The recent appearance of David Ledet's book Oboe Reed Styles, and my personal metamorphosis from student to oboist has caused me to do a considerable amount of thinking about reeds: Why do I make my reeds as I do? What is the right way? What am I sacrificing for tone/technique? What should I be teaching my students? And what would Mr(s) ****** say? (Fill in the blank with your favorite big-name oboist.) Guilt admittedly plays a big role in keeping my reed thoughts honest.
Like most oboists with my experience, I have taken lessons from more than one teacher, (both great and small, pragmatic and not), have attended various seminars by an assortment of different oboists, have discussed and argued about reeds with my colleagues, and have spent a period of intense study with a great master.
For some time my great master considered my reeds to be of an inferior quality, "too restricted", he said. In fact all of his students played on reeds which he considered too restricted. It was his practice to scrape out a reed for each of us at the beginning of our lessons. We then played the rest of the lesson on this reed which was usually terribly wild.
Once after a particularly painful lesson in which I had to play Barret Grand Etude No. 15 in its entirety at 69 to the eighth note on a wild reed just made for me, I posed this question to my master: "If I were to name all of the top oboists sitting first chair in the finest orchestras in the United States, including yourself, most would be Marcel Tabuteau's students, the rest students of his students. Were I to gather all of you into the same room and ask you about reeds, none of you would agree. How can my reeds be so wrong?" My master answered: "Well, Nancy, you'd find similarities. I once forgot my reeds before a rehearsal and had to borrow one from my assistant. If it were my reed I would have made drastic changes. But I could play it, and do you think anyone else knew it wasn't my reed?"
I have never quite understood if this story answered my question, but it did bring up other questions. Why do different types of players play on different types of reeds? What are the similarities? What are the parameters of a good reed (flexibility vs. stability)? And don't we all develop a certain sound, (our ideal tone), and make our reeds to create that sound?
Similarities between reeds, and parameters of a good reed are perhaps the easiest questions to answer, but the least satisfying. Certainly a reed must make it possible for an oboist to have a good tone, and a wide range of dynamics and articulation. It must be flexible to do these things, but remain stable enough for an oboist to play for extended periods of time in tune. The solution to these parameters is what every oboist needs to find for his/her type of playing: different oboists play on different kinds of reeds.
Aside from cane, gouge, and national sound, what major factors affect the differences in the way oboists make their reeds? My first response would be embouchure and the angle from the body at which the oboe is held, one affecting the other. At the present time, I live with another oboist who has been playing the oboe quite a bit longer than I, but who studied for some time with the same great master as myself. He has much less lip than I, holds the oboe closer to his body than I do, plays with a lot of reed in his mouth while I play near the tip, and his reeds are restricted while mine are quite flexible. Amazingly, our sounds are nearly identical. It appears that the fleshier your facial structure and the closer one plays to the tip of the reed, the freer the oboist must make the reed in order to assure proper response.
How does the oboe itself figure into the reed solution? I recently switched from playing a Gordet to a new FQ series Loree. My Gordet was a very hard, somewhat inflexible instrument. When my Lorée first arrived, every reed I tried on it sounded like a buzzboard. For my Gordet I was using a rather narrow shaper tip, a Brannen X-narrow. My reeds had fairly long tips, a lot of wood out of the heart area, and very shallow windows. This type of construction gave me the projection in my sound that was not built into the oboe itself. When I began working with the Lorée and heard its clear centered tone with a rather strong octave above the fundamental, it became obvious that my reeds would have to change. Basically I needed to take the function of projection out of my reeds, and instead construct a reed which could effectively use the projection already built into the instrument.
First, I switched to a slightly wider shaper tip to bring more lows into the sound of the reed. Changing from a Brannen X-narrow to a Brannen narrow admittedly does not seem like a drastic change, but when dealing with shapers just a slight change in width can make a significant difference in response and tone. For these new reeds I am taking more wood out of the back of the reed and therefore leaving more in the heart area. I have left the tips of my reeds rather long to deal with the tightness of a new oboe.
In my case, my reeds changed with a change of oboe, the end result being a sound which I felt to be my ideal oboe tone, the same sound I was striving for when I played the Gordet. It was, in fact, a sound I had created in my mind, not one which was created by the oboe.
Another determining factor of what an oboist's reeds will be like is the oboist's job. The demand upon an orchestral oboist is to be able to turn-on the tone for only a few phrases at a time. How many times I've listened to tape recordings of concerts I've played waiting to hear my big solo, only to realize after it passed how very short it was! The orchestral oboist needs to cut through the strings, blend with the winds, and add to the brass. This player also needs the flexibility to play up to the pitch often decided upon by the strings.
The recitalist has entirely different demands for his reeds. This player needs to be able to play for long periods of time. Pianos can be softer and fortes more controlled, the articulation immaculate and every phrase turned with the utmost in sensitivity. Above all, a beautiful tone must be maintained throughout the performance. In my case, I find I need a lighter, looser reed for recital and chamber music than I would use for an orchestral concert.
And what kind of reed is practical for 20th-century techniques?
Therefore, the right reed seems to be the right reed for one's oboe, embouchure, acoustical, and practical needs. A clarinetist who directs the woodwind techniques course at UMass decided one summer to really study the oboe and learn more about reeds. After his first oboe lesson (on a store bought reed!) and a long discussion about the problems of oboe playing vis a vis clarinet playing, he suggested to his teacher the idea of a reed lesson. His teacher asked: "Well, Joe, what kind of sound do you want to produce?" Joe answered: "What do you mean?" His teacher: "Do you like the reed you're playing on now?" Joe: "I guess so, it's OK. " Teacher: "Well then, let's copy this one! "