Reed log

G4 and G5 got tips cut, G6 and G7 wired and numbered, G8 and G9 got shaped, beveled and formed. I tried to shape a little wider than my shaper tip with G8 and G9, with the idea of getting a bigger tube which wouldn't present as much problems with shrinking. I tried to add about 1 mm by nudging the cane after cutting one side. This was maybe too much, it looks ginormous, and the forming mandrel went in almost to the tip before I could get a round tube at the butt. I suspect they will play really flat, but I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Just to think a little harder: 1mm in width = 2 mm in circumference, = 0.6 mm in diameter. At a slope of 0.07, that's 9.1 mm in length, which is about two bocal sizes, ie the difference between a #2 and a #0. But it'll fit more onto the bocal, so shouldn't that bring up the pitch, rather than lowering it? This is actually a bit tricky. The bassoon's bore is a truncated cone, capped by a reed which makes up for the missing volume. The tube of a reed is more or less a continuation of the bassoon bore, so just increasing the tube size would change nothing, if the tube continued a smooth taper down to zero: you'd end up with more tube on the bocal, but the length from bocal to the point would not change. However the tube flattens into the throat and widens into the blades at a fixed position from the tip and butt. So changes which bring the throat and blade of the reed closer to the bocal, such as widening the tube, will shorten the overall length of the bore. Merely widening the whole shape, like I did, will affect the blade and throat as well as the tube, so maybe won't be a win overall, but I think the idea is okay.

Later: painted G4 and G5 with nail polish after they'd dried, 2nd wire to the butt, on the end and about 1 cm up the inside of the tube, wiping with the mandrel. I did this because I was pretty happy with the result of adding nail polish to G3: no loose wires, a dimensionally stable tube, and maybe better tuning. G4 and G5 had shrunk a bit -- as finished blanks, I think they went on the mandrel a few mm (3-4) beyond the mark, and now, after one soak-dry cycle, they go exactly to the mark. Hopefully, with the nail polish added, they'll become stable there.

Again: tube size is stable (yay), but I feel like they leak around the bocal more than others. Maybe the hardness of the nail polish prevents a tight seal.

02/06: Being struck by the difference in size between what I'm currently turning out and my models, M1 and M2, made by a local pro, I decided to try an architecture experiment. M1 is much shorter, ~23.5 mm, as compared eg to G3 at 26.5mm. I clipped G5 down to 25mm, and set about trying to shave it down to a short soft reed. So far it's still pretty resistant, requiring lots of air and lip pressure. But there's still lots of wood, and a prominent spine, so I guess I can keep going.

XXVI, last time

Kay, so this is my last recording of XXVI, at least for awhile. I think it's better than my first attempt, but there's still lots I don't like. But, I don't think those things are improving fast enough to merit the investment of my time. The quaveryness I noted before is less, I think quitting coffee helped, but it's still there as I struggle to bring some notes into tune. I think the intonation is overall better, but I almost hate to check. I know the notes better, and still missed one. Musically, it's still meh, but time to move on.

Light practices

This week: Monday and Tuesday I had rehearsals, but didn't play otherwise, I think Wednesday I missed entirely, Thursday I played a few minutes with the kids, but nothing else, and today I got in about 10 minutes of long tones in the morning, which left me pretty tired. I think I'm feeling the effects of not enough actual practicing. Previously I'd managed to get into a cycle of almost an hour a day, which I ended up spending virtually all on long tones, scales and intervals. This was pretty good: you'd think that technique wouldn't improve at all without fast playing, but in fact it does, and in trying to come back, working on strength and tone is what it's about anyway. I think this is more serious practice than I'd ever done before, actually. Even at music camps, I'd be playing for many hours a day, but very little of that was long tones. So it really helps. After about an hour, I'd feel that I was done, but I'd also have run out of time and chops, and so would stop for the day, without have played a note of music. I suspect that people who are actually serious do multiple practices a day, so they can develop tone in one session, work their pieces in another, and so on. Still, an hour of long tones helps a lot. Even ten minutes is much better than zero, and helps maintain the practice of getting over the initiation barrier, but I doubt ten minutes a day is sustainable long term. I need to work hard enough to get tired, work hard enough to get some positive feedback -- improve something, learn something, have fun, just something. Too short, and it's hard for that to happen.

