I've been playing for 24 years, went to college for music performance and this was the most helpful video or instruction I have ever seen for teaching others on breaking in reeds. and I saw it for free on RU-vid. I absolutely love your videos!! you obviously know what you are talking about. you're an excellent teacher. thanks for making such good content!
I recently purchased a box of alto sax reeds from a certain, non-eco friendly packaging company, and only 3 of the reeds played reasonably, and I have never had a reed that wasn't good enough for me, from any company. I decided this was the perfect time for me to learn to adjust reeds. Naturally this was the first place I came to look, watched the video, ordered myself the the set from your website and just adjusted my first reed while watching the video, I CANNOT BELIEVE the difference this has made!!!! What have I been missing all these years?! Thank you SO very much for this video and of course the awesome polishing cloth/plaque combo package! Oh, and the Earspasm Music sticker was an AWESOME bonus!
Thanks for sharing that which I had suspected for years but as a Canadian who lives beside Toronto's biggest music store just buy reeds find a good one and rush to my gig. I will now hope to practice on boxes of reeds which have been stashed for years and never made it to gigs. I'm a hobbyist on Armenian Duduk and have several reeds which were picked for me but a world class player, but which have become almost impossibly stiff and stuffy in Toronto , which I think is a lot more humid.
I'm a tuba player but I love your videos so much. I don't get any use out of videos like this but the informative style of your delivery makes these really interesting for me to watch.
Tried this with some reeds that were too hard. Wow! This seriously works! My tone is more clean and big, with max blowing ease! Thank you so much! I'll be saving more money now!
The most helpful explanation and demo I've found. Loved your multi-coloured diagram, starting at 3.20. Really clear and memorable. I've just used it to improve a stuffy tenor sax reed beyond recognition, at the very first attempt! Thank you so much.
I watched this years ago, but am now taking notes on the many highly worthwhile details which I had impatiently glossed over. Great succinct but very nuanced detailing here and great playing also.
A really helpful video! This is the best video on the internet that explain how to work on reeds, I'm gonna share it right away! Thanks :D you're great!
I purchased two sets of these, one for myself and another for a friend. Michael ships very quickly! I have been really struggling mostly with the bass clarinet reeds. I think I have 2 favorite reeds out of close to 15 reeds I can’t stand to try to play. I also have quite a few Bb reeds new in boxes that I know are unplayable until I learn how to do this. Great detailed info in this video. If anything, the clear plaque will help me flatten out my moist reed when the tips get a little wavy and it fits in my cases. Great RU-vid channel❣️
I've been playing clarinet for not quite two months (after playing flute for over 20 years) and adjusted my first reed today; it went great! Drastically improved. Thanks for all your helpful content! (And yes I bought your reed adjustment pack.)
Dear Mr. Lowenstein, just wanna say your videos are extremely informative and educational. There needs to be more teachers like you around. Oh, btw, your recital and masterclass in Perth, Western Australia was superb! Sorry, but didn't get a chance to say "hi" to you that night... so here's saying "HI"!
Micheal, you have enlightened my life of chalumeau player! Now the 1st register sounds much better and I reach the second much easier and higher. I specify that I use a chalumeau without keys. To be more precise, I use a gauge to determine the free part of the rails. A huge thanks for sharing this video, you are inspiring for your music and your skills.
This is SOOO good!! I tried it; and works!!- Ordered the Planck and cloths. What a great presentation!!! Vandorn Supreme #3 down to what my ear likes. Discovery: reeds must be "fitted" to each different great mouthpiece separately.
From now on, reeds will not be pain in the butt:D!I learned very useful thigs about reed adjustments fom your video. Every single reed form the box will sound great! Thanks again!
Very precise and informative. My sax repairman told me about your video. I just wish you would have aimed the camera to the reed as you were sanding and polishing it. Fortunately, you verbally explain it well, but since it is a video, please always show the viewers as you're manually working on something. It would really help a lot. Thank you for sharing your expertise with us!
Great video again, Michael. You're putting them out faster than I can watch! My comment/experience is that often if a reed is hard, I start by sanding the bottom half (often just the shoulders), and I feel like it frees up the whole reed. Have you experienced this? Then I move toward the tip to improve response and balance.
