Reed Life Cycle (part 1) : long-term cycle

O.K. a little over a month of intense computer work is now over!
Back to the oboe, if fatigue and a sore back doesn’t get in the way!

The bad season for reeds and reed making is coming quickly, so I have to try to finish as many reeds as I can as soon as possible before weather just confuses the difference between good and mediocre reeds.

It’s a reed’s life…

I’ve “irked” more than one professional and/or amateur oboist by saying that making oboe reeds is easy! I stand firm on that, but I must explain that a lot of the complaints I read are mostly due to misunderstanding how reeds behave over time. Reeds have 2 definite life-cycles and you can’t expect them to behave “perfectly” when they are not in the performance phase! The short-term cycle describes with the reed’s behaviour during one day and the long-term cycle describes it’s entire lifetime from first scrape to final rest. The short-term cycle MIGHT be more apparent in Euro (short) scrape reeds because the windows in American scrape theoretically eliminate the reed’s springy bounce-back. But the long-term applies to all scraping styles.

In my student days, I had a reputation of being able to scrape a blank in 15 minutes and be able to play a good performance on it. Nonetheless, the best reeds take weeks to scrape (having been tied months before). In a nutshell, my best results commonly follow this pattern:

• On the first scraping, the reed should play all the notes relatively easily, nothing more. Trying to improve the sound or responsiveness at this point can very well ruin the reed.
• A few days later, the reed will open much more to the point where it is almost unusable. At this point,
  • first: close the reed with proper soaking and squeezing;
  • second: the reed can be softened over a few days for sound quality and responsiveness (remove more bark in the back and/or reduce the tip, sides and heart), but not too much as this can make the reed very unstable.
  • Note 1: squeezing the reed is more important than scraping for a few days. Playing the reed a little bit each day helps determine how much can be scraped.
  • Note 2: at this point, the reed can tune the oboe very flat. I don’t fix that yet because I have found that the reed will naturally rise in pitch within a week.
• Less than one week after the first scraping, the cane’s character should begin to show itself. The difference between concert grade, practice grade, strength builder or just plain no good!
• About a week after first scraping, I will sometimes make dramatic changes to the reed: change the back, back-up the heart, chop the tip by as much as 2.5mm – sometimes, no change at all. The dramatic changes often take reeds I thought were awful and turn them into concert-grade reeds. Sometimes, even small adjustments take near-concert grade reeds and ruin them irreparably!
• More than one week after the first scraping (a week and a half or 2 weeks), the reed will be at its best. This is where the final touch scraping can be done. A reed that needs scraping or any adjustment after 2 weeks (in MY experience – other people will have different opinions) usually means it is just no good.
• The reed is actually best for performance after about one month after the first scrape. Reeds should be used at least every 2-3 days for 15 minutes to an hour to keep them ”alive”.

This kind of use typically keeps my reeds in concert grade for another couple of months…. but then again, I don’t play anywhere nearly as much as students or professionals!

I know the reed is at the end of its life when it becomes “too” easy to play, the sound brightens and becomes buzzy: dynamics will become more difficult, the pitch will rise (or drop) and articulation will become sluggish. No scraping will help anymore. Sometimes, cleaning with hydrogen peroxide and pipe-cleaners will extend the life for a few days to a week, but it is not a full restoration.

Reed Season! – New Repertoire.

Physical update first:

Because my physiotherapist is on vacation, I’m actually skipping a month of treatments. Increased activity at the gym is a mixed blessing: I do feel generally more awake, but I do get extra sore the morning after. Every fitness and therapy person I speak to agree that it’s a matter of doing too much too fast. Right now, I can’t do much in the pool and too much time in the hot tub appears to seize my neck muscles resulting in passing headaches and pinched nerves.

Oboe-wise: my fingers are feeling great! I don’t get the fatigue and the soreness in the fingers themselves anymore (“Mashala”, as they say: “God made it so!”). These past few days, however, I’ve been getting those twinges in the forearm and shoulder that remind me of tendonitis. They are not tendonitis, I’m sure, but either a pinched nerve in the neck or a few tight muscles. I know this for sure because my fingers are playing just as smoothly as they have in these past few months, which is more than ever in my best days.