I've also starting thinking about the balance between practicing and making reeds. My initial goal was to learn enough so that I didn't feel trapped and stymied, and I think I'm there: I can now make reeds that I'm willing to play on. In fact, virtually every reed I've worked has been adequate at some level, though obviously they are all different, so I no longer fear being left with no reeds. Now, attaining excellence is something else, which will require a sustained effort over a long period. But absolute excellence in reeds is not the goal, rather it is a means to an end, and only one of many required for the ultimate goal of making music. So it would make sense to play more, and reed less.

In a similar vein, more observations. Awhile ago I pulled out one of the first reeds I made, one I'd abandoned for weeks. It played fine. It wasn't really worn out, maybe not surprising given that I've been moving on quickly to the next set of reeds, and also the fact that how long they last depends on how heavily they're used. So I've been driving my reedmaking by the need to practice reedmaking, rather than consuming reeds. Indeed, reeds can last a long time: in the Lacey article I quoted before, he uses a batch of 6-8 reeds for "many months", cleaning them by sonication after each use. I'd think that would help a lot, because I think the primary way reeds age is by accumulation of dead skin material in the pores of the blade, leading to dampening and deadening of the sound.

And finally, I was struck by a comment Norman Herzberg made, in an old interview I found. He was asked which was more important, time-wise: practicing or making reeds. A sharp question, because you can't just answer that both are critical: everyone has limited time, so there has to be a tradeoff. And he was a legendary expert both in teaching students and making reeds. His answer? Practicing, no question. In particular, without enough practice, you may not have the playing skill to demand more of your reeds, which is necessary to making them better. So, more practice, I guess, the answer to everything, no matter the question.

Future of classical music

I added another blog, Sandow, a prof at Julliard interested in the future of classical music. He has a book, which no doubt I ought to read, and lots of old blog posts, with many interesting discussions, and also a class. This being the internet age, he has the syllabus, readings, and listening material all online and generally available, so folks like me can follow along at home. The course title is Classical Music in an Age of Pop, which I think harmonizes pretty well with my thinking at the moment. Yeah, the community orchestras I'm playing in do spent their time on the traditional literature, familiar to musicians and their loyal audiences. Pro orchestras it's the same deal: I think this is not lack of imagination, so much as just plain respect for the audience -- people like to listen to music that they know. Popular music works, in part, because it's popular: a self-fulfilling status which allows large numbers of people to be familiar with it, know the tunes, maybe have it help define a phase in their life. So people interested in the future of classical music are thinking about how it fits in.

Now me, I always enjoyed playing more than listening. So when I discovered that I really liked contemporary pop, and electronic dance music (YouTube has really helped me experience lots of music I didn't know I might enjoy), the thought occurred to me that it'd be fun to play music that too. But it's not easy. Pop is very clean, very precise, technically. You can get away with a lot of garbage, playing in the middle of an orchestra, that would be totally unacceptable in dance music. And rhythmically, pop can be extremely sophisticated and precise. So I have a lot of work to do, if I want to eg play Basshunter or Lady Gaga tunes, and have them work, musically. Still, it's something to work towards.

Another recording

This is on reed G2, another hymn. The D's above the staff don't feel stable, and the D's in the staff seem nasal -- I wonder if these are related.



Update: Gah, that's terrible. Maybe I should practice getting the notes right before uploading. Here's changing just production (reverb, panning, bass boost). Helps a bit I think.



