Oboe maker Paul Covey has been located in Baltimore, Maryland since 1970. He began his oboe studies with Ferdinand Prior at Cincinnati', and later moved to the Cleveland Institute to study with John Mack. After graduating, Mr. Covey moved to Baltimore and studied repairing with Mr. Hans Moennig in Philadelphia. Paul Covey i's located in the light industrial section of Baltimore, not far from Johns Hopkins University.

Nora Post: How and why did you get started making oboes?

Paul Covey: My teacher, John Mack, was really responsible for that. He was always interested in working on his own oboes, and in mechanics. After I graduated in 1970, 1 was doing some private teaching in the Cleveland public schools. The instruments were terrible, and they were always going off to be repaired. They took months to get fixed, I got fed up, and so I decided to give it a shot myself.

NP: Do you feel you were mechanically inclined as a child?

PC: Oh, yes. This wasn't anything new. As a child, I was interested in taking apart radios. I remember I drove around with one fender on my car for a short time while I was fixing the rust on the other! My grandfather was a farmer, with tractors, etc. I was always interested in machinery; I always wanted to know how things worked. It was a very natural thing for me.

NP: I'm curious about something. Since you started out in repairs, I'm wondering if you think someone trained in repair is more sensitive to the player's needs than, say, a person who does one part of an oboe - in factory production, for example.

PC: You're talking about craftsmanship versus production. They're two different animals. My main concern with a small production is quality. I'm concerned with employee satisfaction and with my satisfaction! All the employees here get their initials on the oboes they build, and everyone here signs a card that is included with the finished oboe. We're doing what I call "horizontal" construction - one person does most of the work assembling an oboe. If someone makes an error in manufacture, for example, he has to correct it. This isn't efficient, I know. But over the long run people are more responsible that way and I think people are happier that way. I've tried "vertical" construction - shorter jobs and so forth, but wasn't happy with it.

NP: My next question is something I've thought about a lot over the past few years. Most oboists aren't taught much about their instrument per se. Many can't regulate their oboes, and I've had so many requests to teach people basic adjustments and the simple repairs. These players wish they knew much more about their instruments. Do you think we would have better players if people understood more about their oboes?

PC: That's certainly the way I work - as I understand something, I function better. Knowing about tuning problems, etc. helps me understand the inherent limitations of the instrument. On the other hand, if I can't get a difficult slur, for example, IT think, "Well, if I can make my reeds a little better," or "It's the reed or the oboe," when I really should just sit down and practice!

NP: But how about the oboe playing population though? Is knowing a little about your instrument - when you need to know much more - dangerous?

PC: Well, it would be good if people knew what an oboe should really be doing - at least you'd know when it's stopped doing that and needs to be fixed.

NP: Yes. You were telling me earlier today that someone here counted the number of parts needed to assemble an oboe, and it was more than three hundred and fifty. That's a lot to learn about.

PC: Right. One of our employees counted about three hundred and fifty, though it depends on whether it's a Tabuteau system or not! You're taking a complicated machine on stage, and you're at its mercy if something goes wrong. Since I do understand the oboe, it's difficult for me to imagine being in that situation. People take something on stage, they put a reed into it and if it doesn't work, they are gone from here!

NP: What's your recommendation?

PC: I think repairmen should keep their customers as informed as possible. I show people how I do things. I think we should take some of the mystique out of it, answer questions, etc.

NP: Right. Incidentally, did anyone help you learn how to manufacture oboes?

PC: No, but that's because I didn't really ask. I was only making one or two oboes a year when I started it. I was just trying to figure out what questions to ask!

NP: How many oboes are you making now in a year?

PC: Last year it was twenty-six. I'd like to get up to about fifty.

NP: I'm interested in finding out how you learned about tuning.

PC: Arthur Benade's acoustical work has been invaluable to me. I can't understand all the numbers, but you can look at what he's done and see the relationships between tone hole locations, diameters, and heights. I have a chart that he gave me, for instance, that shows which way the octaves go as you change the bore. Everything I've experimented with is verified by what he says is going to happen - I haven't found anything to distrust yet.

NP: There are very few people making professional quality oboes in this country. What are advantages or disadvantages of this situation for you?

PC: Well, I think if I were a small European oboe maker, I'd have many of the problems I have here. One of the big advantages for me is being American-trained, and being easily available to people; I'm closer to the people I'm dealing with, and I certainly hope I'm approachable.