This was really, really interesting stuff, man! I have been playing saxophone ( alto and tenor) for almost 50 years now ( well maybe more like 45 since I had a break for learning guitar ) and have always thought it was annoying having to spend 25-30 bucks for in practice 1-2 playable reeds in i box.... And the really good ones you are very afraid to loose or break, especially closing in to a performance. Of course I have experimented with scraping reeds using a razor blade, but never with such detailed knowledge of which tiny parts of the reed that affects what parts of your playing. Can't wait to start learning and practising tips from this video. THX!! P.S. Forgot to say, that I found a glass jar in which I had stored three Vandoren JAVA 3.0 tenor reeds totally submerged in "Plantation Barbados" RUM for seven years, and they were perfectly playable, very nice sounding and with a delicious flavour right out of the jar! D.S.
I was thinking of asking you how to 'work on reeds' the whole day and I came to youtube and whaddda you just uploaded this! Hahaha I am definitely getting that from your website. I was just feeling crap because out of the whole Vandoren grey box, I have one reed that has the 'halo' and the others total shit. Now I can change their fate hahaha. Thanks Michael! I was also listening to your Sway album today.
1/4 in thick plate glass works amazing. You can just cut an old mirror with a carbide cutter and smooth the edges with a diamond bit, duamind file, or diamond paper.
I was a none believer until I bought and polished my reeds just a little...instantly there was a different feel in the tongue like he said. Then when I played I was playing notes I had trouble with hit it with ease. Deep or high this was my game changer
have you ever tried the Vandoren Reed Resurfacer and Reed Stick? the reed stick is fantastic and is pretty much a sandpaper pen that lets you work exactly where you want, its made of etched glass. and the resurfacer lets you take off about a quarter strength really easily. if you find the sandpaper a little hard to use , the reed stick might be a good alternative, though it isnt super cheap
I want to start with thank you this and all your other videos, as a saxophone professor and clarinet/saxophone teacher I sometimes struggle to fit so much information into lessons, and even though I had some CDs of yours I was so excited when a young middle school (now high school) bass clarinet/clarinet student asked me if I had seen this RU-vid channel. He is a voracious learner and joyfully consumes the knowledge and ideas found here. As a fellow teacher and musician, I'm not sure if I can express my gratitude for how you've inspired my young student and helped him enjoy music, even though you've never met him. The second part is 2 questions, I often find keeping the back flat with a ReedGeek really helps many of my reed issues, but I'm just curious because it seems perhaps it is an issue you don't have, after having seen your reed videos. I don't often play it but I know my optimum is a strong enough screw/ligature that it can help reeds seal and play even if not perfect, but do you just not have this? 2nd is you said you don't touch the back half rail, but often on reeds (3-4 out of a box) I find that some of the bark/cuticle is left even on the back half, it stifles the reeds vibrations so it is one of the first things I check before adjusting elsewhere. Is this not really an issue because of the facing length of the bass clarinet mouthpiece?
Hey Ben, thanks for the note. Let me try to answer your two questions: 1. I have a reed geek but I never use it. I keep my reeds in a bag with a two-way humidifier (mercantile alert! I sell them... goo.gl/oTHFtr) which keeps them from warping. 2. I haven't seen that issue on Vandoren reeds in a long time, but you're right: if that cuticle (great word BTW!) is still there, you need to remove it.
Great job explaining this. I have never seen such a good explanation of this art. Would be awesome to have a document with a diagram showing the regions to touch based on how the reed responds.
If you can find an old book; "The Art of Saxophone Playing" by Larry Teal", you will find some good charts that correspond to this video. I think this video is better than Larry Teal's Charts. If I remember correctly, Larry Teal also explains how important it is for the back of the reed to be flat where the reed touches the table of the mouthpiece. Larry Teal didn't go into as much detail (as this video) on the vamp of the reed. He shows some areas on the vamp similar to this video, but this video shows more detail. I would suggest making your own chart from this video and trying this first. I've never seen anyone so good at adjusting reeds before.
Hey Michael, is there any chance you could make a printable version of that diagram you drew for where you should sand the reed and perhaps also show what effects each area you sand has please? If you could that would be amazing. Also, I love your videos and your playing is amazing! Keep the videos coming.