Second update: another hack at it, rerecording every part. This is better I think, though if I listen to each track on its own, I still hear lots to improve. And that's with about two hours of work on 20 seconds of extremely easy music. *sigh* (Reverb is small chamber, 22%. At 100% the exported result was noticably softer, wonder what's up with that. Yeah, normalize was on.)

[MP3]

Notes on G2 - G7

G2 and G3 are currently in finishing. G3 I tried out nail polish on the tube, instead of my usual lack of treatment. (Ie 4 wires, but otherwise bare cane.) I'm hoping for increased tube stability, since mostly I have trouble with the tubes shrinking. I've found that if I don't tighten wires 3 and 4 when they get loose, the tube expands out to them when it gets wet, but the loose wires are annoying. So far all I've learned is that nail polish tastes bad.

G4 and G5 I took off mandrels, touched up the bevel with a flat file, wired and labelled. When fastening the butt end wire (wire 3), the reeds were about 3mm beyond the mark. I'm hoping this is enough diameter to allow them to still fit on post-shrinkage. On one of them (G4 I think) I tried half tightening wire 1, then dragging the twist around to the other side and finishing tightening. I'm hoping that this will balance the blades, since the blade opposite the twist seems to get extra arch from the wire tension. I never seem to be able to adjust this out with scraping, so I've put up with it. They will stay dry until it's time to cut off the tips and start finishing, sitting as wired blanks on my desk.

G6 and G7 got a touch of sanding, folded, shaped, beveled, and tubes formed. I have a fold-over shaper, which I'm convinced is assymmetric. At least the screw hole in the base of the tip is at about a 10-20 degree angle to the centerline of the tip, which even if the tip itself is symmetric, makes it difficult to get a symmetric shape. Maybe it's just skill, but I end up with a visible left-right assymmetry in the blades. I bevel with a file, aiming for flat surfaces to form a seal for the tube, then clean up with 220 sandpaper. Tubes I form wet, cold, wrapped with two layers of wet string, no wires (to make it easier to open later), and munching the cane through the string with pliers on the back half of the tube only. I'm using a Fox forming mandrel, which is much longer than my holding mandrel, despite its sharper taper: it's about 0.08 (mm diameter change per mm length), instead of the 0.07 of my holding mandrel (matching the conical bore of the bocal and bassoon). I've been putting them on tips to dry which have the 0.07 taper, which means that the throat is getting an extra shove if the reeds are put all the way on, which I have to if the tube is going to be supported while it dries. Aand... I think this is leading to cracking I've been getting in the blade. Have to think about this.

I put in two more pieces of gouged and profiled Golden Bamboo cane to soak. I've been soaking for about a week, changing the water daily. Saturated enough to sink would be good enough to form a tube, but better is to get close to the kind of equilibrium the cane will achieve in use. Lacy 1998 (J IDRS 16) assayed sodium levels in cane water, and showed that it takes a few days for salts to dissolve out of the reed. The claim is that this is the primary form of breaking in of reeds, which I'm not sure I believe, but it seems like it can't hurt. He also advocates ultrasonic cleaning of reeds after use, which makes sense to me, but I don't have the hardware.

Reed throughput

Had two rehearsals this week, one with a new group. I ended up playing mostly on G1, and a bit on R5. R6 I tried out, but still buzzy and out of control. I still think it could be a really nice reed, but it needs to calm down, or be calmed down. I've been trying to be careful with it, but that just means it's still mostly just a blank.

I feel like I'm having some luck understanding intonation and reeds. On one of the two soft ones I was working this weekend, G1 or R5 (can't remember which), I was happy with how it was except for being flat. So I tightened the second wire down hard. The tube shrank substantially there, and the pitch came nicely up. It also felt kinda choked, but still.

I have a new goal for reed throughput. I've made about 10 reeds now, and have learned a great deal, and am developing a certain comfort with the very basic level I'm working at. Learning is logarithmic, though: it'll probably take the next 100 to learn as much again. I can do this in a year, by making two a week. So that's my goal: put two reeds per week through the pipeline.