Reed Season:

I’m starting to think that there is something special about the end-of-summer / beginning-of-autumn season for reeds. In the past couple of weeks, my reeds have been much easier to make than usual and showing clearly if they are good or bad; that is, a bad reed shows it has no hope so I can break it without regret and the good ones clearly show what they need to become their best. My reeds have also been sounding generally better than usual…. that is, they can sound bright or dark, but there is no doubt as to their character.

I have recently made excellent reeds on rainy days, so the notion of sunny days are necessary to making good reeds is now demolished. However, this is pretty much the opposite season to February, which typically gives the worst sounding and behaving reeds. So I think the notion of seasons and climate is well evidenced.

New Repertoire: copy-cat or comparison?

I received a shipment of Music Minus One (MMO) material last week. I got some really good baroque repertoire for oboe, recorder and flute (that will all be played on the oboe) and discovered a baroque composer I did not know before: Veracini. I also got some straight-forward jazz and Brazilian repertoire for flute. These will be interesting because they really use the high register of the flute. I will need to practice note in the following range:

Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.1

Included in that shipment is a collection of Telemann duets for flute with no continuo. The MMO CD has a flutist playing flute 2, but the sheet music has both parts. I thought it might be nice to record some of these with the flute on CD and with myself playing both parts. By Murphy’s law, someone had done this and posted it on the BBoard! That someone is Craig Matovich, whom I respect quite a lot as an oboist and as a person: we disagree on some aspects of reed making and tooling, play very differently, but we share many ideals including:

1. 

   Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.2
   Pursuing oboe performance for the sheer joy of it to spite any difficulties.
2. Using technology as an ensemble when we can’t get people to play with.
3. Sharing our experience in the hopes it benefits and/or encourages others.
4. Exploring classical, world-folk, jazzy and fusion of musical styles.
5. 

   Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.3
   The love of music and life overall and hope for peace, understanding and caring in the world.

I had intended to work on another sonata, but Craig agreed that it might be interesting to compare the same work with our different sounds and styles. I personally think he did a remarkable set of recordings. So while I prepare for mine, here they are his. His knowledge, experience and tooling (hardware and software) are far superior to mine, but still accessible to the amateur home-producer.

Mental obstacles to technique

Reading through these have been very enlightening in terms of how my body reacts to technical passages. I know from my old repertoire that my technical abilities are decent… for example, I have shown in a previous post that I can paly Telemann sonatas well enough. But when I read a new Telemann piece that is of equal technical skill, I fail miserably. I observed that my mistakes mostly come from 2 mental processes:

1. Expecting notes and rhythms that are not actually what is written.
2. Not knowing what to expect and therefore fumbling at every note grouping.

So, improving technique for me, at least in baroque repertoire, is essentially training the mind more than the fingers. I have to see if the same is true with Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and others.

Tying Reeds & Significant IMS Results

I’m now getting IMS every 2 weeks instead of weekly. I can’t tell if IMS is supposed to treat/heal fibromyalgia directly, but it does work on big pains that probably contribute to the condition of fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). For example, “Saturday Headaches” are virtually gone and I can walk without knee braces much more than in the past few years. I can play oboe until my mouth stops without excess pain in the arms. I haven’t systematically verified if regularity of notes has improved or not, but not having noticed any problems is a good sign.

Stretching still seems best for the general FMS conditions of constant tension (especially in the legs) causing fatigue. My sleep really improves when I stretch at night. I still get headaches, but it seems due to the season (tree pollen) and bad habits at the computer workstation. Slouching forward and back is really hard to quit.

My therapist started working on slender muscles that cause the worst pains when practicing or working around the house. These are long slender muscles in the forearm and shoulder, apparently under other muscles. The first treatment on these muscles caused a huge grasping reaction: the needle was therefore considerably painful. The reaction (including hot and cold sweats and my whole body shaking) lasted for several minutes after the needle was removed and the soreness in the arm was so bad, I had to leave work early because I couldn't concentrate. The next day, everything was fine and those muscles were fully relaxed... that is, even more than "normal"; in other words, a very welcome relief! Over the week, the arm remained rather well. When strain returns, it returns much less than before. The second treatment on those muscles was MUCH easier: no huge reaction and only moderate soreness for the rest of the day.

Treatment on the lower back is funny: relief is felt immediately and lasts for the remainder of the day. The next day, I get twinges again, but the 2nd day after, the back is much more relaxed and remains so for about a week.