NP: I know you're starting to build two differently bored oboes now. Can you tell me about them?

PC: Yes, there are two designs. The bore of the oboe we've been building since we started was taken from an old AK Loree oboe. Some people are looking for more darkness in the left hand, though, so now we're building a different top joint bore for that. We're also experimenting with a shorter bottom joint length, and with wall thicknesses as well.

NP: What will the shorter middle joint do?

PC: We want to give players a choice of where they want the low register pitches to be. We'd like a sharper low B-flat, B- natural, and C, for instance, which are particularly important for quintet playing or for playing second oboe.

NP: Have you made any actual changes in the bore dimensions of your oboes since you started?

PC: Well, when we started, I made one alteration in the bottom joint right off the bat, because I wanted a higher low register. I also used a different design for the bell to do the same. We're moving towards an instrument that is more flexible in tone and pitch than our previous oboes. We have recently made bore changes to help strengthen the low register, as well as to lower the middle and upper D natural. The new oboe design, with the smaller top joint, is an instrument with slightly darker, fuller, but more resistant left hand notes. Typically, the smaller bored top joints tend to be flatter in pitch from G natural to C natural, though this doesn't always have to be the case.

NP: Right. Marigaux and Howarth have certainly solved that problem.

PC: Yes, but they do a number of things differently, and I don't know how to relate what they're doing to what we've been doing because it's so different.

NP: I see. Incidentally, I'm curious to know if you have any plans to make an English horn. What would you copy if you decided to make one?

PC: That's a dangerous question! But to answer you, of the instruments I know well - and I have to say I don't know the Howarth well - I think there are things I like in the Laubin and things I like in the Loree, and they're not the same things.

NP: Can you tell me a bit about your experiments using plastic instead of wood?

PC: So far, we've used plastic only for the top joints. The only real problem is getting rid of the water. Moisture in a wood instrument makes a line at the back of the joint, and passes out through the bottom of the oboe. With a plastic instrument, the water spreads all over the instrument, and it can change how the instrument plays.

NP: What are your goals in terms of production?

PC: I'd like to be able to do a lot of different things for a lot of different people - an exclusive instrument taken very seriously. Being such a small business, we often do things the long way around, and I'd like to be more efficient without losing quality.

NP: Let me ask you some questions about oboes other than your own. You have to compete, and you see lots of other manufacturers' instruments for repairs. What are some of the strong points you admire in other makers?

PC: Well, there are some instruments I'm not really familiar with. The instrument I see the most is Loree, and I have a lot of respect for the job they have done over the years. It's difficult from the player's point of view simply to understand the mechanics of it all. It's mindboggling to think of producing the sheer number of instruments they make each year. All the oboe makers with big productions - I admire their tenacity to go on!

NP: A lot of players say the old Lorees were the best Lorees. You yourself have copied an AK series oboe from the late thirties. What is your opinion of these older oboes?

PC: Well, that's a question! But I like the C series Lorees a lot - they were quite different from anything else Loree has turned out. There's some handwork involved in those oboes, tone holes are shaped differently, etc. They're very nice, and I hope there are qualities in these C series oboes which mine also have. I'm partial to these Lorees - I always advise customers to hang onto them!

NP: It's a bit like Heckel bassoons, isn't it? People swear by the old ones.

PC: Well, it's interesting. I was too young an oboe player to have ever seen a new AK oboe, but I've asked many people about them who did know. Players have said the AKs were unplayable when they first came out! They were bright and hard- sounding. And these are people with first hand experience.

NP: How would you compare a C series Loree to a D series Loree?

PC: I think the C series oboes tend to have a little more depth of tone quality, and I suspect this is because of differences in tone hole shapes and sizes. But this is a personal opinion. With all these things, you set up a theory, you have an idea for what a problem is, and what the cure might be. If you're wrong, you toss it out; if you're right, you incorporate it. I've got a lot of theories about Lorees, I've got theories about my own instruments - where I am and where I want to go. And that's the way it is! But I have to say that I've only been making oboes since 1979 and what the heck do I know? There have been many times I thought I knew the answer to something, but it turned out that that wasn't the case, or that there was a better solution.

NP: What are your goals in terms of the mechanism and key work of an oboe?

