Great video, as always! You say "sides" in the video, where I'm certain you mean "shoulders", when talking about definition. I learned reedmaking directly from David Weber's excellent book - I had no teacher at the time - and succeeded in creating responsive, flexible and in-tune reeds just from that. What a legend! In order to scrape flat against the curve of the gouge you need a really sharp knife, and to apply almost no downwards pressure to the blade as you scrape. Took me ages to realize this! The only exception I suppose is when scraping the extreme tip, which flattens naturally against the plaque when it gets thin enough. Back to Martin Schuring's three laws of reedmaking - sharpen your knife, make no mistakes, and adjust only for function, not tone. Should be a bumper-sticker.
I miss Mr. Weber. I have about a dozen of his reeds along with his book and dvd, his book has a lot of great advice. I grew up down the street from him and would visit him frequently, my first Loree was one of Davids personals oboes. He was an amazing oboist, repair man, and reed maker. I wish he was still here with us today.
Thank you for this video! My teacher, Hans Lindner, made reed that were much more like the DeLancie reeds and this explains why whenever I've tried other people's reeds, and tried to purchase a reed in an emergency, they've felt so strange and given me a completely different sound. As Cooper mentioned below there's more contouring to the heart, but also he always emphasized that the spine goes through the tip, so while it's thin, there's a bit more of a defined line running through to give it stability and a defined core to the tone. His style also has longer windows going further back so that affects that balance quite a bit too.
Great question. Usually 61 for a 5mm length is good. However, when I start the catch its about a third of the reed from the back. Different cane will demand different lengths of the heart depending on how the cane resonates and where the center of the reed feels. If the reed is tight, or stuck, I will move the back of the heart forward. You will see this in pictures of other players reeds where there will be scrapes in the back of the heart which look like blending. This starts to get into the balance of the back and the tip. Slightly different for different styles.
What do you do with the cane after you run it through that planer? The results of that don't look like any oboe or english horn reeds I have ever seen.
I hope you are monitoring comments for this video. I have found this concept of “rattle” super useful. The only problem I sometimes have is that sometimes I need to push the top of the heart back (resulting in base of heart starting as low as 64) in order to make this happen. 73mm blank . Any suggestions?
I've been having a tendency to discover that I've wrapped a bit past the tube. Maybe the width of one wrap. I swear it seems to move on me over time. How does that affect the reed?
I just found your channel. I wish you had the time to put out more videos. you are the Bob Ross of your profession. I'm sure I'm not the first one to say that.
Thanks for your thoughts on this topic. I was wondering what makes the EV shaper tip well suited for a wide variety of reeds? I think the side profile of the reed you made is like the gold standard of what an American Long Scrape reed should look like. I think most reed makers struggle with making that subtle transition from the heart into the tip and probably tend more towards a cliff edge profile instead of a subtle slope as you demonstrated.
Have you ever noticed and shared knowledge on how the shapes affect the qualities of the reed? Or how a player should choose a gouger that best suites them? I'm thinking of experimenting beyond my current Caleb shaper tip. Yes, the Ross gougers are wonderful. I have two since i also play english horn.
Hi, if the low D is playing there might not be enough spring holding the C# down. Sometimes you can wrap a rubber band around the instrument and across the C# tone hole key to hold it down tightly. If the D doesn’t come out well it’s probably the F resonance key. Needs tightening.
Hey again, I was trying to solve your issue without looking at the instrument. There is an adjustment screw for the Low C-C# key and it might be too tight. Try loosening it and that will enable the C key to fully close. Sorry for the previous answer that may or may have not worked. Best
My teacher was Earnest Harrison and he was a master Reed maker. David Weber was a close friend and I worked with him he was as good as you can get in understanding the double radius gouge and setting up gougers.