Binding (Tying) Oboe Reeds

I’ve seen clarinet and saxophone players buy not only a dozen different mouthpieces, but also a dozen different ligatures to get their reeds to play the way they like. Now consider that once you’ve tied the reed and started scraping, that’s it: no going back! I really consider the choice of shapes, staples and the binding more important than most characteristics of the cane itself.

A Google search should give you a good number of video demonstrations, textual explanation with images (click the pictures for their source), books and DVDs that are worth buying. So I will just add my observations on what is important. Tying reeds is a simple concept, but it requires a  whole lot of care and attention. The following factors must be considered:

1. length of cane on the staple to ensure proper seal without constraining the vibration,
2. proper alignment of the cane (with or) without sideways slippage,
3. winding the thread so it won’t pass the end of the staple.

There are many schools of practice, most notably Philadelphia (American) scrape and various European scrapes. Number 3 is the only thing that all schools agree on (to my knowledge): the thread must stop one or two twists before the end of the staple. Winding thread must never go past the staple. To this day, I still find reeds that refuse to vibrate well have been tied 1/2 to 1 wind of thread past the end of the staple.

Concerning the length at which the reed is tied, many oboists from every school of practice tie at a specified length, regardless of the shaper and/or staple they use whereas others tie at specific lengths that vary with the choice of staple and/or shaper. My own experience considers that the important issue is where the cane closes with respect to the end of the staple. I have found that what my main teacher (Bernard Jean) taught me remains the best way to ensure free vibration of the reed for fuller dynamics and ease of responsiveness: the blades should close one or two twists of the thread before the end of the staple. Because different characteristics in the cane and variations in staple dimensions (even within the same model from the same manufacturer) means that the cane will not always close at the same length: so binding includes pushing up or pulling down the cane before finishing the thread winding.

Le Guide Roseau (Cane Guide) and Pre-Binding for proper blade alignment

For number 2, the proper alignment of cane blades, there are again disagreements. Many who follow variations on the Philadelphia scrape like to offset the overlap of the blades whereas pretty much all who use European techniques expend considerable efforts in eliminating any offset at all. My observations suggest that some offset might be good for some people who have less lung strength and I have been surprised with excellent reeds that had slippage. But in principle and for my own use, I fully agree with the European idea of perfect overlap (no offset at all). This is a very difficult thing to accomplish because the winding thread produces torque that naturally wants to twist the cane with it. Luckily, there are 2 ways to virtually ensure complete absence of offsetting.

The video above is made from still images and shows what I call pre-binding. This consists of using some delicate thread (like the cheap stuff that comes with sewing kits in corner-stores) to wrap the top part of the cane before binding. This prevents slippage due to torque during binding and holds the cane reasonably well on the staple which relieves some of the difficulty of finger-holding during the bind. Delicate thread ensures the cane does not get damaged and it is easily removed when the binding is finished.

Pre-binding is not perfect and if done improperly will allow slippage. Le Guide Roseau (the Cane Guide) is an invention by Fabrice Rousson which eliminates the failings of pre-binding. He provides his own video demonstration (French only, but visually self-explanatory) and the slide-show to the right gives the highlights. Although it might not look like much, after having tried it, it really does do wonders. I tied over a dozen reeds with it and it is superb: by far easier and more dependable than pre-binding. I will scrape some of these reeds next week (that will be the real test) but looking closely at the side of the blades near the thread is the most promising I have ever seen.

Mr. Rousson makes one for oboe and one for English Horn. The one for oboe does not fit the widest shapes so well (RDG #2, Roseau Chantant RC3, Kunibert Michel 7.5 – they tend to split), but these shapes are really for oboe d'amore anyway. For those shapes, pre-binding remains a very useful option, but for real oboe shapes (RDG -1, Kunibert Michel 7.25, Weber wide), the brass cane guide works fantastically.

You can get instructions and more pictures on tying with the Cane Guide here.

Vous pouvez obtenir des instructions avec plus d’images sur le ligatturage avec le guide roseau ici.

Gouging Oboe Cane, part 2

It might be interesting to explain what all the screws do on the machine, but if you have to ask the question, buy a one-piece construction machine that requires no calibrating! There is also a no adjustment machine called a ”Crank Gouger” only available at Innoledy. There is a thread on this machine at the Oboe BBoard. Personally – apart from preferring to save my money for an oboe d’amore – I like the idea of being able to change the shape of my blade, which I think is impossible on those machines.