PC: We make our key work a little lighter than Loree. I want the key work to stay out of the way of the player. In many respects, the baroque oboe is the ideal - mechanically speaking, there's nothing there! Most people don't want to be encumbered by everything on an oboe. The Murray flute, for example, has so much stuff on it that I think it violates a basic tenet of the flute, which is to play with velocity. I'd love to do away with the F resonance key on the oboe; I think the oboe is stronger without it anyway.

NP: Why?

PC: The low register speaks a little better without it. If you plug up an F resonance all the way to the bore with cork, you'll find the lower register is usually improved. Our resonance models have quite a small hole there, so they are not sharp; they have more color and some of the qualities of the Tabuteau system. On our Tabuteau models, we tune the forked F brighter so that we're coming out in about the same place from two different directions.

NP: Have you ever made a low B-flat resonance key?

PC: No. I don't want to do it. The resonance key does bring up the B-flat, but leaves the B natural and C natural very low. And if the resonance pad falls out, the player's reaction is always "What happened to my E natural?" The E becomes totally unplayable. We also have three different bottom joint lengths that enable us to pitch the low B-flat anywhere from five cents below a 440 scale to more than five cents above it.

NP: Oh, while we're on the subject of E natural, probably the worst note on, uh, ob, what can I say?! But do you have any explanation of why the note E tends to give manufacturers such problems?

PC: It tends to want to go sharp. But the E is not just a tone hole problem - it also has to do with the bell and the bore. Certain bore designs seem to help. The octave E on most oboes wants to be high, and the G above it tends to want to be low. So, a builder tries to get more lows into the E.

NP: What's curious is that every manufacturer seems to have a different solution to the E problem - I doubt that anyone would say they have the perfect E.

PC: Yes, it's all a compromise. With Loree, I don't like the current solution - this is quite a different solution for solving the problem than mine, for instance. The problem is that the Loree E is stuffy, while the D below it is high and shallow. These two notes are tied up with each other, and the bell design also comes in here. I think Loree has tried to lower the E by making the throat of the bell longer and they have also come up with an E tone hole with a very short throat, a very small hole, and lots of undercutting. The idea is the small hole keeps the pitch way down, while the undercutting pulls it back up to where it ought to be.

NP: And what's your solution?

PC: Well, I think the throat of the bell should be shorter - this seems to focus the bottom joint notes better. But I don't think you should do tuning with a bell - I don't think that's right, because the bell is still part of the bore. Of course, D is a problem and this really has to be solved or you'll never solve the problem of the E. You play down from a G (which is flat) to a D (which is sharp) and you find yourself in a state of shock! Once you have found a good D, then you're better able to tackle the E.

NP: While we're on the subject of tuning, could you tell me about the different kinds of tuning you do?

PC: I have two different scales that I use for the top joint. And with several different bottom joints, there are options there, too. We're numbering the backs of the joints to reflect the tuning of each instrument, and then we can explain how things will be different if someone asks us to make some changes.

NP: I see. I'd like to ask you a few more technical questions, if you don't mind. As I understand it, you have inserts in the trill keys, the half-hole, the B, C, and the A.

PC: Yes. The only tone holes in the top joint that aren't inserted are the B-flat and the G-sharp.

NP: I assume the trill keys are inserted only to prevent cracking problems. How about the others?

PC: When we started out, we raised the tone holes, and so we made inserts for that reason. The old AK oboes had some raised tone holes. We find an oboe seals a lot better with inserted tone holes, and that the inserted tone holes also prevent certain repair problems. I think if I didn't raise tone holes I'd probably insert them anyway. If an oboe cracks, someone can go right on playing it.

NP: Cracking reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you about. You've written detailed instructions for breaking in your oboes. How do you see the break-in period?

PC: I think there are two different aspects of breaking in an oboe. One is moisture and one is vibration. I think it all has something to do with introducing vibrations to the bore, and to the walls, in certain patterns. The instrument somehow begins to vibrate more readily in those patterns. So, I suggest that people be very conscious of their intonation, and the quality of what they are doing. As for moisture, the differential between the outside and the inside should be kept to a minimum. This means not letting the outside of the oboe dry out in the winter, for example. Cells and molecules in wood change when they are wet - they expand, and a bore can change. I think a new oboe has too honest - too straightforward - a sound. As the instrument gets played in, a more plush sound evolves, and the instrument gets more resonant.

NP: You strongly recommend oiling the bore of your oboes, right?

PC: Oiling the bore creates a barrier to taking on moisture. I suggest oiling the bore with a feather just moistened a bit with oil, and to take out any residue the next morning. Customers who have done this have found that, oiling the oboe every other day, the oboe won't take any more oil after about a month.

