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.