Learning how to make reeds can be a very frustrating process. There are so many factors and no two reeds are the same! This is my list of some core principles that I follow that help to guide my reedmaking and that I have had a lot of success with. Hopefully it helps you in making your own reeds!
Look for Symmetry
It is always good to be checking that both blades of your reed match each other. And also that both sides of just one blade mirror each other. The two main spots to look at for symmetry all around are the transition from heart to tip and the depth and height of the windows. It is nearly impossible to say how these elements being asymmetric will affect the reed, but, in general, if a reed is acting just plain weird, I check for symmetry. It has solved so many strange issues for me! So spend more time playing “Spot the Difference” on both sides of your reeds held up to the light!
Look for Response First
The main element I want from my reeds is response. This comes before intonation and sound quality. You have to be able to actually play the reed comfortably. It does not matter how good a reed sounds if it feels like it is going to give you an aneurysm when you play it. You are not going to get very far on it. If a reed vibrates well, I believe most of a good tone is going to come from how a player uses it and not how perfectly shaped the reed is.
I apply this principle while reedmaking by scraping the tip and some of the heart and maybe even the windows of my blanks until the reed crows before I set it aside to dry out. The next time I pull the reed out to work on it and put in the windows proper, I check again for the reed to crow easily before finishing the parts of the reed and checking for pitch. The same goes for the third day I work on the reed (usually three days is the minimum amount of time I take on a reed). I check for response first.
Let Reeds Rest
As a further explanation to the multiple days mentioned in the previous paragraph, it really does help to let reeds rest and dry out multiple times during the process. I tie a blank and do initial scraping one day (looking for a crow!), finish all the elements of the reed the second day and get at least close to in tune, and then tweak the reed into the final product on the third. It is great to check again on the fourth day that nothing has changed again, or it takes a fourth or fifth day if a reed is being finicky and I am having trouble figuring out what it needs.
Each time the reed dries out in these early stages especially, it changes and often in my experience becomes harder. The more delicate tweaking you do after it has been wetted and dried out multiple times, the more likely those delicate changes will remain effective long term.
Don’t Fiddle It To Death
This is similar to the last point. Another reason it is good to spread your reedmaking out over multiple days is that it prevents death by fiddling – the nervous fidgety kind. Sometimes it seems as if a reed is never reaching the standard you have, and if you keep scraping it for an hour you will likely only ruin your reed by some way or another. If a reed is being particularly difficult and confusing me by how it responds to different scrapes I do, then I know it is time to set it down and come back later. The reed often gets better either because it changed in the drying out process, or because the next day I can’t even remember what minuscule problem seemed unacceptable the day before. Especially when you are feeling stressed about the whole process, it is good to step away and look at it with fresh eyes later.
Test Ad Nauseam
Ok, I know it sounds like I am contradicting myself now, but this is referring to between scrapes. Be very careful about scraping two or more areas of the reed without testing it in your oboe between each scrape, especially in the later stages of reedmaking. It can get annoying to scrape the tip, play it and get exactly what you thought would happen, then scrape the windows, play it and get exactly the result you wanted, and so forth. But you never know when a reed is going to go against everything you have learned about reedmaking and respond totally differently to the scrape you have done on every other reed. The more reeds you make, the more these inconsistencies will come up. It gets tedious, but test the reed often. You might even fix a reed in fewer scrapes than you anticipated!
Ugly Doesn’t Equal Bad
Some of my ugliest reeds have been the best functionally. Don’t discard a reed in the early stages because it is crooked, lost a corner, or any other such imperfection that could cause the reed major problems. Don’t spend too much time on a reed that is a lost cause, but don’t label reeds as lost causes too fast either. The little ugly ducklings might surprise you!
Happy Reedmaking!
Are there any other general “rules” you apply to yourself to guide your reedmaking? Are any of the ones I laid out principles you follow or think you could apply?
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