No matter how you do your initial scrapes, every reed goes through a period of evaluation and refining scrapes based on crow, appearance, and overall characteristics.

Hopefully, you have a gouge and shape that suit your
individual needs and work well together, you've got a well formed blank, and you've started to form the overall slope of the reed. Now, as you take the reed down and start defining the sections of the reed, you will start the evaluation process.

While evaluating the reed, you will be aiming for a balance between all the components of the reed.

When you try your reeds while making them, really PLAY them. Play some music, see how they work in a real musical situation. Try doing things that reeds can often inhibit, such as in-tuned octaves, low note attacks, and soft downward slurs. It is surprising how a reed you thought felt pretty good for a few warm-up notes can be impossible to actually PLAY. Finding this out in your studio is far less painful than finding out 5 minutes into
a rehearsal, so put your reeds to the test before you go out in public.

A final thought on reed evaluation:

Don't sacrifice your comfort and ability to play the oboe for a reed you
think sounds good"but is difficult to play. If you have to struggle to
get the reed to work, you won't be able to play music.

Your reed should allow you to play. It should be on your side and not limit your playing. At the same time, you need to play the reed. Match its resistance. You need to be able to play your reed. It may sound good to you,
but it won't to everybody else if you aren't comfortable playing it.

I have to admit, I’ve been to a lot of zoos and THIS left them all in the dust.

I saw more animals (lemur, lions, leopards, rhinos, bear, and more) in a two hour period than I’ve seen in my entire life.

It might sound funny, but my trip reminded me of the oboe. And how important it is to GET OUT and live.

A lot of people who play this instrument spend a lot of time practicing… or even hunched over a reed desk trying to make the perfect reed.

I was one of those people. And while hard work is important, my music really flourished when I finally started LIVING life and letting it come out through my playing.

Here’s my recommendation:

Go live your life. Enjoy it. And live it fully. That’s going to do more for your music than just about anything.

Boy how true… especially for us oboe players who spend so much time trying to get along with such a finicky instrument.

How often have you spent more time trying to play the oboe than you have trying to play the music through the oboe?

I know I’ve done it many times. And it’s always somewhat comforting to remember what’s really important. It’s not the clicking and clacking of the keys, or this fingering or that fingering… that truly matters.

It’s the music that comes out because of (or even in spite of) those things. It’s the music that matters.

My teacher always said, “You’re not an oboe player. You’re a musician who happens to play the oboe.”

It might sound like those are just words, but they’re not. In fact, understanding and living that phrase is a secret to understanding what being a musician is really about.

What are you going to focus on? Playing the oboe… or making the music?

-Nathalie Sarraute

The beginning of the school year is often the beginning of the work year as well for many oboists.

For the last few months, you may have had an outdoor concert or two, but nothing too serious. Now the phone is ringing off the hook with wedding jobs, teaching jobs, playing jobs, adjudicating jobs.

All at once everybody wants you!

It is often a satisfying feeling to our egos when this time rolls around and we feel so wanted… But try to separate your ego from what you are agreeing to do and make sure you aren’t getting in over your head with too much driving or too much stress with little reward.

I remember the first fall I lived in Chicago. It was a welcome change to have so many oboe opportunities, but I got swallowed up very fast.

There was one particular day where I drove in 3 states, fought traffic for several hours, and spent 14 hours away from home for very little money and very little reward.

It was nobody’s fault but my own, and I was indeed “willing” for it to happen.

I did learn what I could handle and vowed to never get that needy and “willing” again. It’s different for everyone, but set your “willingness meter” now!

Make sure you can play the reed out of your ear.

That means the reed should be easy enough to get through your
piece 2 or 3 times in a row without getting tired.

So if your reed has you huffing and puffing after a bar or two,
you’re going to get into hot water.

Playing the oboe can be hard… as long as it doesn’t sound that
way.

You can hear an example of a good “reed fit” by turning up your
speakers and visiting the link below:

http://tinyurl.com/5d3vf3

The piece is a Telemann Fantasie I recorded a few (10 years…
EEEKK!) years ago…

-Margaret Atwood-

I think the appropriate adaptation of this quote for oboists is “fear has a sound.”

It does not matter how much you practice or how good or bad you think your reed is. Fear is obvious, and it is a sound that has no place in music.

My very wise teacher had a saying along the same lines that I will never forget:

“Fear is not an appropriate color.”

It is a bizarre thing, because someone can play very well and still play fearfully. And someone else can play less well, missing notes here or there or whatever but be full of confidence.

Strive to remove any fear from your playing. If you detect any, ask yourself where it is coming from. Sometimes we just need to acknowledge it and move on instead of acting like everything is OK.

I remember my first solo recital after I had graduated and left school. I was a “professional,” but I didn’t feel like it. I had a really hard time being on my own at first because I realized it was all up to me, and that was very scary.

Luckily, I recorded the recital and literally could hear my own fear. It was then that I decided it was going to be confidence or bust from now on, because it just wasn’t worth it any other way.

30 days ago, we moved out of the mountains of Flagstaff Arizona.

Flagstaff Elevation: 7,200 feet above sea level.

Now when you’re an oboe reed company, that type of elevation can be a real deal breaker.

It was for us. So we stopped selling oboe reeds.

We’d make them at the top of the mountain in Flagstaff, and then send them down the mountain to our customers.

And that’s when it would happen…

KAPOW!

Dead oboe reed. [Death by altitude.]

But in June, just last month, we moved about 45 minutes from Flagstaff, to a little town called Cornville, AZ.

(Don’t worry if you laugh at the name… we did.)

The bottom line is, we’re out of the clouds and back in the desert of Arizona.

Cornville Elevation: Only 3,225 feet above sea level.

The good news?

We Can Sell Oboe Reeds Again!

Now ever since we stopped selling reeds (about a year ago), we’ve gotten at least 3 emails a week asking “When are you going to sell oboe reeds again?”

Well, TODAY is the day.

We’ve got oboe reeds.

Same great reeds as before… Same guarantee as before.

Here’s where you can get them:

Happy playing,

I created a quick list of the major things I was looking for in a good reed.

Mind you, this was 1993… so I was still really new to reedmaking.

Take a look at the list and tell me what your thoughts are.

Now soon after this lesson, I remember my teacher giving me an exercise to practice that really helped me.

The exercise was to make a reed on looks alone. That meant making a reed by working to get the reed looking perfect… without actually testing it.

Most of the times I tried this–once I got the reed looking right–it usually played pretty well.

The point of the exercise was to keep me from becoming my own worst enemy. You know those times where you notice a problem with the reed and start scraping… Then you notice another problem and start scraping somewhere else.

And pretty soon, you get yourself in trouble and the reed goes in the trash.

Now understand, this was just an exercise. A reed doesn’t have to look great to be a great reed.

You can click on the image to get a closeup view of the notebook page.

It’s funny to look back at old things like this. It makes you realize how far you’ve come… and gives you the encouragement you need to go even farther.

Take a look at the page, it’s still good advice from a master. To see the large version (that you can read), just click on the image.

This masterclass was on April 13, 1995… just a few months before I started at Eastman.