One of the most common mistakes made by young oboists (and maybe old oboists too) is playing on oboe reeds that are just too heavy for that particular player.

I’ve been there, and I have certainly done that. And I saw many of my colleagues struggle with the same issue, especially when we were in school. It’s really easy to do when all you listen to is other oboists, day in and day out.

Somehow, you get in this mindset that the way to get that rich, luscious sound you covet is to play on oboe reeds that are too heavy for you! I don’t know the exact psychology behind that but it is something about thinking you need to go in the opposite direction of a really light-sounding oboe reed.

By steering clear of a light-sounding reed, you also give up light FEELING reeds and you end up with a 2 X 4, as my teacher would say. The worst part is that you think you sound great on it, because it is so “dark,” but the reality is that you most likely sound like you are working REALLY hard. Plus, no one can hear what you are trying to do musically.

If this sounds like you, read on!

You’ll never get that rich oboe sound that “so and so has” unless you are truly comfortable and at ease on your oboe reed. It’s just the way it works.

In fact, the reed might even feel “light” to you, but because you are so suited to it, you will have a range of colors not available to you before. Other oboists will be coveting YOUR amazing tone.

I still remember one amazing oboe reed I had a while back. I even remember that it was neon yellow and blue, and just amazing.

Without a thought, I was able to play the first movement of Bach’s solo flute partita, which, if you know it well, is just an entire page of non-stop articulated sixteenth notes.

I played it for a bunch of people and I was very surprised at their reaction. It’s a really hard piece in a lot of ways, and it was by no means perfect. But the reaction I got from other oboists (!!) was that it was seamlessly articulated, with a beautiful full tone in every register.

I was really stunned because I remember thinking my reed felt a little light… it HAD to be for me to be able to articulate every note.

So, the music REQUIRED me to have a reed I could really play, and the effect was more than I even intended or was aware of. That experience taught me this lesson:

Have an oboe reed you can play easily and confidently and your music-making (and the perception of your music-making) will go beyond what you even think is possible.

So what do you do if your reeds are too heavy?

Well, first identify the problem. Sure, if you are playing Mahler in an orchestra it isn’t going to be as obvious. But if you are prepping solo stuff, make sure your reed can indeed play easily in every register.

Don’t worry about how it sounds. If it isn’t easy enough for you to play without popping a blood vessel, you need to lighten it.

Making a reed lighter is not bad.

It’s largely just a stereotype. Anyway, start by thinning the tip, then maybe just go over the entire reed (without pressing!) and just get rid of some bulk. This will give you a good place to start.

Once you get used to playing on reeds you can actually play, you won’t settle for anything less.

Scraping an oboe reed blank is a little like creating a shell for the reed to live in. It isn’t really an oboe reed yet, but it has to be a good enough shell so that the reed can eventually take shape within it. It seems like a rather abstract idea now, so just remember… Your initial goal is to just get some cane off the reed.

All that hard shiny cane must go for the reed to vibrate. Although this part of oboe reed making is not very detailed, you will have to learn basic knife control to get the shiny cane off. Of course, practice makes perfect.

As your reed making skill improves, however, don’t let yourself get bogged down with this step. I have seen may experienced reed making students take such care and time with this part – the “getting the cane off” part. It is not necessary!

Eventually you want to get the rough cane off as quick and as easily as possible. Someone that knows nothing about oboe reed making could learn to do this efficiently and consistently with just a little practice.

Although you will probably end of finishing your reeds while they are wet, I like to scrape blanks (up until the point where I clip the tip) when they are pretty dry. That is just my preference because I don’t feel that the actual blank scraping is the detailed part.

Again, you are just making a reed shell right now. You will have to experiment with how hard you press when you are scraping. It isn’t something I can explain in words except to say you always want to use the least amount of pressure possible so that you don’t crack the cane.

Your right hand is just going to move the knife, it is your left hand that will anchor and apply pressure when you need it. You will figure many of these things out for yourself. Even a private reed making teacher wouldn’t be able to actually feel how much pressure you are using. And it is a totally individual thing anyway.

So take your blank and mark 68 mm. A finished reed will be about 69-70 mm, so I like to start scraping my tip at about 68. Don’t forget to keep that picture of each side of the oboe reed separated by the important spine.

With your knife, you are going to do at least 15 scrapes of the tip on each side of the spine. Start at the line you drew and let’s do the left side first. Draw your knife up and all the way to the very end of tip so that it goes off the end.

This is a very important habit to create.

You always want to scrape the tip and get used to going off the very end. Once you do about 15 scrapes on the left side of the tip, do the right side. Then turn the reed over and do the same exact thing on the flipside.

When you are done you will have rough scraped the tip of the oboe reed!

Now onto rough scraping the body of the reed.

We’re going to apply the same concept you used on the tip and scrape all the way from a few millimeters above the string up until the heart starts, probably about 65 mm. Again you are going to honor the spine, and when you are done with this part there will be a visible spine that you have made down the entire reed. Do about 10-12 of these scrapes on all 4 sides of the reed. You should have taken off a good deal of cane by now.

If you barely see any cane on your table, you are probably not pressing hard enough. These rough scrapes need to remove cane, not just caress it. There is no way a reed is going to vibrate if it has tons and tons of heavy cane on it.

Sometimes I am ready to clip at this point. But most of the time I go back to the tip and kind of repeat what I already did – 15 scrapes on each side of the spine and then again on the flipside.

Special Note

This article is a short excerpt from “The Beginner’s Guide to Making Your First Playing Oboe Reed… in 9 Days or Less”, a step-by-step guide to help you start your oboe reed making journey.

Let it be known that I like band directors, and that without mine long ago I would not be sitting here writing about what I know about the oboe.