I've been adjusting my reeds for years using one of those box cutter knives (that you can break off when they get blunt) for scraping. I've given many reeds an extended life even after they've been cracked or chipped at the end as well as those that won't play from the box. I also use a nail clipper to remove the damaged tip which just happens to be the same round shape. The clipper may be too narrow for the bigger reeds, so I clip off the sides to almost the correct angle and finish off the shape with fine sandpaper. However, this causes the reed to become hard and unresponsive, so I must scrape back the reed, including the heart to bring it back into a playable range. Though this treatment may sound unorthodox a bit rough to some, it has ressurected some of my best playing reeds particularly back when times were tough and I've been doing it ever since. Also I've found that some reeds aren't very flat on the flat side (high and low or soft and hard ridges in the grain) and that tends to leak a lot of air, which isn't good and so I gently and evenly scrape that side as well. Scraping the flat side where the ligature holds it, will lift up a reed that closes off, especially those Rico student reeds that stop after 10mins of play. After scraping, they don't start off very well until they settle in but they play a bit longer when they do. It's nice to actually see what sections of the reed do what and how adjusting them can affect the playing range. Thank you for making such an informative video... I feel I can now evolve into a slightly higher realm. ;)
... wonderful advice. Thank you very very much. It sounds like magic and thanks to you all of us can now do magics too ... ... best wishes from Prague, the Kingdom of Bohemia ... 👍⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐👍
Take this from a fifty-year-old who started his first wind instrument, the Yamaha Venova: this is THE most useful tutorial I found so far. You can work the rest of the technique by yourself, mostly. This, however, is something you would never work out, imho. Hint: just polishing your reed with a nail polish stick does miracles and it is safer than filing all the parts.
This is great, thank you so much. I think I'll have to be extra careful because where I live a box of reeds is so expensive that I have to buy 1 or 2 at a time. And very few times they are reeds that I actually end up using a lot.
Excellent. I will use this method on my reed french horn. the reed horn doesnt sound very good. I wonder if I should use a bass clarinet mouthpiece in stead of the clarinet mp on my horn. then again, i could always go back to my farkas mp and resign from this invention / experiment. Hey - i could polish my metal mouthpiece. Inside and out. Brilliant!!!
A clarinet University professor showed me this concept. It's probably the best technical lesson I use today. Sax reeds are a little larger. I make less mistakes than clarinet reeds. I work every reed I play.
Very interesting and informative about reeds!! I wanna buy a set on you’re website. But I live in Sweden. Can you ship international? Doesn’t seem like on you’re site...
After having taken up my clarinet some years ago after a 35 years of break , I thought that meanwhile somebody must have invented something to avoid this reed nightmare. And it as. I fond many companies making synthetic reeds, but didn't like them until Legere launched the European cut. They do the job and cane reeds, cutters, files or whatever is stored away together with most of my frustration. I*m playing a Bb Buffet RC, Vandoren B45, sometimes 5JB and reed #2,5.
I made adjustments to my Reed and now my upper and lower registers sound excellent. But my open G, A, and Bb (but especially open G) are very fuzzy sounding. What area on the Reed do I work on for those awful notes? Thank you for your videos.
Great video. My experience with reed adjustments has been that the major issue with reeds is the left/right balance. I can almost always improve a reed by playtesting both sides and then sanding the less responsive side. I was surprised you did not mention this. Do you never do this or do you consider it being more of a "how to fix a totally bad Reed" technique? Best regards Peter
@@Francois_Dupont there is a tehnique where you rotate the mouthpiece to dampen one side of the Reed so that only one of the sides are vibrating. Sort of playing with 45degree angle of the mouthpiece in your mouth.
This is video conveys all about reeds in only 16 minutes! My biggest trouble with cane reeds, is inconsistency! I mean the reed behaves very akward, after a few plays! I try always to rotate these two categories of reeds: 1) The super-ready to play reeds and 2) The reeds which have potential to perform from decently to very good! My latest problem with cane reeds, is that in the bottom reeds my tone "clacks" and the note seems that it will "break" somehow! So my question is: How is it possible, if it is possible, to adjust a cane reed to respond in a very well manner through all registers and not to lose it's vibrating behavior...Allow me to describe it as "punchiness"! I hope it's not my embouchoure or a leak on my alto saxophone!!! Thanks!