Calibrating the machine – general principles.

Now comes the time to actually use the gouging machine. Again, a few principles for the adjustment. I don’t know if this is justified with any scientific theory or even practical experience, but intuitively, we want any end-to-end line on the cane to have exactly the same thickness. Therefore, of extreme importance is complete parallelism of the bed in comparison with the arm that the plane glides on. If there is a vertical discrepancy, either the ends or the middle of the cane will be too thin compared to the overall length at that point…. The middle getting thinner should be impossible regardless of which direction the guide or bed might be slanting. But this has happened to me a lot. Maybe my guide that has a curve in it… very possible.
Horizontal (sideways) angles, no matter how small, means that the center thick part will not stay centered. In theory, this should actually produce a diamond-shape  thick part, but in practice… again, maybe the beaten-up condition of my machine. For years, without realizing it, my machine was unable to do anything else than this because little holes in the bottom of the bed were drilled by adjustment screws tightened too tightly! No matter how I pushed or pulled with the side adjuster screws, the under screws would pull the bed back in the exact same position by sliding back in the holes.
I fixed this by filing down a flat surface for the screws with a “Dremmel tool”, but most people would criticize (correctly too) that this risks the introduction other imprecisions.

Fitting the cane: chopping length.

This is so simple, I don’t know why I mention it. The chopping length has one purpose alone: to make the cane fit in the gouging machine. If you use an easel to score the cane before folding, and this easel is of a different length than your gouger bed, TOO BAD: it’s the gouger that matters! On either end of the bed are usually little plates to hold the cane in place: the spring-mounted hook “pinchers” actually do very little but prevent the cane from sliding above those end-plates. Because the plane glides past these plates, to let the blade can cut the entire cane length, there must be curved holes in them to allow free movement without damaging the blade or the plane bottom itself: the bottom helps hold down the cane to prevent ripping and lifting off the bed.
The cane can be a little shorter (up to 1.5mm), but the less snugly it fits, the more risk there is of snagging in the blade and being pulled over the end plates. My machine only has one end plate: I don’t care about the one in back (right side) because it was too difficult to get the right curve on it to prevent damaging the plane and the blade. The one in front (left side) is the only one that really matters, when we’re careful, because it’s the one that keeps the cane in place while cutting.

Shaving Thickness: cut vs. rip.

Pretty much all sources of information I have been able to find agree that the cane shavings must measure between 0.05mm and 0.1mm. Thinner than that simply does not cut enough: not only will it take a very long time to gouge (risking compression of the cane), but it just might not cut, period. More than that seems to rip the grains rather than cut them. This is significant because if grains are pulled or torn from each other, then the cane lacks its living properties; it does not “hold together” and all kinds of strange issues happen with the finished reeds.

This “video” is a bunch of still images taken at short interval. I flip the cane around every now and then because the blade stops cutting in that direction: I start the blade a little bit inside the cane, so the back always remains a bit thicker until the gouge is complete. The gouge is complete when the roller starts rolling: having reached the guide, there’s nowhere for the blade left to go. Towards the end, notice hat the cane came off the bed a little bit: this is because the cane is a bit concave (curving inward). This piece did not break and I was able to finish it nicely. The shavings change in thickness and appearance. Towards the end, it becomes barely more than dust. At that point I very carefully flip a few more times: even if the roller is rolling, there are often little bumps left over from some degree of ripping.

Grains: good and sponge-cane – a sharp gouger blade.

This is the last point on cane selection. There exist density testers for metals, hard woods, ceramics, polymers and so on. I don’t know how effective they are for cane. For myself, I roll the inside of cane on my thumbnail: if it feels smooth, it’s excellent cane (densely packed grains). There are varying degrees of soft cane and I usually don’t like them. One kind of cane I call “sponge cane” because when scraping the bark, the under part looks porous like a sponge. This is usually horrible and not worth scraping at all.
It’s actually hard to predict while gouging because a rough thumbnail roll is similar for both soft and spongy cane. Also, to really emphasize and clearly identify good, medium and soft canes, the gouger blade must be very sharp. I use the same techniques as I do on my reed knives, but with even better honing stones. Some oboists talk about leaving burrs on their knives…. aye-aye-aye-chihuahua!!! Burrs tear, they don’t cut! But getting rid of them requires great stones and a hard metal blade (always the case with gougers).
All in all, I actually have had a couple of amazing practice (not concert) reeds with sponge cane. So, again, I don’t throw much away anymore. I use coloured thread with bands of other colours to identify which reed is which and I log in a book the variables (thickness, cane quality, shaper used etc.) associated with each colour combination.