He was (and probably still is) a wonderful man who encouraged me, taught me what he knew but then was humble enough to say that he could take me no further. He recommended a professional oboist in town so I could continue learning the things he could not teach me, and I am forever grateful.

So, you could say I have a great deal of respect for band directors.

I know they are teaching a lot of kids a lot of different instruments, and there is no way anybody can be an expert on all of them. I give them credit for trying!

But there’s something that has been coming up a lot in my teaching and even when fielding reed questions that has been bothering me. And although I am sure band directors aren’t the only ones to “blame,” that’s where I am starting to work towards a solution.

The problem seems to be in advising the young band oboists in the selection of oboe reeds. Now, many a band director has bought handmade oboe reeds from me, so there are exceptions.

But to the majority out there, do you know how much easier teaching the oboe would be if you handed out handmade oboe reeds instead of fibercane or even those awful profiled music-store reeds?

The reason is plain and simple.

These reeds do not encourage good habits and make the oboe difficult to play, more difficult that it ever needs to be.

The idea I keep hearing is that somehow, good reeds are reserved for good students… but that is completely wrong. A good, handmade oboe reed should be provided for every beginning oboist on their very first day of playing the oboe.

Talk to a professional oboist and see if they can work with you in making reeds that young students can handle, or consult a professional reedmaking company (yes, like MKL Reeds) that can work with these requests.

Although we need “labels” on reeds so that we all know what we are talking about, these labels are perhaps the least helpful part of all of this. Find a place that can make reeds for beginning students, and that should be pretty much all you need to say.

I am on my soapbox lately about all this “hard, medium hard, soft” stuff!! There is also this very large misconception out there that once a student has been playing for more than a year they need to “graduate” to a “harder” reed… and by the time they have been playing a while they are being handed these “hard” reeds they can’t even play!

I just don’t understand where this all came from, thinking that increased ability on the oboe somehow means you should make it harder for someone to actually play.

Now, it’s not entirely the fault of a band director. And the situation is not exactly helped by machine made reed manufacturers that are labeling their reeds in this way either.

Here’s my take on it:

An oboist needs a reed he can play, NO EXCEPTIONS!!

Buy oboe reeds for your students that are handmade and are not classified in this hard, medium, soft way, unless you can talk to someone and explain what you need.

What a more advanced student needs in a reed is resistance, which is much different that hardness. So, stop handing them hard reeds once they pass the year mark, and especially when they seem like they are struggling.

Unless you can scrape these reeds down for them, they should not be encouraged. Better yet, get reeds from a professional oboist because these will make your job easier and it will make your students improve faster and probably enjoy playing a lot more.

I can’t imagine how hard a job it is to be in your shoes, but think of the amazing start you can help give to each and every kid that chooses to play the oboe.

There are many excuses for not making your own oboe reeds, but in my opinion, one of the poorest excuses is money.

Let’s face it, playing the oboe is an expensive proposition. If you haven’t realized it already, then let this be your warning. If you don’t want to spend any money at all, then you should probably just pick another instrument.

Apart from getting the oboe itself, there is regular maintenance, and of course buying reeds. Which brings me to the issue of it “costing too much” to make reeds. Learning to make reeds is an investment, and like any investment, you have to put something in to get something out. In this case, that means a bit of money.

But the rewards of making your own reeds go beyond money (even though you will spend less doing so!).

If your true goal is to really improve and take your oboe playing to the next level, then you have to be willing to accept the price tag and just go toward your goals. There is nothing that will improve your tone, music-making and “artistry” like learning to make and play on your own oboe reeds.

You can’t really put a price tag on that, because the skill is simply invaluable.

Of course you’ll have to invest in some basic reedmaking tools, but more importantly you will have to find some way to learn what you are doing.

This knowledge is also priceless because the reedmaking foundation that you lay will help determine your reedmaking success.

You can find a professional teacher to take lessons from, or you can learn the basics from an online or published guide. Buying a few tools and getting a beginning reedmaking education are the two “up front” costs you’ll need to incur to get going on making your own reeds.

You can do all of this for relatively little money, compared to the money you will spend buying store-bought oboe reeds year after year. The education you will get is priceless, because you will determine so much about your own oboe playing.

Don’t let money excuses hold you back from exploring this wonderful part of being an oboe player! In the long run, you’ll actually save money and you will be a better oboe player as well.

After you take the jump to making your own oboe reeds, I guarantee you will not look back and regret it at all. The money, especially, will seem inconsequential when you never have to pick up the phone to order reeds again!

Question

“How do I know what my oboe reed strength is?”

Answer

I never bought into the whole reed strength phenomenon, so I don’t know what to tell you. Make your own and it won’t matter. If you have to buy a “strength” just remember that harder doesn’t mean that you or the reed is “better” or more advanced than you used to be. It will simply have more wood left on it, hence less finished.

When you’re looking for a good reed to play a solo performance,
just remember this:

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…

It’s amazing what 4,000 feet will do to an oboe reed.

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 remember this reed lesson pretty well. Even though it happened almost 15 years ago (eekkk…). The idea was to give myself a simple “cheat sheet” that I could refer back to as I made reeds. It was basically my profile of the “perfect reed.”

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.

Got a question recently about how to tie your knots when you’re making an oboe reed. It’s hard to explain in words, so take a look at the video and see if it’s clear.

This video is actually part of our reedmaking course, The Beginner’s Guide to Making Your First Playing Oboe Reed… In 9 Days or Less

Here’s what happens to dead oboe reeds (in this case, a bassoon reed) in our house. My son really gets a kick out of this. I wish I could have so much fun when my reeds kick the bucket.