I love those moments when suddenly something becomes completely clear. Last night I suddenly, for the first time, really understood how to play oboe.

I played for years when I was at school, but I never really put in the time to practice, and so progress was slow. I passed grade 5 and was working on grade 7 pieces, but then just totally stopped when I got to uni, really.

My big problem was always stamina. Oboe has a reputation of requiring very strong lip muscles to hold the embouchure (the shape of your lips around the reed), and I was always collapsing after 45 minutes. Now, since about christmas I’ve been playing almost every day, and could play for an hour, but then I was totally exhausted.

My oboe teachers always used to tell me not to “bite the reed”, and I didn’t think that I was. But after reading a description of how to make sure that a reed is playable I realized that I was. I was using my lips to force the reed to make a noise, whereas I should really just blow the thing and let it play itself.

The change was immediate. Suddenly, my tone improved drastically (I’d been blaming my v. basic oboe), and I can play for hours. It means that I have to learn a new type of control, but this is coming easily. I suddenly have a completely new level of sensitivity to tone and dynamics that I have never experienced before.

My technical skills are returning (slowly), my sightreading and theory are recovering, and now I’ve got a nice dark tone rather than a rather raspy effort.

I love it when things come together like this.

Writing about: Elsevier.com – Journal of Controlled Release

Todays Journal of the Day, for sure. Can’t decide whether it sounds kinky, painful or meditative.