Hi

As you may or may not of heard before I am thinking of learning the Oboe but I don't know if I can.

I would like to know what it is like to learn the oboe.

What you did in your first lesson?

How long it took you to learn a tune?

If you had any training in music before you started and in which instrument?

Oh by the way, I am 15 years old and if I decide to learn I would be learning at school.

Would I be able to make the same progress at school then in private lessons.

Thanks PianoDude15

I had always wanted to learn the oboe but only started a bit over three and a half years ago, almost twenty years after I left school.

I could already read music fluently (my main instrument was piano) but I had also played quite a lot of recorder and a little bit of flute, so fingering and tonguing were not new concepts.

I had had my oboe for about two weeks before I started having lessons and had already worked the fingering out for at least an octave (possibly more I can't really remember). I could play simple tunes from the first time I tried it.

My first few lessons concentrated on breathing (breathing out before I breath in) and playing long notes.

I am now playing grade 8 pieces but am not convinced that I have a grade 8 tone (or the stamina).

The hardest thing for me has been building up enough stamina to play for any length of time.

Hello I will do my best to help you..I am sure there will be others here who can advise you as well..

The Oboe is probably one of the more difficult instruments to learn, possibly akin to the French Horn which I hear is also fairly difficult. Tuning, tone, articulation, are just three of the issues that face oboists daily. Also Oboes are very pricey, the more you pay the better the instrument will be and the more responsive it will prove to be, Student models are notoriously fickle and you must be careful not to rush into buying anything too quickly. Let your teacher advise you if you haven't already gone out and bought one, and break the news to your parents about the costs involved.

Depending on who teaches you, much of your first lesson will be spent just on breathing properly, both inhaling and fully exhaling...you would be suprised how lazy most peoples breathing is...that is all except singers who are taught very early on how important proper breathing is. You may also "Crow" the double reed whilst unattacthed to the oboe..., Most people naturally clench up their throats and puff their cheeks out to play but you must learn to relax the throat like you are going to sing and support from the diaphragm, you teacher should cover all of this...

Learning a tune may come in a little while, something fairly simple, probably Baroque, (thats what I was taught) and you will proabaly start to do lots of long notes concentrating on tone and note quality...it is best to play in a dead space without too much reverberation so you really concentrate on getting the very best tone possible...I usd to open the wardrobe doors and play into that, it was very harsh and revealed much about my sound. Any reverbaration will improve the tone so practice in as flat a room sound wise possible, but above all Listen Listen LISTEN!

How much you progress is entirely up to you and the volume of work you put in...at first you may not be able to play for more than 15 minutes as your lip will give out so just persevere...wherever you study, either at school or privately you must be prepared to put in a lot of work, and do the stuff you cant manage and not the stuff you can...

Good luck, for reference and a bit of window shopping check out Howaths website, just google Howarth Oboes and have a look...you could also check out Loree-paris.com

Good luck let us know how you get on.

Kindest regards

Andrew

Hope that helps a little

Hi there Piano Dude
I can't really add anymore to what kerioboe and Andrew have already said, only perhaps the importance of perseverence. You need to keep practising, and try and ignore all the rude comments about duck decoys...!
You can't play for long at the beginning, but every little helps. The other piece of advice that I was given was try and hear the sound you want to make in your head - you won't sound like that for while, but it's supposed to help.
Hopefully your swan will eventually emerge (thanks keri for that image, it's lovely)

I started as an adult having been a rather poor clarinet player through my teens, so I was used to tonguing and breathing properly, although the breathing technique for clarinet and oboe are completely different.
I think that I started playing tunes straight away as I had no difficulty getting the notes; my teacher was keen that even simple studies should be played musically and not just as technical exercises. The other thing I was taught right from the beginning was breathing in and out properly and control of the breath (still learning this one!)

For me the hardest thing is confidence...to allow the breath to flow freely through the instrument and not be scared. I'm beginning to think that you need a lot of chutzpah to play an oboe in public!

Enjoy your oboe if you decide to start learning...my current teacher described it to me as a stream of light running through the orchestra. It's a wonderful, frustrating instrument, and I love trying to make it sing to me!

I can't remember if anyone has mentioned this but a really good teacher who is an Oboe specialist will be a big help.

That is such good advice...sadly you really do need a teacher who specialises if at all possible...no disrespect to all the peri teachers out there but I feel the Oboe is one of those instruments that needs very solid knowledge of to teach. I know that many teachers who's principal instrument is say Flute, Clarinet etc teach Oboe but I often wonder at the wisdom of this...I accept that Oboe purists are thin on the ground and for many a peri teacher is the only way to go but I do urge anyone who is learning to try their hardest to locate someone who Specialises as suggested above. Just the double reed is enough to contend with, the embouchre too is an area of much debate,tone and quality of tone and finally the most important part....Breathing...

Apart from that little lot its a doddle...

I was told that you don't so much "play" the oboe as "sing" through it (not literally).

It's really worth trying to find an oboe specialist...both my teachers have been oboe specialists and it really helps especially when it comes to dealing with reeds and learning how to breathe correctly.
I play with our local music centre wind band as they have no young oboists locally and talking to the wind and brass peris there, they would be happy to teach single reed, but really don't know much about teaching double reed instruments beyond the beginner stage.

A.U.K I couldn't agree with you more! I think it's more important on Oboe than Flute or single reed instruments to be taught by a specialist. It's not really the sort of instrument that you could get away with teaching yourself even with the skill to do that on other instruments.

My teacher says this too but it doesn't mean you have to be able to sing to play it. I hate singing but I love playing the oboe.

I know this must be kind of natural for me to think, but I think the Oboe fingering is the simplest of all woodwnds...

no, i'm told flute is (this is partly why they can play so fast, the fingerings are easy) and the sax is pretty simple (being a 'new' instrument, the inventor thought of all this stuff)

I think the difference in the speed at which people can play the flute or the oboe is not so much a fingering problem but more to do with the resistance a double reed offers to the air you can get into the instrument; this means you can tongue faster on the flute than the oboe, so tongued passages will tend to be faster on the flute than the oboe. (I don't know anything about the comparative speed on each instrument when it comes to passages which are entirely slurred).