Once the machine is calibrated, no more need to measure, right? – WRONG!

The density and health factors of the cane will change the actual final thickness of the cane. This means that:

1. the machine can be made of the best metals: this ensures tolerances of 0.01mm or less
2. cutting other metals, polymers, ceramics and glass would confirm these tolerances
3. cane is a plant (soft, not actually wood) and some degree of compression, “bounce-back” and ripping will occur.

I have not compiled any statistics (variance extremes and standard deviation), but as much as 0.08mm variation has been observed….. due to the beaten-up condition of my very old brass machine that does not even use ball-bearings? Perhaps, but the following observations should hold true on even the best of machines:

1. The hardest (densest) cane seems to gouge the thinnest, but not always.
2. The softest, spongiest cane tends to resist thinning due to “bounce-back”. It absorbs most downward pressure from the plane and seems to decompress afterwards. End result, less effective cutting.
3. Sunny days tend to gouge thinner than cloudy/rainy days.

Until recently, I had always soaked my cane for at least an hour before gouging to prevent cracking. This naturally increases the degree of bounce-back, even in the hardest cane. Lately, I have started to gouge dry and have not noticed any extra cracking. It really makes gouging easier by providing more resistance to the blade, so less evasion of being cut. It changes nothing, however, in the density of the cane and the thumbnail rolling test still works.
Theoretically, gouging wet means the thickness measurement should reduce as cane dries and shrinks. This does not matter as long as measurements are always taken in the same state (wet or dry). And people have been reported to like their cane with thicknesses ranging from 0.42mm to 0.68mm, so the important thing is that each oboist determine her/his preference and go from there.

Gouging Oboe Cane, part. 1

Honestly, a person would be justified to ask what the blazes makes me an expert on gouging cane: I’ve only always used the same beaten-up machine for about 20 years (10 of which were almost absent of oboe activity) and I only actually fixed a very serious flaw with it (preventing any real adjustment) last summer!
Well, it’s true that I don’t know even a quarter of what a real cane producer does. But what I do know, I can substantiate with engineering principles and my beginnings were founded on the advice of machine-shop tool maker (my late brother, God rest his soul) who fixed and calibrated machines that built engine parts for air-craft used in the roughest manoeuvres! Also, information on gouging is very hard to find, so by laying out here what I know, I hope to be of service to advanced reed-makers who need something to start their adventure with gouging.
For a more detailed discussion, check-out this thread on the Oboe BBoard.
In my last blog post, I talked about how measuring the diameter can be misleading and the arc is more important than the diameter. This picture shows (top left) how using a micrometer or calliper or most diameter-rulers will measure what we think are the long diameter (DL) and short diameter (DS). But in reality, the real short diameter (DSR) is actually smaller and the real long diameter (DLR) is actually longer. Using a radius gage solves this problem by measuring the actual arc.

   

This means that, when you buy cane, you have to be sure that your supplier is measuring the same way (with the same tool) you are! But that only matters, when you buy gouged or shaped cane, because when you buy canon (tube) cane, the measurement range is really just an average of what you can expect. After a piece of cane has been gouged, it is virtually useless to do any kind of measurement of diameter or arc, because the actual tensions in the cane grains pull the sides together a little bit: a curl results and the arc has changed. Diameter measurements, then, must be done at before splitting or before gouging and then the cane must be stored in well marked containers.

Pitfalls of the scientific method.

Personally, I think we tend to over-value the importance of any given measurement. Cane is a plant, not a high density polymer! Diameter is one issue, but the thickness of the cane wall must certainly mean something too! There is also age, density, health and many other factors, not even considering the staple being used, the shape and the weather (when making and when playing)!
Do keep a record of measurements, binding, shaping and scraping characteristics (not to mention observations on cane quality), but don’t draw conclusions based on less than 5 to 10 reeds and don’t immediately discard cane or a reed you’re working on just you think one or two measurements were missed. I have had amazing reeds with almost all descriptions of cane and often the best “setup” has produced reeds that just went to the garbage.
Modern science works by attempting to isolate a single variable and see the effects when that variable changes: then the study is performed again by isolating another variable. This assumes that a model can be built from those different variable changes: a tenuous assumption at best which most serious scientists will hold as difficult. Proof: weather prediction is probably the most sophisticated and intensely researched multivariate model – how well does that work?
For making oboe reeds, this means that it might be best to just keep all the cane (throw away what we know from experience just won't work) and learn to adapt our technique to get as good as possible a reed from whatever piece of cane we get.

