A mateur musicians find all too often that time they would like to reserve for music is eaten away by non-musical activities that appear more urgent. Not the time spent in rehearsals and concerts, which can usually be blocked out in advance. Rather, it is practice time that suffers from late business meetings, evening classes (taken or taught), meetings of town government committees (always at 7:00 p.m.when do those people eat dinner?), and a dozen other suburban inevitabilities.
If you drive alone in your car to these activities, or back and forth to work, a whole world of practice time exists that you may never have considered. While driving you can practice on nothing but a reed. This doesn't help the fingers, but it keeps the embouchure in shape, at a minimum. Moreover, some exercises are uniquely effective on a reed alone.
Three of these are: circular breathing, legato tonguing, and sforzando attacks. These are all techniques that become smoother the greater the air column that supports them. When you reduce the air column to a 47 mm reed tube they become very tricky indeed, and if you can sustain a note without wavering in pitch for three or four mile markers on an Interstate Highway, you'll find that when you re-attach an oboe to the reed it's a piece of cake. The same holds true for the other exercises: mastering these without pitch change on a reed alone makes them much cleaner on the instrument.
"But," you say, "I always listen to music while I'm driving to work." Great! Play along with it. Most reeds have a compass of a fifth or more, and you can fit into the harmonic pattern somewhere. It's easiest in the eighteenth century, where you can buzz along happily on the dominant, measure after measure. But it can be a fun challenge to anticipate what an atonal piece is going to do, and play accordingly.
"But," you say further, "what will the other
people in my car pool say?" Whoops! Out of luck. You can't
do reed practice unless you are alone, or unless all the people
you're with are double reed players. That's a sociologically unstable
situation that we'll discuss another time.