If you aren’t planning to learn reedmaking now or anytime in the near future, the best thing you can do is learn how to scrape the reeds that you do buy. To do that, you’ve got to know the parts of a reed. Here’s a very simple diagram that will make it clear if you are just starting out. Get the Oboe Reed Diagram Feel free to pass it on…
We’re only about 18 days away from our big announcement at MKL Reeds. If you are reading this blog and haven’t signed up for our newsletter, The Reed Report, you are going to miss out. Before you play another note on your oboe, go and get your free subscription. You’ll get some free gifts and goodies, and it will only take a minute. You can signup here: Sign-Up For The…
It’s probably no surprise that we get a lot of questions from present, past and future customers about oboe reeds. That’s my business of course. We get questions like: “Do I need a soft reed or a hard reed?” “How should I know what reeds to order?” “What do I do with oboe reeds if I order them and don’t like them?” The list goes on and on… These are…
I always love trying different shaper tips–not only do they offer me different options and “feels”, but they can feel different on different gouges, so I often revisit unused shaper tips when I redo my gouge. Having recently gotten both of my gouges worked on, I went back through my shaper tip collection to see how things felt, and I’ve decided that my Ruth shaper tip makes absolutely fabulous reeds….that…
I certainly don’t profess to know everything about reedmaking….in fact, I kind of like being presented with the odd reed problem now and then. It challenges me to do some investigating and create a solution for a specific reed issue. In the end, I learn a lot and my reeds get better… I do have a lot of reedmaking experience, however, owning a reed business and all. This leads me…
I was cleaning out my desk the other day and came across my whole collection of Monumental Reed Notes. The collection is actually just a stack of Post-It-Notes from my years of study with Richard Killmer at Eastman. I thought I would share some of them with you. Don’t worry about the detail… at first. Get the reed playing. Make it a stable, functioning reed and then worry about putting…
It’s always fun to travel to festivals and gigs out of town, but it can make for unpredictable reeds. Planning ahead for multiple scenarios with a case full of gorgeous reeds is the ideal situation, but how realistic is it to make a reed in one city and expect it to be the same somewhere else? I’m back in Chicago now after spending 5 days in Nashville and am headed…
Playing the oboe is hard enough as it is, so I try to keep my reed philosophy as simple as possible. I believe there are only a few things that make a good reed. The rest, as they say, is just opinion. A good reed must have: response – if it doesn’t make a sound, what good is it? stability – using words like integrity and down-to-earth seem a bit…