Gouging means correct measuring.

A serious reed maker should begin shaping cane as soon as possible. Jay Light wrote something to the effect of: "an intelligent chimpanzee can shape cane". But one of the really important elements of quality control in cane, especially for the oboe, is the gouging: the thickness and inner curve of the cane used. This is much more difficult than shaping, unless you know a vendor of gouging machines that will adjust your setup. The equipment is VERY expensive and there are different ways to gouge the cane. Overall, if you can get a good supplier of gouged cane, I recommend leaving it at that. But here's some theory for curiosity's sake!

As soon as we start gouging, we need ultra-precise measuring tools. The micrometer is a dial (or digital) comparator mounted so it points to another pin, either perpendicular or inline. The perpendicular pin is necessary for the measuring of finished reeds, but the inline type is better for gouging because of the risk of incorrect angle.
In my last blog post, I showed pictures of a home-made wood base for chopping pre-gouged cane. I also made a base for my dial indicator ($35, at the time) because I could not afford the full micrometer ($250, at the time). I made the base of wood and the other point with a screw that I filed into a ball point using metal files and fine sharpening stones. I don't recommend anyone else do this or even use my micrometer, because any displacement of the arm will cause incorrect readings.

In the image above (a) and (d) are correct because the ball-points of each are in line: this is evidenced when a piece of flat metal is perfectly perpendicular to the measuring prod. Otherwise, when there is displacement the read measurement is longer than the real thickness as proven by the equation familiar to everyone who did trigonometry:

realThickness = | measuredHeight X sin( angle )|

Perpendicular means sin( angle ) = 1, so no flaw in the measurement. Displacement can happen front to back and side to side, so when it gets maladjusted, it can take 15 minutes to get it right again!
Now, The blade is shaped to have roughly the same diameter as the cane tube. Because it is elevated from the base, when gouging, it will make the sides thinner than the center: this is usually what we want. In fact, most of us want a much thicker center compared to the sides for better tuning stability and warmer sound. Thinner sides also help the reed close, saving on endurance. Because my machine is old and beaten up, I do this myself by reshaping the curve of the blade.
Here is the blog page of one well respected American Scrape reed maker and vendor on his adventure learning how to make (and shape) gouger blades. This should be enough to dissuade anyone (even me) from attempting it! A lot of experience and skill is required, and the appropriate tools are not a luxury, they are absolutely required.

There is also another technique called "double-radius" whereby the blade is a little off-center. When the cane is flipped around in the machine, the offset automatically goes to the other side of the cane. This causes 2 grooves to occur in the cane producing a stronger center. In the picture, the 2 green blades illustrate how flipping the cane changes where the blade cuts the cane. Not all machines do this (mine does but I don't dare attempt it with its difficult setting screws), so sometimes reshaping the blade is the only way to get a thicker center <=> thinner sides.
Different mechanisms exist to control the final thickness of the cane: the height adjustment of the blade assembly (plane) is stopped by a roller. My gouger uses a double-wedge guide: pull the bottom wedge to the left to make the cane thinner and to the right for thicker cane. There are pitfalls with this, most notably the difficulty in fine adjustment, but also it lacks any guarantee of parallelism with the cane bed.
If you choose to buy a gouging machine, I HIGHLY recommend you get one with the following characteristics:

1. First choice: one-piece construction with fewest adjustments possible!
   
2. Second choice: exchangeable beds so you can use most of the machine for oboe and English Horn.
   
3. In all cases: height adjustment should be on the wheel, not the guide... keep away from those 2ble wedge height adjusters (like mine)

Pre-Gouging and tootH yanking…

I capitalized that H because apparently I forgot it on a Tweet and got some good laughs!