NP: I've got another, unrelated, question, having to do with the idea of an oboe being "played out." What does this mean to you?

PC: I'll assume we're not talking about bad keywork - keywork gone to the point of no return, and I'll assume we're not talking about damaged tone holes or pads that don't seal. So we're talking bore and acoustics. My feeling is that several different things qualify an oboe as being played out. Some oboes sound dark, but there's no life left. They just sit there.

NP: To me, being played out means an instrument has lost some of the clarity of its tonal focus - it's too "spread" sounding. Do you agree with that?

PC: Yes. There's no core to the sound. Often these oboes get flatter, too. The bore can start to look grainy, and this can create extra resistance, slightly different bore dimensions, and flatness. Often the bore area about an inch and a half from the top to just below the halfhole gets too big. The low register starts to get flatter, and the octaves start to spread out - the high notes are too high and the low notes are too low. This is not how you want it!

NP: So, you agree that there is such a thing as a played-out oboe?

PC: I think so.

NP: Is there anything you could do for a played-out oboe?

PC: Perhaps you could line the bore with a rubber sleeve like Laubin does. But as far as reboring and filling go, you need something that's going to stay attached to the wall and also remain stable, what with changing moisture conditions, etc. I haven't found anything that's been very successful. Of course, at that point, the mechanism of most oboes is marginal at best, so I don't really think it makes sense.

NP: How time-consuming is oboe making for you, and do you have time to practice?

PC: Well, as John Mack can surely tell you, I was never one of the world's great practicers! But, of course, it's been a tremendous help to me being a player. If you play someone's reed, for example, you can start to understand so much more about the player. Some of the Philadelphia players who come here, for instance, just amaze me. A beautiful sound, beautiful volume, and the reed is just tiny. I don't know how they do it!

NP: While we're on the subject of other players, how much do their comments influence what you are doing?

PC: Well, they are who I'm making the oboes for, so I obviously want to have an idea of where players are coming from - who they studied with, what orchestra they are playing in - I hope players never get to the point where they think they can't tell me I'm off the track, or that an oboe isn't really what they are looking for.

NP: If you were starting over again today, just about to make your first oboe, would you still copy an older Loree?

PC: Yes, but I'd probably copy it even more slavishly! These days, so many manufacturers have done so much work on the oboe that I don't think you should want to start from scratch. The best bet is to find an instrument that can be generally liked, and use that as a starting point. And, of course, if you don't want to go broke, you've got to find something that will sell. What's not good about this is that if you succeed, you hesitate to experiment with something that works, and maybe you don't understand why it works. But if you've gotten that far, you can probably do some experiments to figure these things out.

I went about it the other way, and I've worked my way up from a smaller sounding oboe with a pretty good scale to a bigger sounding oboe. This just happens to be how I did it.

NP: If you won the New York State Lottery today, what changes would you make in your business?

PC: For starters, I'd do more advertising. Not that many people know we're here, or what we're doing. Recognition is a real concern. I'd like to be able to travel more, and to show my oboes to more people.

NP: Just a few quick questions to close up. Can you tell me about future plans for your oboes?

PC: We're going to be building a rosewood oboe. We're also making third octave keys now for people who ask for them. But what I really want for the future is to be better known! In some ways, your situation is a bit the same. You may not be building oboes, but you're introducing the instruments of Howarth and Marigaux into this country. With me, I've tried to build an oboe which is better in tune than a Loree, and which has more of a personal touch since I'm here. Originally, of course, I wanted to be a better repairman, so I had to learn to solve the problems of Lorees. Once I started making oboes, I felt that if I had any hope of selling an oboe, I had to know an awful lot about it all. I don't know how well I've succeeded, but I know I've learned a lot, and the more I learn, the more I keep learning.

NP: With the successful introduction of European oboes other than Loree into the hands of some of the finest soloists and oboe sections in the U.S., I'm curious to know if you think this will have an effect on you.

PC: Yes, it will certainly have an impact. It can only help! For so long, people made judgments about instruments because of what their teachers told them, or because of what they thought they had to play in order to get a job. But I've always said that if an oboe does the job for you, that's what counts. Who cares if it's a Marigaux, a Fox, a Loree, a Covey, or a Howarth? That's the only test - if it does the job for you, and if you're happy playing it.

@ Copyright 1987, all rights reserved by Nora Post

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