Hi Pierre, Cooper here... I think a lot of things you got right about the differences, but I did notice a few things that you might have missed. Having said that, I never had the opportunity to study with de Lancie himself but I saw a handful of his reeds from David who explained every detail of them. I did sit at the desk of David Weber for 3 years when I lived in Chandler. My wife was the office assistant there (would pack up orders, answer phones etc) and I would go pick her up every day, usually stopping by and talking with David for 15 mins... which would extend for an hour until it was dinner time. Some days I spent 12-15 hours in his shop watching him repad an instrument, pin a crack, or heaven forbid, fix a gouging machine which he hated... I'll never forget asking him if I could buy a graf blade for him and he put me in the car, drove me to the hardware store where we bought steel strips, sand paper, drill bits, a blow torch, and motor oil (for oil quenching). Some 20 hours later I had 15 new graf blades and blisters all over all 10 fingers. The biggest thing you talk about is the taper, and while this is true about the tip (tapering all the way to the end), it is also true for the heart, as well as the windows. David said the Philadelphia style had to taper to the middle of the heart, and then back down to the thinnest place in the windows and back up. No hard ledges or lines, just one constant hourglass shape. Based upon your video, it seems like the thinnest place on your reed is about the middle of the window. David always taught the thinnest place was just behind the heart, otherwise the top 1/3rd of the window and taper back up to the bark. Another thing was that the tip and the heart always tapered from side to side. The scrape of the side of the heart was thinner than the middle, and so it almost had a complete dome shape (not visably domed, but if you measured it with a micrometer the side next to the rail was much thinner than the middle and channels). This concept of the heart was much different from Mack who actually referred to the heart often as the "plateau" implying that it was basically parallel from a side view from the back of the heart to the front. The effect of this is obviously adding more resistance to the reed to blow against (something you talk about when you mention his strong airstream). The windows were always somewhat parallel in the lowest places. With the tip being parallel, heart being parallel and windows being parallel, this created a purportionally thicker and more stable heart to blow against, which you describe. The final big thing that isn't mentioned is the overlap. de Lancie and Mack both used the overlap but in different ways. de Lancie would scrape both the left and right sides of the reed differently, so that the left side rail and window would kind of collapse into the overlap, thus creating tighter sides and a more focused sound. This is why the double radius was so important obviously because it was strong enough to hold up. There's more I could mention, but everything you say makes sense to me. More pieces to the puzzle to see the overall picture.
Love that Landwell knife. Having a great knife is so important. When I got my first Landwell I noticed an immediate improvement in my reedmaking due to the amount of control you have when scraping.
Regarding symmetry, Something I’ve found helpful is standardize my scrapes so I’m more or less doing the same thing with every scrape. When you get to that point, I like to count aloud my scrapes, that way if I decide to 20 on one side of the blade, I’ll do twenty three more times. Counting scrapers is tedious but it really helps to maintain the symmetry between the two blades.
Really cool video. I think it’s really cool how every oboist makes their reeds slightly different but their tendencies can for the most part can be traced back to who taught you and who taught your teacher. One of my favorite oboe books is the Reed styles book that shows different reeds made by famous oboist from around the world. Someone should publish an update to this, showing how reddmaking had progressed.
I’ve played lots of oboes over the years but never had the opportunity to play a Laubin. I tell students looking to buy an instrument to play as many oboe as you can and ignore the brand, since all brands have duds and diamonds. When I bought my oboe ten years ago, I was at first shocked that out of the ten oboes I tried one of the lorees was an absolute gem. I totally expected to get something other than a loree, but it truly was an exceptional instrument and it’s still the best oboe I’ve ever played. I imagine a boutique company like laubin produces far more diamonds than duds, but every company makes the occasional perfect oboe, you just have to look for it. The way you describe your reedmaking sounds similar to what I’ve concluded after years of experimenting. Reeds need to vibrate fully from tip all the way through. A lot of students I see somehow learned that harder reeds are easier to intonate and have a more consistent tone so they play harder and harder reeds. This is true, but you have little control over your color or dynamics and you have to work so hard to make the Reed speak. I like softer reeds and am always trying to convert students to give up the popsicle reeds.
These videos are really answering several questions I had about beginning and finishing the tip. When I first began reedmaking, I would succeed in producing that “rough scrape” without knowing what I was doing. In fact, I thought I was making a mistake because of the lack of definition. Somehow my teacher and I were always able to make decent reeds from those initial attempts. Later, I tried to be more careful and put that definition in at the start. I ended up with tips that were thick in the center, with aggressively thinning sides. The reeds felt huge in the mouth, and I couldn’t understand where I was going wrong. Now I know I wasn’t prioritizing “slope before sides”.
Thank you for making this video and sharing your insights! It was nice to hear you mention David Weber. I got my first gouging machine from him when I was 18 (I’m 57 now). I also made reeds for their (he and Vendla) business for many years until they retired. I’ll be sure to share this with my colleagues, I’m sure they’ll find it fascinating.
Using Halion, within Cubase, you can create your own samples of your own oboe articulations. Greg Undo will help anyone with Score questions since it is part of Cubase of which Greg is the Yoda for Steinberg software such as Cubase or Nuendo, Wavelab etc. You Pierre are our Yoda for Oboe reeds and more, as you are doing here! See us on RU-vid every Tuesday and Friday 10 am Western time for 4 hours for Cubase users all over the world! Please say hi to Greg and they'll know who I am :-)
And it was Steinberg that designed and implemented the VSTi (virtual studio technology instrument) for loading and using samples. I also use the Vienna Solo Strings samples and there are literally hundreds of articulations. But Cubase is already loaded with everything you need!