First – human (caused) tragedy:

What is happening in Libya right now can cause a lot of anger, for different reasons, directed at completely different “camps”. Regardless of the camp, this can result in anger, fear and pain. I firmly believe that what the general population is told about the motivations is, at best, a load of half-truths. So I beseech everyone, regardless of your political opinions to simply speak for and keep your mind set on a peaceful resolution of the current situation.
I did serve the Canadian Armed Forces: I am Combat Leadership certified. More on that some other time, but I did serve 8 years with pride and honour.
The image to the right is from the War Amps: an organization that raises money to help children with amputated limbs and their families. The image with the downturned rifle is the Canadian Armed Forces’ symbol for mourning dead soldiers (“fallen comrades”). The organization uses this as a logo for their efforts to sensitize people to the horrors of (all) war and to the importance of trying to avoid it and find peaceful solutions to critical situations. Some of you will argue in favour of action to prevent worse trouble: history has yet to show this works at all.

One wisdom tooth gone!

The operation went really well. The “deep sedation” (getting me to sleep) was quick and efficient and the wake-up process went quickly and well. The extraction took an hour, but evidently without problems: today (approx. 48 hours later) no pain, no swelling. 2 weeks to oboe! In the mean-time, prepare reeds for scraping!

Pre-Gouging: the conception of an oboe reed!

I was surprised, during the summer, to read LOTS of questions and discussions about pre-gouging. My wife took some excellent photos and I will use them to explain: many more can be found on her Flickr photostream. In a nutshell, “gouging” cane is giving it the right thickness and inner curve and “pre-gouging” is only about getting a piece of raw can to fit the gouging machine…. that’s all!

To me, the most important criterion for cane selection is flatness: this will greatly determine how “freely” the reed vibrates. Arching inwards will choke the reed and cause leaks close to the binding. Arching outwards will make the blades separate: I got excellent reeds with this, but they are usually difficult on endurance. I don’t care so much about “straightness” (side to side) as this will be cancelled by the shaping.

Most references and stores only mention splitting in 3. For me, the inspection of flatness sometimes shows that it is possible to get 2 flat sides that would ruined by splitting in 3. Fully flat splits are not always possible, so I just aim for the best possible and choose to split in 2 or 3 depending on which will yield closest to flat.

      

The images below show:

1. Split lengths from a canon (tube cane) split in 2, split in 3 and pre-gouged.
2. The split-only cane in the machine: it can work, but risks jamming the machine and messing-up the delicate adjustments.
3. The pre-gouged cane: much easier to gouge.

In terms of quality of cane the important factors are:

1. density and “health” of the grains: hard to tell before scraping – I’ve lately made great reeds with canes of almost all hard/softness
2. flatness of the final cut
3. diameter and thickness of the selection

The thickness of cane will be the subject of another blog post (on gouging). As for the diameter, these pictures show that what looks like a HUGE difference in diameter can be as little as 1mm or 0.5mm. In fact, I consider the arc more important than the diameter because, in an ovoid tube, the diameter can be misleading, especially if you’re using drop-in rulers to measure it.

    

The pre-gouging demonstrations above work equally well with canons split in 2 or 3. I only have difficulty when a canon turns out to have a diameter for English Horn: a bigger pre-gouger (especially for E. H.) is required for that. In many internet guides on reed making, they show chopping the cane before pre-gouging it. I prefer the opposite because:

1. it is easier to chop after the cane is thinned,
2. some split cane lengths can produce 2 pieces for reed making, but the chopping first requires preparation that can ruin it.

For chopping, I removed the guillotine from my beaten-up old gouging machine and made a wood-base for it. The reason is mostly that I could make a fixed-length stopper at the end, making it easier to measure the cut. The base does not need any degree of precision at all (±1.5mm is good enough) and the side bar allows it to take the pushing force from my hand more easily. The guillotine blade needs to be sharpened once in a while, but its nothing precise at all. The gouging is the really sensitive part.

The above images show: (left) cutting a little bit off the end to keep the flatter part in the middle; (center) sometimes, 2 pieces of reed cane can be obtained from the same split length; (right) again, what counts most of all is correctly centering the cut to keep the flattest part.
Other than the above, I pretty well keep all cane, soft or hard, twisted or straight. The reason is that I have it, might as well use it. If it does not work out to be a good reed, well I only lost a few hours of my time. But throwing away the potential for a fantastic reed is a horrible thing!

Old Cane and Rubato MIDI

It seems the full moon is having its effects: work gulping my practice time and great reeds going bad just because the cane is too young.