Hi, as usual this video is very helpful for us all reed instruments enthusiasts. Please let me ask, is there a way to recover a reed that you feel it's got good quality sound, but it squeaks a lot even after you've sanded it? Thank you! Best Regards from Portugal!
Thanks Michael! This will be great as an introduction for some of my students, I definitely picked up some stuff for me myself. Do you flatten the table of the read on your plaque? I was taught to do this first by polishing on printer or notebook paper, then taking the warp out of the table of the read with sandpaper on the glass plaque. Wondering your thoughts on this.
"Break-in" the reed first before working on reeds (typically a few days of the reed adjusting to being used) DON'T TOUCH: The tip and the heart 1:26 - Tools 3:20 - Parts of a reed 5:18 - Reed too hard 6:28 - Bad altissimo articulation 7:05 - Fuzzy tone, especially when tonguing in the clarion register 7:59 - Heart of the reed 8:40 - Poor response in clarion register (still) 9:04 - Bad/fuzzy sound in lower register 10:07 - Demo 13:08 - Polishing
I am a huge fan of your work! I have been playing bass clarinet for about 3 years now I'm starting to notice that my band music is getting too easy and I want to get better. What do you suggest doing in order for me to become a better steonger bass clarinet player?
Well, it's all about how you challenge yourself. If you have a private teacher, you can ask them what s/he recommends. But if it were me, I'd just try to pick some more challenging music, or try to learn a different style (jazz, etc), maybe join a youth orchestra if there is one in your area, decide to go to a music camp like Interlochen in Michigan next summer, etc, etc.
I does exactly what it says on the tin. Cool, thanks working fantastic.....supposedly it makes a better difference than trying different reed brands, after all those reeds are all made from the same bamboo....
Great video! Some consideration: have you ever read Gaspare Tirincanti (RIP) tips on how to work with reeds? There are a couple of similarity, but even som diversity from your way, especially the work in lower part of the vamp. Actually Vandoren begun with the V12 serie right after that book (I believe it was in the introduction of the first Stark arpeggio edited by Gaspare). Second consideration: I got used working with razor blades instead for sand paper, since I find it more precise in a way... What do you think about that?
Dear Michael, great video(s) ! I ordered one your sets (and some fun stuff), but I have a question on reeds : some reeds consume a lot more air than others - even though they might sound allright, any suggestion on how to tackle this ?
Hi Mike - I'm really digging the polishing cloths. For years I've been using superfine sandpaper for adjusting and the back of the sandpaper for polishing, but these are much better. Question: Will they wear out? how long do they last?
Harry Hassell Oh, they definitely wear out. But you can try rinsing them and drying them which should prolong their life a bit. So far I have gone through several of them, and I find they last about 5-6 months with heavy use, or a year with light use.
Hello Mr. Lowenstern! I have been playing clarinet for years, and in all these years I have never tested the hygro reed cases. It realy works? Is it a good idea buy one? and Which one? Good work!
Mr. Lowenstern, I'm currently playing the first movement of Weber 1 on bass clarinet. It ends with an altissimo G (F#/G trill right before). When I play it on Bb (primary instrument), I can get a dramatic, "end of the the world" type sound. When I play it on bass, it just sounds silly, even though it's in tune. My tone in that register isn't spready or out of control, but it is missing all of the character. Any advice? This video is by far the best guide to reed working I've ever seen! Thank you so much!
Noah Stone fingerings my man. What are you using for fingerings? If you can, download my altissimo fingering chart at earspasm.com and give those a try to see if they help.
My sanding kit just arrived in the mail. Thank you. A couple of questions: 1) would it help to cut the cloths into smaller squares? and 2) what would help with octave jumps to the altissimo register, e.g. clarion e to altissimo e or clarion c to altissimo f?
I usually fold mine into quarters rather than cut them. That way I can open them up if I want to do a pass over larger reeds in "polish mode." And to answer question #2, go for the green dot (from the video).
