives me chance to really have a good blow and relax the embochure.. I swear it helps my Oboe playing...

I must confess that though I say I do an hour, I would estimate that I am not doing more than 40-45 minutes each hour, theres quite a bit of fiddling about and sorting things out, its never plain sailing. Also I should add that after 45 minutes my lip is blown so I have to stop and go do something else, then after awhile, maybe two hours doing something else I go back and start again.

Anyway if nearly three hours a day doesnt show some improvement then I am doing something very wrong...Tuesday is looming (lesson time again) and I need to show a marked improvement or I am wasting my time and that of my teachers so fingers crossed...

Kindest regards

Andrew

One mre reason to have a cor



I'm glad it's going well.