Free advice for new reed makers:

In my posting wimpy [ weather cane mouth | reeds ], I mentioned how the weather is public enemy #1 for reeds… well, freshness doesn’t help either! Ever since my own student days in Montréal, we always said that you just can’t make a good reed out of green cane: good cane is ripe cane! Today just confirmed that for the ump-teenth time! For the past few years, I had been experimenting with shapes made on request by Roseau Chantant. I was always impressed with the quality of his cane and workmanship, but tonight, I fell upon one piece that just won’t play. When cane is not ripe, you can make a reed that will play wonderfully just after you scraped it, but the next day it goes dead (no more crow). Scrape it again: it plays great for 15 minutes and goes dead again. Scrape it again, and the same thing over and over again…

I have tube cane from 1994, and this never happens. Using almost any shaper, this cane will make from good reeds to fantastic reeds, rarely bad (except, of course, where the grains were always wrong to begin with). You’ll know “green” cane by a kind of very-hard soapy wax-like feeling when you scrape: it doesn’t feel like cane, it doesn’t scrape like cane. There is also a yellowish-greenish shine to the grains under the bark.

I know this will not provide comfort to new oboists on a budget, but there is really only one thing you can do to prevent this: buy lots of cane, and let it age at least 5 years!

MIDI accompaniment

Leading up to my 1st video (Gammal fabodpsalm), I mentioned preparing the accompaniment as a MIDI file (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to be played by my computer. Well, luckily I have some very powerful software, but the neat thing is that there are tons of free music editing programs out there; you can also get almost any piece of music in MIDI format for free off the internet. You can see how this becomes interesting to students and amateurs!

I’ll write more on that later after trying out a few things, but this is what I consider important in an editing program:

1. Easy computer keyboard note entry: mouse entry looks easy, but it is actually very tedious, hard on the wrists and prone to mistakes.
2. A way to change tempo in chunks of music: in other words, select a few bars and say “do a rallentando” or “do an accelerando”.
3. A way to change the dynamics (in MIDI, this is called velocity) in chunks of music: in other words, select a few bars on one instrument or several instruments and say “do a crescendo” or “do a diminuendo”.

Those seem obvious and natural enough, no? Points 2 and 3 are surprisingly hard to find! I have only found 1 freeware program that does tempo changes, and this is not even rall./accell.! Finale, one of the most popular programs (and one of the most expensive) does it all, but not easily. But looking for freeware is hard because doing a Google search for “MIDI editor” will bring thousands of results, most of which for ring tones and drum beats!

At any rate, for my next few recordings, I want to concentrate on sound quality (of the oboe) during the recording process, so I’ll use Music Minus One and other recorded accompaniment I have instead of . Also, there is a Linux distribution (Ubuntu Studio) designed especially for multimedia artists, so I’ll try it and hope it will allow my lap-top to communicate with my digital piano. Installing Ubuntu Linux (and its variants) has always been flawless for me, so I have hope!

wimpy [ weather cane mouth | reeds ]

For those of you who have done Linear Algebra, the part on matrices, you’ll recognize the equation:
wimpy weather + wimpy cane + wimpy (tired out) mouth =  wimpy reeds….
By wimpy reeds, in this context, I also mean wimpy sound!

Many of you in the U.S.A. are experiencing weather that we, in Eastern Canada, take for granted: lots of snow and dry-cold weather. Well, over here, the weather is about as expected (between
–5 and –15°C…. sorry, I don’t do Farenheit). But that doesn’t really matter as the heating in the house keeps it at a comfortable 19°C. What is the killer, for the sound, is that the humidity in the house has been dipping below 28%…… in the summer, it goes as high as 93%, before we turn on the air conditioning, then it stabilizes at 55%.

My reeds that were playing soooooo nicely a month ago just went wimpy last week, with undependable stability. For the past few days, the sound that was sooooo mellow a few weeks ago just turned to into a buzzaphone!

One thing I have noticed regardless of the weather, though, is that when my lips get tired, I tend to bite instead of support with my gut and the sound goes (relatively) sour. Relatively, because a reed that played warmly and darkly will still do so, but will add a definite buzz to it.

Ah well, I guess I’d better leave the repertoire alone for awhile and just concentrate on long tones! Also, we can expect worse in terms of humidity with the temperatures falling to –30°C in late January and Februrary, so I’d best work on the power humidifier a bit!